Between Wednesday night and yesterday we were without power for about 18 hours. Huge windstorm. We got very little wind, but it hit about 85% of our electric co-op's area, so we were down, also. Could have been worse - I think at least half of their service is still out. Hopefully, my reader/commenter Diane, fared ok in her area of the state.
I really just wanted my cup of coffee yesterday morning, LOL. If the outage was going to continue into today, dh was going to get out his old generator and get it hooked up. It will at least let us run a few things in the house. DH was chatting with a friend who has a small cattle ranch nearby and asked her how long the water trough's last for her cows, if there's no water (electric well pump, like us) and she said about 2 days, but if need be they just move the cattle next door to her brother's place, where he has a creek running through his property.
The power came on around 3pm, so I was able to get online and worked for a couple of hours. I'm not sure what I would have done today, for getting payroll done. Tried to do it from my phone or ipad, I guess, or my boss said we could Teams and have me walk her through it. They were saying we might get more winds last night, but all is good this morning, and payroll will get done. I used my couple of hours yesterday, to pretty much get payroll all prepared to go.
My sis and I did get to train a good chunk of Wednesday, which was great. She's going to be great. She had worked on a report, adding invoices to our system, for about 90 minutes and added more than you know who did in 5 hours that same day.....It sounds like her plan to do the 20 hours/wk is to work full days Mon and Tues and half day Wed and then she can do Thurs and Fri for her other p/t job. Works for me.
The 20 degree drop in temps yesterday was very welcome, even if we did have no power. Going out to water the flowers last night was so much more comfortable. We had planned to go into the city yesterday after I was done working to pick up a Walmart order, but with no power and them saying it might be multiple days, I certainly couldn't bring a bunch of groceries home to be refrigerated/frozen, so I rescheduled it for Saturday morning. I just noticed the weather temp notification on my task bar in the right corner of my computer - it says 99. It's only going to be 79 today, so where that's coming from, I have no idea.
Awhile back dh had bought 6 5-gallon jugs to store water in, for a power outage and to use to be able to flush the toilet. Well, he realized that isn't going to be much, if we are ever out for more than 2-3 days, so we decided we'd better still fill the tubs as well, when we know in advance we might lose power. Awhile back I asked dh about maybe we should get a whole home back up generator. Mostly it's not having water that is the worst part of it. We are considering that again, LOL. Also, somewhere I have a battery phone charger, but of course I couldn't find it. DH has a solar one, that he's never really tested out in full, but it was barely charging his phone. My phone was almost fully charged yesterday morning, so I was ok for the day.
Well, I hear dh is up, so I will go back downstairs and make his egg sandwich, before I get started with my work day.
My plan for water for flushing is to fill detergent jugs and milk and juice jugs. But, we have never done it. We don't lose water when lights go out, which rarely happens and then not for long. He has a gas water heater, so we never go without hot water.
ReplyDeleteI am glad it was not longer and you got your payroll done. It is good your sister will be a better help than you know who!
We rarely lose it either, and most often just for a few hours, so it's hard to justify needing a whole house generator. I think dh just needs to get his small generator set up so it's easy to get to and hook up, if needed. I'm glad you didn't get all the damage.
ReplyDeleteTyping from Land o' the Power's Out Windstorms here. We are on private wells and have a septic system, so when the power goes out, as you know, there's no water! Both this place and our last place have a standby generator, but our farmhouse doesn't. When we had our first windstorm the first fall we moved here, a storm took out power for four nights and five days in November, and I was pregnant to boot! Fortunately, that place has a woodstove, so we weren't cold, and I could cook. BUT, I was forcing a flush with store bought bottled water. After that, we made a habit of making sure that when a suitable container was emptied (bottled apple juice, 2 liter bottle, plastic orange juice container) to fill it with water and tuck them under the sinks in the bathrooms, or stow them on a shelf in the garage so we could force a flush. Remember though if you have a septic system, that forcing the flush will send the effluent to the septic tank, but if there's no power, the pump can't send the tank to the leech field. Our rule was one flush per toilet per day. Even then, power restoration was always accompanied by the septic alarm blaring!
ReplyDeleteYes, dh was worried about the septic pump as well, if we were going to be out for very long. He really needs to get his generator figured out as a backup.
DeleteIf you decide to get a new generator check out Costco. They put them on sale a lot. Dh got one for $450 on Costco.com and he is really happy with it. They had several different options, some cheaper, and some more expensive. I can’t remember if it was on sale when he bought it.
DeleteDiane
Well, if it were JUST DH and me, the septic pump wouldn't have been an issue. That said, I AM glad we have the standby generator. It runs on propane, and kicks in just seconds after the power goes off. The last severe power outage we had lasted 4 nights, 5 days. I started getting nervous about the propane, as we were around 20%, and the propane company couldn't give us an estimated date of delivery because they had people at zero. On the second night, we made the announcement that we were manually shutting the generator off at 10 p.m., and leaving it off until morning.
DeleteDiane - we do already have a generator (just not a whole house type), so dh can hook that up (it runs on gas and is noisy is the annoying part of it) if necessary. The whole house generator would be about $10k, including installation :(
DeleteI guess we don't realize how soft we've become do we! When I lost my hot water in March it really brought it home to me how tough our ancestors had it!
ReplyDelete