Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Power outage. Lights out.

Living in the country, (sticks), have you had loss of electricity for any length of time?

Any tales to tell?

the country place is co-op rural electric
and goes out all the time. it's only been
inconvenient one time, and i have coal oil
lamps and lanterns, so it wasn't any great
hardship. one neighbor didn't have any water
set aside, so i split what i had with him.

The longest I was out was 4 days, in a snow storm of course. I have a generator and ran cords to keep the frig and freezers going, and the wood stove kept us warm. But if you're on a well, you have no water.

After that, I rewired some circuits to a manual transfer switch, and power the "outage" side with the generator. Now it will power the well pump.

REC here with most underground now, pretty good. Have coal oil lamps, wood heat and 2 generators on standby

Of course it always happens at the worst times.

Lost elec when I knew a bad, blue norther was blowing in and got to the ranch just in time for the elec to go out.

Got minus 14 that night. Luckily I had a good infrared heater and plenty of propane.

Another time I returned to the home ranch after being away on an extended project. Caretaker didn't remember to have the propane filled before I returned home. Propane ran out the night I got there ahead of a snow storm that dumped 3 1/2 ft of snow.

Called the propane folks in the morning and they said they couldn't get up the mountain until the snow melted.

Was about 5 days until they could.

Luckily I had a big Jacuzzi on my outside deck, and was able to bathe. Just had to rinse of out of it as not to get soap in the tub.

We had several ice storms over a 10 period, where we lost power anywhere from 1 to 5 days. Toughed one out at home, one in a motel, and finally got smart for the last one. I had an electrician fix me up a switch box where I can plug my generator in and power the house. The generator is big enough that I can run all the essentials, and still be comfortable. Of course, as luck would have it, have only had to use it once for about half a day. But, not complaining, that's a good thing.

Without power for 9 days due to a ice storm, March 1976. Dad had purchased a three point tractor generator the previous year so we got the cows milked, but we did not have a hookup to the house. We ate or gave to the neighbors most of the contents of the freezer. Made good use of the home canned vegetables.

We took the tractor and generator to milk some of the neighbors cows. The roads had 3-4 inches of ice on them and the tractor with chains could not navigate the steep hills to get to some of the farms, so we cut fences and went cross country. This worked OK for the first couple of days, but the milk trucks could not get thru to empty the milk tanks. A lot of milk got dumped. We had hogs so we salvaged some of the milk.

We had wood heat in the house, kerosene lamps and good supply of kerosene. We cut more fences and went cross country to get some of our elderly relatives and a couple of families with young children and babies back to our farm.

We hauled water from the creek in 10 gallon milk cans for washing and flushing the toilet. Also, cans of water from the spring for potable water.

Twenty-three days was the longest. At somewhere around day Seventeen, I bought a generator. Freezer was starting to thaw. We had tried to keep it closed as much as possible, and took a lot of food out at a time. We had a propane cook stove, and hung blankets over the doors to other rooms, and cooked a lot. Stayed warm even though the gas furnace needed electric to work. I still have the Generator but have not used it in several years. Been about two since I started it, and I need to do so. miles

We lose power often. Mainly from tornadoes and heavy lighting, occasionally from snow. Lighting is usually fixed within a day or two. Tornado in 2011 left us without power for 10 days. Use a generator for freezers, fridge, etc. Have a couple of kerosene stoves for heat if needed.

We burned a fair amount of fuel about eight years back running a PTO generator.

Years back, I was using an "H" Farmall gas on the generator.
After a couple of days I had a pattern worked out where I had gas pumped the night before for the next morning.
I'd leave one house light on, and shut down the three horse water pump.
I'd gas up, check oil, start the tractor, let it warm up, pull on the PTO, get the voltmeter in the green, then throw the switch on at the meter.
Then adjust the throttle for the draw, and wire the throttle again, and at some point turn the water pump on.
A hot cup of coffee would be waiting from the pot set up the night before.

I still talk about the morning I put my long handles backwards THREE times in the dark before I got them right.

Funny, I always hope the power bill will be lower after not getting it off the line, always the same big bill.

We have had a five day outage and a lot of one and two day events. No issue really. We have a 6500 watt generator that will run a light and the electric stove if needed but we prefer to use lanterns, candles, the wood stove, and the like.

A freezer will keep food frozen for about 7 days when it isn't running due to lack of power. That is if you can stop looking in it every couple of hours to see if anything is thawing.

If it is winter (and it usually is) we run a space heater off of the generator to the area in the basement where the water comes into the house. We also put a bucket of snow in the refrigerator if there is snow available.

Was out two weeks last hurricane. Put in big auto generator, probably won't have another hurricane in my lifetime.

Similar deal here in E Texas. Most of the times our outages are due to wind. Two years ago on labor day we were out of town when a small and tornado crossed about 1/4 mile north of us. Neighbors said everything looked ok, but power was out. Knowing with house closed and no one opening refrigerator or freezer they would be good for about 3 days, so we delayed our return. It was a mess, could see downed power lines and trees from about 15 miles out, then when we turned off the highway, could hardly get through for our 1/2 mile drive to our road. Trees and power poles down, lines in the road and utility trucks everywhere. Got home and hooked up the generator. I have a big portable Honda, a 11KW model, and like you had an electrician friend put in a double throw switch with a big input plug to connect my generator. We are all electric, so I can run refrigerator, both freezers, stove, microwave, coffee pot and all lights as well as central air(heat pump) I do have a set of gas logs in fireplace and some 40 lb propane tanks for emergency use. At least with that switch I can total disconnect from the local power grid without breaking the seal and pulling my meter, and keep utility workers safe by no back feeding power to utility lines, plus no problem of having to run a lot of extension cords to various appliances.

Without power for 27 days after an ice storm in 2001 or 2002 at my parents house, but in town we were only without for 9. It destroyed miles of lines and poles.

Two weeks without power or anything else after hurricane Katrina in 2006. We got hold of a generator after about a week that was enough to run the freezer and refrigerator. The trouble was getting gas to run it, there was very little gas anywhere around and gas stations would limit you to five gallons when they'd get a load so everyone would burn up the gas they'd just bought driving around trying to find more gas.

We have a little country store about 15-18 miles from here that sells mid grade alcohol free gas. I go down every fall and fill 8-10 5 gal cans, and add stabil so as to be prepared. I had slipped up and not done this last year and we had an outage a couple of months ago, so I got the gen going, and ran down there and bought about $120 of gas that morning. I will use it all summer in the lawn mower and my older hand held 2 cycle equipment as that specifies alcohol free gas. After I use my generator, regardless of how long it runs, I change the oil, with Mobil 1 synthetic, then start it and run the carburetor dry. I have never had any starting problems, even this last time when my battery had died, It took 3 pulls on the cord, two to get the carb primed and one t start, on a 25hp Honda engine. Went and got a bigger gel cell battery, which I hope will last longer than the lawn mower type it normally takes, I also keep a maintainer on it along as with my vehicles. Have a Mercury that will kill a battery in a few weeks if we go off and do not keep a maintainer on it. I also have a John Deer lawn tractor purchased in 2000 and finally had to replace the battery this spring. 17 years out of that original battery, not bad.

Always run an engine out of gas for any length of time in storage. Never fails to keep things clean and ready to go.

After I dropped a couple hundred getting my Honda Rancher redone after ethanol screwed everything up, I asked the mechanics there about what I could do to prevent that, not only in my ATV, but with other small engines. I asked them pointedly about shutting the fuel switch off, and running it out of gas.

They told me NEVER do that with ethanol gas. The ethanol does it's damage after the gas has been run out, or evaporated from the carburetor. That's when the damaging oxidation occurs.

1) Use Premium gasoline.

2) Add ethanol treatment. (I add Stabil ethanol treatment, and regular gas treatment both to my gas cans as soon as I get them home.)

3) Run the engine every couple of weeks. (This keeps the gas from evaporating in the carburetor.

Since I started doing the above, I have had no further issues.

We went 2 weeks without electricity after Katrina. I had 2 bottles of propane for the gas grill and a couple gallons of gas for the coleman stove. While it was raining, I caught a lot of rain water coming off the house for use in the toilets. We filled all the coolers with drinking water before the storm and bought more drinking water. I bought a 3000 watt generator and plenty of gas. I rearranged my breakers so that only one side of the panel was hot. Left one light bulb in each room and kept the ceiling fans operational. During the day, I would run the refrigerator and freezer to keep them good. Watched tv at night and waited for the electricity to come back on.

We had back-tp-back ice storms one winter back in the early 90's, lost power during both for 8-9 days. By the 2nd storm I had a generator. The house we live in now is wired for the generator. I can run all of the receptacles and the well pump. Been in this house for 17 years now and have had 3 outages that lasted more than a couple of hours, but none for 24 hours[of course].