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dacjohns
Our Frustrated Curmudgeon
Some of the lines that went down were not in the urban areas where lines are commonly underground. The lines were the major distribution lines.Homesteadmom said:
Winter storm January 2009 in the Midwest.
- Thread starter dacjohns
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Homesteadmom
Frugal Homesteader
Thanks for clarifying that Dacs. Glad you are okay.
k0xxx
Mr. Sunshine
This year's power outage has been another "interesting" learning experience.
The first thing that I learned, was that no good deed ever goes unpunished. I have a good friend that had lost power and needed a generator. Having two, I brought him one. This immediately caused the one that I kept to sputter and die as soon as I arrived back home. The next eight days were laced with interspersed generator sputtering and my muttering.
We had plenty of wood for the wood stove, so we kept warm. We also had a lot of potable water stored so we had no problem there. However, a branch took out the valve on back-up water storage for flushing, so all of the water ended up on the ground and frozen. We ended up melting ice and snow to flush with.
Food was not a problem, but we did end up emptying the food from the freezer and refridgerator about the 5th day, and using snow and ice to keep it cool.
Having propane, we cooked on our normal stove top. We even baked potatos in the wood stove. Our lighting was mostly by kerosene lamp and suplemented by candles and rechargeable lamps that we had readied prior to the storm.
It was an interesting time. We played a lot of cards, listened to the scanner, and operated on our Amateur Radios via deep cycle batteries, backed up by solar panels.
The first thing that I learned, was that no good deed ever goes unpunished. I have a good friend that had lost power and needed a generator. Having two, I brought him one. This immediately caused the one that I kept to sputter and die as soon as I arrived back home. The next eight days were laced with interspersed generator sputtering and my muttering.
We had plenty of wood for the wood stove, so we kept warm. We also had a lot of potable water stored so we had no problem there. However, a branch took out the valve on back-up water storage for flushing, so all of the water ended up on the ground and frozen. We ended up melting ice and snow to flush with.
Food was not a problem, but we did end up emptying the food from the freezer and refridgerator about the 5th day, and using snow and ice to keep it cool.
Having propane, we cooked on our normal stove top. We even baked potatos in the wood stove. Our lighting was mostly by kerosene lamp and suplemented by candles and rechargeable lamps that we had readied prior to the storm.
It was an interesting time. We played a lot of cards, listened to the scanner, and operated on our Amateur Radios via deep cycle batteries, backed up by solar panels.
