after almost a week of no power, I'm back

We got hit hard with that snow storm, and 12-18" of snow on trees that have not shed all the leaves, is kinda hard on power lines:( we had also lost our phone lines for a day or 2 also.. I know during the floods in the midwest, the outages and conditions were a lot worse, but we got our little taste of that... we did rent a generator to keep our fridge going, and we were able to watch TV. we have a well, so we were out of water, but just went to my grandparents to shower and get water in 5 gallon water jugs. American red cross did come in to help and set up 2 shelters, so it must have been declared state of emergency, but I didn't hear that it actully was... got power back at 5:00 tonight

Wow Matt. I know what kind of hell that is. We lost power for a week when we had a huge ice storm a few years back. I did not mind losing the power as much as having to haul water. That is truly a pain. Glad to see you back on and that everyone is doing okay.

yea. the water isn't even the issue with me.. it's that ventless gas can the govt mandated.. they make a real mess filling a generator, and fill really slow.. holding 5 gallons of gas up to the tank gets tiring

I hate those gas cans more than anything else i deal with. Mine are made of metal and are very heavy. The gas either does not come out well or it sloshes everywhere.

A day without power is fun but a week would suck. How did you keep warm, wood ?
And about those gas cans, they get the screwdriver treatment from me.

Wow Matt, I watched it on the news. I can't imagine!! :eek:
Ken

we have 1 of the glow warm ventless gas wall heaters in the living room, which all the rooms are pretty much connected to, and it does not need power, so we were set with heat, and managed to keep it around 71-72* nights, but it never shut off for very long...

what do you do with the screw driver to those cans? I have an old type nozzle that fits the can, but I lost the end cap to it, so I only use it if I have to.. I would have gotten it if I knew where I last put it :LOL:.

Ken, was it under state of emergency? our local radio news station didn't say, and we could only run the fridge or the TV on the generator ( 2,500 watt, didn't want to push it ) so we didn't watch a lot of TV, and when we did, it wasn't the news..

Matt - both NYSEG and National Grid kept reporting that they had a few thousand without power but it would be back on by "tonight" for most and "tomorrow" for the rest. They did that for 3-4 days:eek: but never reported it as an emergency that I ever heard. I was in your area before it started so only got wet. We, in Southern Saratoga County only had and inch or so of sloppy snow so had no problems:3dSMILE:

We've had 5-6 day long power outages from snow twice in the past 6 years at the Wa. place. Sucks big time. Biggest problem with even having a portable generator is how far you have to go to find a station that has power to refill your fuel cans. Fixed that problem a while back and put in a natural gas fueled backup generator. Of course now that I've gone through all that we'll probably never have another long term failure...........:LOL:

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Originally Posted by IC2

Matt - both NYSEG and National Grid kept reporting that they had a few thousand without power but it would be back on by "tonight" for most and "tomorrow" for the rest. They did that for 3-4 days:eek: but never reported it as an emergency that I ever heard. I was in your area before it started so only got wet. We, in Southern Saratoga County only had and inch or so of sloppy snow so had no problems:3dSMILE:

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Yea, we were the 1st to report an outage in our area.. power was supposto be restored weds morning.. then weds at noon.. kept pushing it back, until the last time it said friday by 6.00 pm, and it came on at 5.00... really the bad part was we were not prepared at all.. the snow blower is still down from last year with 2 broken belts ( not that it would have done much good in that snow ).. and the truck has goodyear rain tires on it... I got 4 General Grabber AT2's from tire rack, but can't have them mounted until the 5th..

and our highway dept lost power, so they had to hand crank the diesel pumps, and road conditions were not good because of there delays



as far as outages.. it was just over 4,000 for NYSEG and 2,300 for Central Hudson, not sure on National Grid's count.

Matt, glad you have your power back, hope you can keep it on now. We have been having above normal weather so far but the snow will be coming.


Bob, that statement about buying the natural gas generator and not having to use it perhaps, reminds me of a commercial. Two guys sitting in a bar the one guy had all kinds of test for his heart. The other guy asked why he was so upset? The guy said he spent all of that money on test and they didn’t find anything wrong!!!

We were without power last year, I bought a generator from sears 6500 watts we were able too keep the Frig, freezer, plus lights on. It was in the heat of the summer so I put a 110 window air conditioner in one room and that’s were we spent most of our time. We have a well also, I would take water out of the pool for the toilets and we had plenty of drinking water. Did you know that you could take a sponge bath with one-gallon of water? Survival mode takes over when the unexpected happens?



Richard

Matt,
I can't remember there exact wording, but that sure was the impression I got. They said it was especially dangerous because of it's early arrival. I'm not sure why that would make a difference, but that seemed to be important.
Ken

yup.. we used pool water for the toilets too... because of the rain tires on the truck, we had to wait for the plows b4 we could get water... so we melted snow for the morning coffee, and we broke out the camping perculator for all week...

were probably going to get a generator.. gonna be a hard winter by the looks of things now.. the rental was just shy of $150 for 4 days.. a generator of the same size as we rented isn't much more to buy

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Originally Posted by Ken Thurm

Matt,
I can't remember there exact wording, but that sure was the impression I got. They said it was especially dangerous because of it's early arrival. I'm not sure why that would make a difference, but that seemed to be important.
Ken

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not all the trees have shed there leaves yet, so there were a lot of down'd limbs over power lines. trees in the roads ect... and the highway depts hadn't put the plows and sand/ salt boxes on the trucks.. so for the first run on the roads, our town just ran with the plows.

The video they kept showing, what a mess :eek: You do check the color of the snow, right :LOL: :LOL:
Glad you were prepared and safe.
Ken

I bought my generator on October 10, 1988 while living in the boonies outside of Albany, NY after one of those "fun" storms where the trees make a mess of the power systems. We were without power for ~10 days and my sump pump wouldn't run - can you say a basement swimming pool until I got it up and running?? Luckily I had a walkout basement so it really was only an ankle deep wading pool - but of course it flooded the furnace to the tune of $150:mad:

Matt, It's hard to believe that only about 150 miles seperate us and all we got was 1" of wet snow.

we have been out of power 1 other time when it was like 3 or 4 days.. that was when we used our 1,500 watt ( running current ) inverter to run the fridge, it is a 2,000 watt surge power inverter.. could only let it cycle once, as if you didn't rev the car up when you turned the inverter on, it would stall the car from the alternator load.... but I think after this, were buying a generator.

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Originally Posted by chevy 37

Matt, It's hard to believe that only about 150 miles seperate us and all we got was 1" of wet snow.

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yup. the way it happened just didn't make sense.. our other house in Ovid, where my dad works out of. he said there wasn't much there ither, but that's pretty close to Auburn anyway..... I do notice that it turns into spring type weather a lot quicker up there than down here. and the 1st frost up there was 2 weeks after our first