4th day with no power

[NoTrespassing]

Last Thursday afternoon we got hit with 80 mph straight line winds here in Central Illinois. Power went out about 1:30 pm. Reports claim over 1200 poles damaged or destroyed. Power is still out for over 50,000 as of today. This is the first time in 23 years of living here that power has been off for more than 12 hours. We've been given false estimates of restoration twice now. Power was supposed to be restored yesterday at 12:15 pm. That came and went. Then an estimate of 12:15 am for this morning didn't happen as well. Apologies were issued after both failures. Luckily we have a small generator for phone charging, freezer, and fridge. We have no water other than bottled, pool, and rain collected. Fun times! Now it's just a waiting game.

 

[bdhsfz6]

I know what you're going through. We had a 7 day outage after hurricane Sandy in 2012. We only had a 750 watt Honda genny which we used for charging cell phones, TV, lights & computer. No water A/C, cooking or refrigeration. We had to siphon gas from our 3 vehicles since no nearby stations were pumping. Showered at a relatives place 45 minutes away. It got old very quickly.

After that incident, I bought a 12KW PTO generator powered by my Kubota. I fuel the tractor from my 1000 gal heating oil tank which would last a month if necessary. Only used it twice for short outages since.

 

[Tinhack]

Yep. I know power outages hurt really bad. I feel your pain. I'm not sure which is worse--The record heat of summer or the record cold of winter. For me, the outage occurred during a record low-temp freeze. I was burning candles to keep warm in an all-electric home. We couldn't even buy propane to run a stove or gas for the car since everybody was out. A week of that was grueling. I bet a lot of babies were made during that outage. Ya gotta stay worm somehow.

 

[NoTrespassing]

We have a nice Weber propane with side burner for our cooking needs. My wife even bakes in it. She was raised without plumbing or hot water so she's handling it easily. We had a brief downpour yesterday and my wife, son and I took a shower under a gutter downspout. No neighbors can see our house, we're very isolated. We're also washing dishes with rain water.

 

[Richard]

son and I took a shower under a gutter downspout.

Heh, that brings back a memory.

Call it 25 years ago when we were building. Shell of the house was done, (no indoor showers yet) and had the well hooked up... it was roasting hot/humid....I was dirty as can be. Needed to take a shower so what did I do?

Being resourceful, I simply hooked the hose to the outdoor bib and created a shower outdoors (we also are VERY isolated and in the woods and, this was behind the house so only the squirrels were laughing at me)

Proceeded to start taking a shower when it hit me.

Well water can be C.O.L.D. It was all I could do to stand in this water without my breath being taken away from how cold it was.

I finally resorted to jumping in/out of the water stream instead of just staying in it.

Meanwhile, camera cuts to the squirrels who were rolling on their backs belly laughing at me.

 

[LouNY]

Long duration power outages can be difficult to handle. We have them too often, but being rural and a bit self sufficent we can handle them much better then the folks in town who are so used to never having interruptions that last more then a couple of minutes. We have been over a week several times in the winter, makes you appreciate fuel and generators.

 

[5030]

Why we have a 27KW diesel powered emergency genset and auto transfer switch. 45 seconds after utility drop out, we are back online with everything electrically powered. Sure it's expensive to run but light years better than no utility power. You never have any idea how bad it can be until you don't have it.

I would never own a pto driven backup gen set.

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

Yep. I know power outages hurt really bad. I feel your pain. I'm not sure which is worse--The record heat of summer or the record cold of winter. For me, the outage occurred during a record low-temp freeze. I was burning candles to keep warm in an all-electric home. We couldn't even buy propane to run a stove or gas for the car since everybody was out. A week of that was grueling. I bet a lot of babies were made during that outage. Ya gotta stay worm somehow.

May be funny, but there is some truth there.
The year I was born there was an extreme cold front in January with lots of snow on the ground, weather data records confirmed this.
We had annual birthday parties for the 5 of us that were born in September of that year. My first grade class had a total of 5 students, now LOL!

 

[Peter 315]

Why we have a 27KW diesel powered emergency genset and auto transfer switch. 45 seconds after utility drop out, we are back online with everything electrically powered. Sure it's expensive to run but light years better than no utility power. You never have any idea how bad it can be until you don't have it.

I would never own a pto driven backup gen set.

A pto gen set is better then sitting in the dark...

 

[LouNY]

Why we have a 27KW diesel powered emergency genset and auto transfer switch. 45 seconds after utility drop out, we are back online with everything electrically powered. Sure it's expensive to run but light years better than no utility power. You never have any idea how bad it can be until you don't have it.

I would never own a pto driven backup gen set.

I prefer my pto generator and lots of choice of tractors to run it with. Over 25 years of use and still ready to produce power.