My power just went out.

"gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee" (gogmorgo)
12/17/2016 at 10:50 • Filed to: None

I have electric heat and not the best insulated house... I hope it comes back on soon.

Edit: IT’S BACK! Although this is the third time it came back on, so here’s to hoping it’s here to stay.

DISCUSSION (20)

DipodomysDeserti > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 10:55

Shit.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > DipodomysDeserti
12/17/2016 at 11:04

IT JUST CAME BACK ON!

...and then went out after 30 seconds. Looking up how to report outages. At least the cell network’s still up so that’s a good sign I think.

deekster_caddy > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 11:15

When it’s-34 out, does it really matter that it ‘feels like’ -48? Also, electric heat and no backup generator?

jimz > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 11:25

y’know, I like cold weather and snow, but there’s a limit. When the temperature outside is nearly down to the point where it doesn’t matter whether it’s F or C...

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > deekster_caddy
12/17/2016 at 11:32

Rental unit, reasonably stable power grid with lots of redundancies because the power company crews know it could take a while to get out and deal with a problem. Longest outage I’ve experienced was a few hours. It’s just a little alarming when it’s this cold out, and it keeps going out again. If it came to worse, I could throw an oil “lamp” together pretty quickly and get quite a bit of heat.

And yes, it does matter. -34 is annoying but survivable for almost 15 minutes of exposure. Losing heat like its -48 is how people lose digits. Exposed skin freezes in under 10 minutes. That -40 mark is a big one.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > jimz
12/17/2016 at 11:41

When it’s nearly down to that point isn’t that huge a deal for me. It’s when it starts mattering again... I’ve seen windchill factors down past -60°F. Those are the days you only go outside long enough to say you’ve been out there.

just-a-scratch > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 11:44

I hope you have a plan to keep pipes from freezing inside too. Around here it only gets a bit below freezing, so letting a faucet drip will keep the line clear. At - 40 I’m not sure what you should do. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Good luck with the power and stay warm.

just-a-scratch > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 11:47

Yeah. I’ve kept warm outside at -30, but never managed it at -40. It’s no joke.

CB > just-a-scratch
12/17/2016 at 11:55

As someone who had a sink freeze at -40 and stay frozen for a week, you wait and use your landlord’s shop heater to try and warm it up.

DipodomysDeserti > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 11:58

Those are scary temps. Believe it or not, but we had some bad blizzards in AZ a few years ago that cut off power to isolated parts of the reservations in northern AZ (some of the towns never had power). They had to air drop supplies and MREs to people, but a lot of the older Navajos don’t read or speak English and couldn’t fogure out how to use them. Keep warm

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > just-a-scratch
12/17/2016 at 12:00

If the temperature inside dropped far enough I needed to put on long sleeves, I would have turned a tap on, yeah. But the pipes that risk freezing are all pex so not going to burst if they do freeze.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > DipodomysDeserti
12/17/2016 at 12:15

It gets cold up in the mountains. And there’s definitely more snow. I live at the bottom of the closest thing my province has to a mountain, and escarpment that rises 1500' above the prairies, and it’s almost surprising the difference it makes. A couple weeks ago when we got about a foot of snow down here, it was so deep up on the hill it took a couple days to get the roads dug out, cause the plows couldn’t push through. Fortunately no one lives up there, and there are other roads around it.

As far as the temperatures go, I don’t even live all that far north.

shop-teacher > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 12:21

Ugh. Hopefully it stays on for you!

DipodomysDeserti > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 12:28

I’m two hours from Mexico, so anywhere in Canada is “far north” for me

deekster_caddy > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 12:50

Good to know, it doesn’t get that cold around here. And it sounds like you don’t need a backup genset. My untested plan in a long outage is to hook up an inverter to a spare battery and let it power our gas fired steam heat (no fans or pumps, just a gas valve). If the outage outlasts the battery, I can just hook it up to my car...

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > deekster_caddy
12/17/2016 at 13:21

Yeah, I can always hop in the Jeep if it gets too cold in the house. For real long-term, I’d build a quinzee in the yard, lots of firewood around. Plus I’ve got enough gear for backcountry snowshoe camping that I’ll survive for a while outside at -40. Well, -30°C, I haven’t spent more than one night in a row outside at -40 so far.

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > DipodomysDeserti
12/17/2016 at 13:26

I’m not even two hours north of the US border. I can drive on permanent roads another ten hours or so north of here, and another 20 or so (about the same distance) on winter roads. And there’s still people significantly further north, you just can’t drive there without going way west and way back east.

Stephenson Valve Gear > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/17/2016 at 16:42

I live in the mid-west where it rarely gets below 0 degrees F, but we can have extended outages (over a week) due to the occasional ice storm. I have a backup gen for the house, and another work gen that is just big enough to run the heater and a few lights. Every year when November rolls around, I buy enough gasoline to run a generator for a couple of days, and do a monthly start & warmup to make sure they are in operating condition. If the heat dies, I can always run some 1500 watt heaters to keep warm, too. Always good to have a backup plan for electric, as well as an alternate heat source. But, I own my house - I realize that isn’t always realistic for a rental...

gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee > Stephenson Valve Gear
12/17/2016 at 16:49

I can always hop in the Jeep to stay warm if need be. Lots of snow for quinzees too and I’ve got enough winter camping gear and firewood to keep me alive for more than a few days outside at -30. It’s just annoying when you don’t have a choice.

ateamfan42 > gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
12/19/2016 at 10:15

I have electric heat and not the best insulated house... I hope it comes back on soon.

Except for a wood stove, pretty much all other conventional forms of home heat (oil, natural gas, pellets, etc.) require electric power to function. So extended power outages are bad for everyone.