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Anyone have power outage tips?
I recently went through a four-day power outage. It was pretty rough. I think four days is about the limit for me. After that, I’d start having serious problems.
I wrote a little something about the experience. The fragile nature of my life’s work
Afterward, I raided Amazon for some preparedness stuff:
- Batteries
- LED lanterns
- Battery-powered fan
- Cooler with ice-retention
- Power bank (and charging cables)
Eventually we’ll probably get a generator installed (we had one but it broke down years ago). But in the meantime I’m wondering what other basic steps I could take to be more prepared.
How do you guys deal with power outages?
blakewatson.com
blakewatson.com – The fragile nature of my life’s work
During a four-day power outage I was confronted with how meaningless my work and hobbies are if there is no electricity to support them.
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7 Replies
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Oh man, Blake. I’m so sorry to hear this. We had a similar experience back in 2011. A hurricane knocked a tree down preventing us from getting in or out. We were without power for a week, but after a few days, we had some guys with trucks come and move some boulders so we could off-road it and get out. I needed electricity for all my medical equipment.
After that, we got a generator. We had an electrician set it up where the generator would power my bedroom (with all the medical equipment), the living room, and the refrigerator. I believe heat/AC as well.
We get outages all the time for some reason. Do you too?
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Yeah, that sounds rough! A generator is definitely a good idea. We will probably try again with one (the last one broke), but we might be moving in the next year or two so not looking to make a big investment like that just yet.
YES, my power goes out all the time. Sometimes for no apparent reason. It’s gotten a little better lately I guess but it has a history of being pretty finicky.
Sometimes I weirdly enjoy them at first. A forced break from the screen. Nothing to do but talk to family.
But after like four hours I start having an existential crisis, since all of my skills, abilities, hobbies, passions, work, and friends live inside of my computer. 😅
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I’m with you. I do enjoy the peace and quiet for a little while. But my livelihood is basically on my laptop and phone. So after a while, the existential crisis starts to settle in. Do you have a hotspot on your phone? Sometimes I’ll use that if I’m desperate.
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If my power was out for an extended period of time like that I’d have to go elsewhere. It does worry me that inclement weather could hinder my plan to escape, but most people these days can’t stay put so I’m sure someone could get me out.
Everything I own runs on power so I can’t even say I’d read a book because it would drain my phone battery. Did you have a giant picnic to eat all the food before it went bad? Be sure to check with your homeowners insurance. Sometimes food loss can be covered and doesn’t count towards your deductible. Glad you made it through safely!
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Yeah, it’s really sad how almost anything we do requires power. But, to that end, I did get a very large capacity power bank so that we could charge devices and not feel guilty about using them for fun.
Nope, all the food went bad unfortunately lol.
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After a major hurricane here in 2016 (tall pine tree through the main bedroom roof, and long stays in a local hotel…argh) we purchased a whole house generator. It’s been a big help durin the subsequent hurricanes and fairly regular power outages in my “urban forest” neighborhood. It is very expensive, but thankfully we could afford it. (It didn’t cure me of PTSD though when Hurricane season is in its prime.)
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Oh wow, I would evidently have PTSD in hurricane season too if a tree went through my house!
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