A Conversation for Ask h2g2

What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 1

Bluebottle

Have you ever had no electricity for a lengthy period of time? If there's a power cut at home, what do you do?

A question inspired by this month's Create theme (see: A87883078) which may well lead to a submission for smiley - thepost or Peer Review.

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What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 2

bobstafford

START THE PETROL GENERATORsmiley - smiley


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 3

Baron Grim

I live on the Texas Gulf coast, so we periodically have outages caused by hurricanes. Depending on where one lives, the outage can last for days, weeks, or even months in some limited cases.

After Ike, we were without power for 2-3 weeks.

We tend to be prepared here. For the first night following the storm, I broke out the Coleman lantern, a bottle of Scotch, a battery operated radio, and a large pistol. I sat on the porch under the lantern so any looters entering the neighborhood would see it was not abandoned.

The next day, as other neighbors returned to watch their own homes, I broke out the Honda generator. I hooked it up to the refrigerators and freezer periodically to keep food from spoiling (if you don't open them they don't need to run constantly). At night the generator ran my bedroom A/C as the night time lows were still well into the 80°s. During ensuing days I tested the limits of the generator adding more appliances and devices to it. I was able to run the 'fridges, a few lights, the satellite receiver and TV, the cable modem and laptop. Most of the early days are spent chopping fallen trees and repairing damages.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 4

Rev Nick - dead man walking (mostly)

I have a couple of car battery boosters that have built-in inverters. Each can power small table lamps with compact flourescent bulbs for quite some time. Along with a couple of large jugs of drinking water, and a wood-burning fireplace - we've gone a couple of 20'ish hour black outs.

We both now own Kindles, and I have a travel battery pack that can charge both atleast twice. We just carry on


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 5

swl

A lot more sex, usually.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 6

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

I watch television by candlelight, obviously. smiley - biggrin

If the power is off for a long time in Winter, I pile more quilts on my bed. That's the one good thing about being a pack rat: I have enough covers to keep me warm.

I have a stove that uses liquid propane. My furnace uses kerosene, but electricity is needed to make it go on and power the fan that blows hot air through the floor vents.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 7

Baron Grim

Ooh! That reminds me.


Several years ago, maybe a decade, I was sitting at my local having a beer and a neighbor from the new subdivision near my home came in telling his tale of heroism.

In the middle of a night, earlier that week, his next door neighbors knocked on his door asking for refuge from the cold. Their central air and heating system had broken that evening and they were worried for their young children. He welcomed them in and made them comfortable. He went on to tell about the particular problems with the heating system and how between the repairman getting the wrong part and other delays, the neighbors stayed with him for several days.

This fellow and his neighbors were all in their early 30's or late 20's.


I let him finish his tale of neighborly good samaritanism. Then I just pointed out that the temps never dropped below 40°F all week. This is on the Gulf Coast as I mentioned earlier. Apparently folks their age have never heard of extra blankets, portable space heaters or even electric blankets. There is a 24 hour Walmart just down the road. When I was a kid we TURNED OFF the heater in winter at night. The first to get up was tasked with lighting the one gas space heater and got the privilege of having the most toasty bun warming spot. He didn't rescue anyone. He pampered them. smiley - laugh

Spoilt brats! smiley - senior


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 8

Rev Nick - dead man walking (mostly)

Briefly off-topic: In the late 80s, a USAF instructor that I knew was being transferred from Panama City, FL to North Bay, Ontario. He and his bride were both native Alabamans . . . And found our August weather of about 80F too cool. We stopped around at their hotel to welcome them to town, and nearly got bowled off of our feet - - - the Missus had cranked the room heat up to maximum.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 9

Pink Paisley



Without the internet? How?

smiley - laugh

PP.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 10

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

"found our August weather of about 80F too cool." [Rev Nick]

I'm not going to ask what they thought of the weather in January. smiley - whistle


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 11

Rev Nick - dead man walking (mostly)

(She went to visit her mother for a few months. smiley - winkeye)


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 12

Rev Nick - dead man walking (mostly)

Back on-topic:

The village that I grew up in was right in the middle of a "snow belt", so there were often times that power would be lost and roads impassable. Old style oil lamps and candles kept light for that 14 or 15 hours that aren't daylight. A wood burning stove was always ready to fire up as needed. "Santa Claus" kept us as a family of 8 well stocked on cards and board games.

And it wasn't uncommon for my father to take the tractor with an 8' wide snow-blower through the village to collect seniors - my grandparents and a few widows. Watching them come up the street, wrapped in blankets and standing in the front-loader bucket of that tractor was a bit comical.

Sub-note: sharing home and heat was partly good nature and good will, but the extra people also helped to add body heat. smiley - laugh


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 13

MMF - Keeper of Mustelids, with added P.M.A., is now in a relationship.

During the General Strike of the '70's power cuts were the norm.

To an extent we, as a family, were lucky as my Dad worked at the local power station. Their job was restricted so they could not strike but did 'work to rule'.

However my Dad would warm Mum when a power outage was due so food was prepared early, often sandwiches. Don't forget food was still fairly basic then. And we were bathed. Mum would also notify close friends. Modern technology was not directly affected as, apart from the three television channels which only broadcast at certain times we didn't miss much, and the radio was battery powered.

Light was by tilley and hurricane lamps and candles. We did our =homework then played cards etc. I don't remembwer being dramatically affected although it did seem to drag on for a fair while but that could just be hindsite playing tricks.

MMF

smiley - musicalnote


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 14

2legs - Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side...

until recently it wasn't so aweful a concept.... as we had gas hob, so could heat water, for coffee and tea, cook food etc... but... now, no gas hob smiley - yikes luckily still a gas boiler so I've hot water for washing my hands (necessarly to prevent death from infection basically), and at least would have warmth from the gas heating, but no coffee and tea... basically I'd just not get out of bed now smiley - sleepy other than which, I'd run about screaming that the internets was gone, and ... be very bored.... smiley - erm and, ... nah, nowdays I'd just sleep until it came back on.... too fatigued wihtout artifical stimulatens, as regards tea and coffee... smiley - sleepysmiley - zzz


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 15

paulh, vaccinated against the Omigod Variant

smiley - brr


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 16

SashaQ - happysad

We're lucky where I live that the power cables have been renewed so power cuts are much less frequent than they used to be, and when they do happen they can be fixed more quickly. The last one was only for a couple of hours, so I switched my large torch on and played games on my battery powered tablet.

When I was a child, power cuts most often happened during thunderstorms, so the family would sit round the light of the gas fire and our little wind-up musical box would play "Whistle a Happy Tune" smiley - biggrin


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 17

Icy North

I sometimes have to deal with power cuts affecting technology services to my employer. These are a mix of planned and unplanned (workmen regularly dig through cables, even in this day and age).

In the data centres, they have dual power supplies from different sources, so in theory everything should stay up if you lose one of them.

If an office loses power, then there are generally two backups. There's emergency battery power which kicks in immediately and keeps some floors running for an hour or two. There are also generators in some locations covering critical circuits.

Both of these backups are temperamental and, despite regular testing, they don't always work as planned. As a result, we do lose power from time to time. Technology doesn't like it, or rather, it doesn't like it even when the power comes back on. Servers and network devices often hang in a non-operational state. Applications and batch processing can fail in the middle of tasks. Databases can even get corrupted. Office telephony is over the network so we can lose that too. We have to rely on mobile signals.

We declare a major incident when there's a power cut, and set up 'war rooms' for the key support staff and decision makers. Computer users either go home to work, or find a coffee shop with an internet connection, assuming their applications are still available.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 18

SiliconDioxide

Where I live we rarely get a power cut. At my previous house we always used to fill a bowl with water because the local water supply was gravity fed from a water tower which in turn was electrically pumped from a reservoir. After a four hour cut there was never any water in the pipes.

My emergency plan starts with explaining to my children that life is possible without the Internet.


What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 19

Bluebottle

We don't have powercuts often. I think the last one we experienced was last Boxing Day when we visited the inlaws oop north in Leeds, which was experiencing flooding and after the children had fallen asleep there was a power-cut. As it was Christmas they had candles on display anyway, and as Father Christmas smiley - santa had given the kids 'Charades for Kids' smiley - gift we opened the box and were playing charades by candlelight. Only one Christmas decoration caught fire…smiley - holly

At home we have a wooden box that hides the fusebox. I store the powercut supplies in there, which consists of 4 headtorches, my camping lights, a scattering of other torches including clockwork ones and a battery-powered radio. As we're a maisonette we have no gas, everything including the boiler is electric. I don't think we've had a powercut that lasted more than ten minutes since the children were born, though.

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What do you do during a Power Cut?

Post 20

2legs - Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side...

Actually... thinking about it, I really oughta have a plan in place what to do if there is a powercut, now, as I'll be without a fridge, and the £1000 worth of injectible growth hormone in there, won't last long without refridgeration.... I guess If I've got some ice blocks in the freezer, then they can then provide some way to keep it cold for I think the stuff says about 48 hours, which hopefully would be long enough.... Or try transport them in cold bag to someone nearby who's got a ridge working smiley - doh and then visit them every night at midnight 1 AM, to inject myself ... that would please them smiley - snorksmiley - ermsmiley - weirdsmiley - doh


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