I'm glad your electricity is back and you can have the comfort of a nice hot shower. Sometimes we appreciate our comforts all the more when we lose them for a bit, but I hope it doesn't happen again for you this year.

That was a long time to be without power. Yes, technically it's not even winter. Hope it doesn't happen too much this winter for you, or maybe never again this winter. Maybe that would be too much to hope for.

How many times did you flip the light switches? I would do that all the time when the power was out. Four days is a lng time without power. At least its not the dead of winter. After our last five day outage, i got a generator.

We lost power in half our house. Luckiky it wasn’t the important half.

DH called it in on his Con Ed app. As it turned out the problem we had was actually specific to our house.

Glad you have power back. I really hate when the power goes out. Happened two or three times this past Summer, for no reason.

I live where the power goes out all the time. Kind of rural and heavily wooded and trees or parts thereof fall and take out power lines frequently, although the power company has worked hard this past year to clear as much as possible and reduce the problem.

We lost power earlier this week as a result of the west coast bomb cyclone and high winds. A small tree on our private road fell and took out all the power to my small neighborhood. Would not normally have been a big deal except that crews were called out to more serious outages so we had to wait just over 24 hours for a less than 30 minute repair!

Fortunately we have a dedicated generator that clicks on automatically. Not big enough to power the entire two family structure but all the essentials are covered - heat, hot water, refrigerator and the lights and electric in the main great rooms. All of the kitchen works except for the range so rely on microwave and toaster. I lived on soup and sandwiches for the day :-) Unfortunately the modem for my internet connection is in my office which didn't have power so I was offline for the duration.

All I can say is been there done that and isn’t it wonderful when it all comes back

Oh dear - that's terrible! Glad all is back online for you.

As my friends who live in a rather rural/wooded area would say (sarcastically) 'country livin'!

We have a gas powered generator. Keeping it going for 3-4 days....on and off this time of year would be a PIA. Glad you've got power back! ♥

We fill our bathtub when we know a storm is approaching that might cut our power. There's a lot to be said for a flush toilet, but the boring darkness is also an issue. Our neighbor has a very loud generator and I spent the last 3 nights cocooned in fleece with my noise-cancelliing Bose headphones on my head.

I have a small Honda generator, as our power can be off for days in the winter. I have a woodstove that can heat the house and I can cook on that and a portable propane camp stove (takes too long for the woodstove to get hot enough to boil water for my morning coffee, so I fire up the one burner camp stove). The generator is not wired into the house; I just use an extension cord to run the refer and freezer periodically and can run lamps so it's not dark for so long. It's small enough that I can haul it in a wagon from my garage (detached and downhill from my house :-( along with a can of gas to put it on my porch. It runs forever on a tank of gas and is easy to start and is reasonably quiet. I still don't have water because we have a community well system (9 homes), but this year our water system is investing in a generator so we can have water. I don't think the generator will run all the time for the well pump, but probably several hours at a time so we can flush and get water to heat for doing dishes, etc.

Olychick - We also have a portable gas Honda generator and run an extnesion cord in through a window to alternate keeping power to our refrigerator and our basement chest freezer. Priorities priorities. Flush toilets and hot showers aren't on the top of our lists!!

I hate the inconvenience of when the electricity goes out. I think it's the only time my princess complex surfaces. If it's going to be out for more than a few hours, I get into my car and drive to where it's on. In the past that was often to a hotel in a destination that had other attractions but now with a second home, that offers a suitable destination too. No generator needed with this approach.

Elmer - we got cold and hungry. Got into our car, turned on the heated seats . Caught up with the news on SiriusXM, drove to a local pub that had power and sat at the bar, eating and drinking, chatting with other homosapiens for 3 wonderful warm hours.

Elmer - we now live in our second home. I never want to have two of them again.

When the derecho hit West Virginia some years ago, my power was out for 2 weeks. No gas was available for many many miles either (with power stations couldn't pump the gas), so a generator, even if I'd had one, wouldn't have helped. I was very happy to have gravity feed water, so I did have water, and a gas stove that I could light with a match to cook and heat water. But I've sold this place and will be moving 4 miles down the road to a very small town--2 streets--and I will be dependent on power.

Usually, when our power is off for extended periods it's because of a heavy snowfall. Until downed trees are cleared and the roads are plowed (a slow process in my area because it's a rare enough occurrence that we don't have enough plows to clear residential streets very quickly), there is no driving anywhere, even with 4 wheel drive. So we have to be prepared to heat and cook without power. I have 10 gallons of gasoline in my garage that will keep my little Honda generator running for a couple of weeks if I am judicious with it. I store water to use in emergencies and I have one of those bags with a hose that you can hang and fill with hot water for a shower, if needed. I have used it a few times over the years, when desperate, lol. The worst thing is running out of firewood on the porch and having to haul more (uphill) from the woodshed in a foot or more of snow. Ugh. THAT makes me cranky. My favorite things when the power is out are headlamps. I have them all over the house and lots of batteries. It makes it so easy to walk around, read, go outside, etc. My friend's home burned down from a lit candle, so I won't use those any more.

We're on well water here too so a generator is a must have. Just a 5,000 watt Honda hooked up to a sub panel box but it's enough power to keep the well pump, 2 deep freezers, 3 fridges, lights, TV, microwave, toaster oven, and internet going. If I shut off all of those items for 20-30 minutes then I can switch it over to keep the water heater hot. Gas logs is the backup heat source for winter blackouts but during the summer we just take the heat or bunker up in the one room which has a window ac unit. We shut the generator down at 11pm and restart at 7am during those long outage durations. Hurricane Irene was the last big one @ 3 daze without power, and last winter an ice storm knocked us out for 36 hours).

@seagrass_gw Cape Cod....Oh my! I LOVE heated seats AND SiriusXM! ☺

I was brought up in a Scouting family and learned primitive camping and survival skills early in my childhood and so did my husband. But on the cusp of 70, I'm not as well-equipped to deal with things that my 20-year old body could sneeze at...we do prepare the best we can and help our older neighbors. At some point in time, if we're fortunate, someone will be helping us. We live in a very small town and have a good community police department who check in on elders living alone. We have been helping a 92-year old widow since March of 2020. She has told us she wouldn't be able to live in her home without our help.

Each day she calls the non-emergency police phone number just to check in, and if they don't hear from her (or other seniors on the program) they dispatch an officer to the property for a wellness check, and there is a lockbox on their home so the officer has access to a key and doesn't have to break a door or window to comfirm their safety. Her phone died and so the police woman took it to the station to charge it for her.

We took hot soup to her for dinner on Thursday night and she mentioned that she wasn't able to start her car so DH went back with a tricklecharger for her battery. Then Friday morning he went over again and she had fallen and was on the floor, but was able to get back up on her own. So we plan to keep a closer watch over her.

Seagrass, how lucky she is!

I get what you're saying, seagrass, and agree. We're also perfectly able to deal with the power being out, though I'm not about to use flint and steel to start a campfire in the backyard to cook over. It's more a matter of inclination than ability, I prefer to avoid the inconveniences.

Your neighbor is quite lucky to have considerate neighbors like you looking after her but it sounds like the best thing you could do for her is to convince her to find a more suitable living arrangement. Relying on neighbors is neither a considerate nor feasible strategy for more than a short while.

I think that will be left up to her out-of-state sons...and our EMS services. In the meantime we do what we can...

"Amen!" to that, laceyvail ... caring for neighbours is part of what makes a loving, vibrant community.

ole joyfuelled

We built our home with power outages in mind. We have a special panel to change the power feed from the power company to a generator. We could have as large a generator as we choose but a big one uses more fuel. We have one that covers the essentials like the well, fridge, freezer plus stuff like TV computers and lights and best of all the tiny pump that runs our infloor heat in the down stairs. The heat and hot water is propane so the hot water heater heats and the tiny pump that uses so little electricity pumps and we are toasty downstairs and the rest of the house isnt going to bust a pipe. I have thanked the day I decided to spend that money so many times. There would be no way to connect up the water heater that we have now and the hydronic pump other wise. They both take some electricity. We have have inexplicable outages twice recently but nothing like days on end. It happens-usually flooding around here. Wind is usually only a day or two. I hate it when the power goes out.

Sounds horrible. I sympathise. At the moment we’re into our second week of three without central heating because our gas boiler is down and the plumber is booked solid until mid November. But we do have electricity, thank goodness, so we have hot water and mobile room heaters. Power outages are extremely rare where I live and if it does happen it’s usually very brief, like half an hour or so. Power lines are mostly underground and unaffected by the weather.

floral, are you in an area where the selection of plumbers is limited? Having to wait so long at this time of the year sounds unusual.

Underground power lines are common where I am in newly built up areas and many urban areas but not so much elsewhere. The power outage factor from overhead wires that we suffer is from power lines going through heavily forested areas where either falling trees or wind-caused tree and branch movement can take out the power lines or even poles.

I can't imagine in the UK that distribution lines outside of built up areas are underground but maybe they are? I think many parts of the US are also more heavily forested than much of the UK so perhaps that accounts for the difference. Our regional power company has said they do their best but that it's mostly a losing battle to try to keep trees trimmed enough to be clear of their lines.

No, the selection isn’t limited. They just have huge amounts of work and we need one trained for a specific type of boiler.