Did your prepping work for you during this long outage??

[goofycj7]

I had mixed results this storm, the 6,000 watt generator I bought used seized up after five minutes. Not the motor but the actual alternator started to smoke, then make noise then seize completely.
Fortunately as far as the generator I bought it from a NES member who refunded my money and was very apologetic.
My snow plow wiring was not connected to my newer 2002 tacoma by Saturday. Got that done Sunday night and found a problem with the replacement solenoid. The old solenoid melted at the end of last season and this new one would not actuate.
So my wife slid her focus down the driveway and I shoveled out the two parking spots at the base of the hill.
We had the coleman stove for cooking, many battery powered lanterns and lights but we went through 16 d cell batteries in five days. Ate up most of my stock.
For heat the propane fireplace insert kept the house at 60-70.

For the future buy a new generator at Home Depot in 2-4 weeks, when the guy in the rental area told me people will have returns the ones they bought this storm.

Get the plow wiring fixed, I thought I still had a month to get that finished. Instead I stayed up till 1 AM to find out I had a wiring issue and no energy to look into it.

Get more batteries, 32+ D cells and a brighter Lantern for the rooms without power.

And plan on this happening again while I am sick. It was one of those weeks!

 

[FrugalFannie]

The generator ran fine. The way we hook it up we power about half the lights and receptacles. We run the fridge on it's own extension since it's circuit will trip if someone forgets and runs the microwave at the same time. The heater, hot water heater, clothes washer, televisions all run off it. We had 2 5 gallon cans prior to the storm. After dropping off my son at school on Tuesday I went to the Lowe's in Framingham and picked up 2 more. 5 gallons runs it for about 12 hours and resupply isn't usually a problem since we are around the corner, walking distance, to 2 gas stations that almost never lose power. Well, everyone lost power this time. And everyone in the nearby towns also was looking for gas making for long lines. Extra cans made it easier to not worry about running out. We can cook on our stove, just need a lighter to light it. All went pretty good.

 

[SSW]

Guys, this is an excellent thread, THANKS for starting it. I am a lifelong New Englander and learned just how much I don't know and have made a list of things to get started on. THANKS for giving me the dope slap I needed to preplan and supply.

We never lost power, but would have been FUBAR if we did. THANKS again, I am really enjoying reading your experiences!!!!

 

[Rancho]

genny worked great even had an oil change while we were at it. my free 18 yr old snowblower worked like a charm even in the messy wet snow we had. all in all it wasn't bad but I need to make a switch box to hook up to my service for next time.. had plenty of firewood for heat.

although I would like to switch to solar or propane genny because i felt bound to gasoline.

 

[RichM]

The best decision we made was to send my wife and 2 children up to Maine to stay with Grandma and Grandpa!
Heat was a kerosene heater purchased in New Hampshire. I only ran it for an hour in the morning and 2 hours at night to raise the temperature by about 15 degrees. I bought a second CO detector because it also had a digital readout; it eats batteries like crazy! It needs a new 9-volt every 12 hours!
Showering in a dish pan was fine when in the Army, but it's no fun at home.
I also had a 200 watt inverter to run from the car to the house. I thought that I'd be able to run more off of it (like the fridge), but I quickly blew 2 fuses in the car, so that didn't work so so well. BTW, the car makes for a very expensive cell phone charger! I need to check out some of the solar chargers.
I can't believe how few people have sleeping bags! Mine was very comfortable, even though the house was down to 50 degrees by morning. Coworkers were trying to make do with a couple of extra blankets.

Sent from my way-too-expensive cell phone using Tapatalk. Please excuse spelling errors and missing links.

Sent from my way-too-expensive cell phone using Tapatalk. Please excuse spelling errors and missing links.

 

[MisterHappy]

Ha. When I browse the tag sales and find gear like that, I usually clean it up and give it to the scouts or some boys who can't afford to buy new. I've got everything I need.

What I'm having a hard time finding are the "slip on" mantels. Unlike the 'sock" style that either clip on or tie on, these little mantels are open on both ends and slip over the manifold on small lanterns. I hope Cabela's has them.



Rome

REI has them, IIRC ( for the Camping Gaz style lanterns) Some are even low-radiation!

 

[Cabinetman]

Thanks. I'll check 'em out.

Last night I ordered a transfer switch setup from a company called A.P. Electric & Generator Supply. The total cost for a complete 6 circuit setup including a 25 foot cable and waterproof box was $301 with free shipping. $300 is not a ton of money but I'd rather not have had to spend it. However, the one thing this event taught me was that I'm not going to be caught scrambling again trying to wire stuff in and wondering if I'm exposing myself to problems or if I made and error. It's just good insurance. So, I've forwarded the info to another member here for his approval (he's an electrician) and probably help with the install although these are supposed to be easy to setup.

Today I'm probably going to drove my M-i-l to her house and drag my generator there. She's been living with us since Saturday and her house is below 50 right now. I'm not worried about freezing yet because it's too warm but she'd like to be puttering there and I can understand that. She's leaving for a trip to France on the 11th and has to begin packing. You know how long that can take! LOL Her cat is also missing her. We have a large dog who would like nothing more to play with her cat but the cat doesn't understand that. So, I'll setup a temporary hookup for her gas furnace and some lights and make her happy. Enfield is still 50% out of power! Today is day 7.

Rome

 

[Fanucman]

Everything worked fine for me. The generator ran fine, I only ran it a few hours a day (for each meal), so I was not going through fuel so badly. I realized I could use a better radio and a better 2nd lantern. We have two electrics and it is hard to read by one of them now.

The one problem I had was the freezer started thawing and the refrigerator was getting warm enough to make me nervous. At first, I ran the generator so little that the fridge was not getting down to a nice cold temperature. Later during my 6 day outage, I had to run the generator a bit more than I wanted just for the fridge!

In the thread for the storm a month or two ago, a few of you may recall I described my neighbors as "future zombie chow", due to their helplessness. Well, this time, they just gave up and moved to a hotel over an hour away. I guess that's one "survival plan". LOL. Overall, it was probably the best move for them. We asked why they did not use their generator and they said "it broke and nobody will fix it". $5 says they won't even try to get a replacement for the next storm.

 

[Prepper]

I also had a 200 watt inverter to run from the car to the house. I thought that I'd be able to run more off of it (like the fridge), but I quickly blew 2 fuses in the car, so that didn't work so so well. BTW, the car makes for a very expensive cell phone charger! I need to check out some of the solar chargers.

What I do for extended cell phone use is this, a Trent external battery pack:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-IMP...DRHW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320503746&sr=8-1

I've had this for nearly a year and it works great. It'll fully charge my cell phone from dead 5 times before itself needs a charge. And, I was able to charge it in the truck using a 150W inverter from Radio Shack (didn't blow any fuses, but now I'm nervous about looking into a bigger inverter), and since work regained power there I also brought it to work for charging.

So, thanks to this, I never had to be truly disconnected from communication. Otherwise, the phone's internal battery wouldn't even last a few hours due to how much I was using it. I'm signed up for my town's Code Red system as well as the PD's twitter feed, so it was handy getting updates on my phone from their twitter feed about what roads were out and how the progress of the town's recovery was going (not to mention the usual reports of criminal activity they send out).

 

[green_metalflake]

What I'm having a hard time finding are the "slip on" mantels. Unlike the 'sock" style that either clip on or tie on, these little mantels are open on both ends and slip over the manifold on small lanterns. I hope Cabela's has them.

Rome

During Irene, those were the only mantles I could find. Wal-Mart had them and no other types.

 

[green_metalflake]

I had mixed results this storm, the 6,000 watt generator I bought used seized up after five minutes. Not the motor but the actual alternator started to smoke, then make noise then seize completely.
Fortunately as far as the generator I bought it from a NES member who refunded my money and was very apologetic.
My snow plow wiring was not connected to my newer 2002 tacoma by Saturday. Got that done Sunday night and found a problem with the replacement solenoid. The old solenoid melted at the end of last season and this new one would not actuate.
So my wife slid her focus down the driveway and I shoveled out the two parking spots at the base of the hill.
We had the coleman stove for cooking, many battery powered lanterns and lights but we went through 16 d cell batteries in five days. Ate up most of my stock.
For heat the propane fireplace insert kept the house at 60-70.

For the future buy a new generator at Home Depot in 2-4 weeks, when the guy in the rental area told me people will have returns the ones they bought this storm.

Get the plow wiring fixed, I thought I still had a month to get that finished. Instead I stayed up till 1 AM to find out I had a wiring issue and no energy to look into it.

Get more batteries, 32+ D cells and a brighter Lantern for the rooms without power.

And plan on this happening again while I am sick. It was one of those weeks!

Irene was our pre-run and we had a lot of holes that we fixed for this one. Consider this storm your pre-run. The best thing I did prior to Irene was check everything I thought I might need. That ended up being the generator & chainsaw. I'd never used my generator before as it came with the house. I've always figured add gas & go and I came within an RCH of doing that. The manual was in a bag hanging off the side so, I actually RTFM! So glad I did, first page, "Fill crankcase with oil."

Re: D-batts, there were none to be found during Irene. The only thing in quantity was AA & AAA, once in awhile a pack of C's. D's were gone everywhere I checked, Home Depot, Lowes, Rocky's, Aubuchon, BJ's, Ocean State, even my local hardware store. All picked clean. However, everyone was spilling over with AA & AAA batteries. That was a big heads up for me.

We only have a couple lanterns that use D's so those remained dark during Irene. The rest of our flashlights were AA so we had no problems with those. Still, the lanterns put out far more usable light and I still want the option to use them. We did buy 8 D's and loaded up the lanterns but I won't buy any more. What I did buy though was AA-D adapters. Each one holds 2x AA. Less capacity but not that much less and if I cannot get more D's in a crisis, what good are they? I'll use AA's from now one and stock those deep.

For my main room lighting though, it's oil lamps now. Clean, easy to use, and bright. Not Coleman lantern bright but not Coleman noisy while running either and they do not smell at all with clear K-1.

 

[green_metalflake]

Re: inverters, I have a 1000W Xantrex XPower and have it wired into the car via a cigarette lighter plug. 1000W seems like a lot but that covers a simultaneous laptop & cellphone recharge while driving. It would not cycle my fridge. That said, I do recommend the Xantrex. Retail is ~$140 but if you keep watching them on eBay, one will show up way less than that. I got mine last year new for $45 shipped. It took a couple months of looking however.

 

[speedy]

Power outage was definetly a good test. Have some holes in my set up. Will be taking care of the details soon. Glad I was "ready". My family was glad we were ready. Great way to re inforce the necessity to be ready for anything.

 

[green_metalflake]

Re: indoor temps, we did not get below 60 while one of the neighbors I spoke to was at 50. If there was ever a home improvement expense I've been thankful for it was new window and thick attic insulation. We put in Marvin wood frame & gas-filled double pane windows and they really do make a difference on retaining heat.

 

[green_metalflake]

My family was glad we were ready. Great way to re inforce the necessity to be ready for anything.

I heard my daughter telling one of her friends, nearly bragging, that we had a generator so she could use her hairdryer, the house stayed warm, Dad made coffee and cooked, things weren't all that bad, etc. That felt pretty good. Most of her friends did not get power back until Wednesday/Thursday last week and were very cranky.

 

[Cabinetman]

One of the things I'm going to do is 'standardize" stuff like lamp mantels. Seems that the sock-style ones are more available so that's what I'm going to go with and I'll just leave my slip-ons in my camp gear trailer.

Regarding cell/phone service, that was one other panic issue with us initially. The local towers all went down but the verizon one came up pretty quickly. the ATT tower, however, were slow to come up. My wife's work cell phone (UTC) was the only phone in our area to work. When the ATT phones (tracfones) came up, we couldn't call in certain directions but others were fine. That whole cell service thing was pretty eeire.

Ya know, what really caught me by surprise was the fact that I'd literally just finished a novel titled, "Lights Out" by Dan Crawford. So much of what happened to us during this storm had happened to them initially that I had to pinch myself a few times. At least we had cars!

Rome

 

[RichM]

We just got power back half an hour ago. Now it's time to go check the freezer before it re-freezes. Then it's time for a long hot shower.
I finally burned a whole bunch of those jar candles... And I still can't throw any of them away! That was my only light source. I'll get some lanterns soon.
I'll also get backups of essential items, like long-stem lighters for the candles and another siphon for fuel.

Sent from my way-too-expensive cell phone using Tapatalk. Please excuse spelling errors and missing links.
Eta: Nope, we lost the freezer's contents. Off to the hot shower. I'll let the freezer re-freeze, and throw it out on trash day.

 

[Big_Red]

I was not prepared for this storm. In the eight years that I have been in my house, we only lost electricity a few times and never for more than a few hours. Even during severe storms we never had problems. I honestly expected that this storm would be another non event. We all know how that turned out. I sent my wife and kid off to the in-laws who had not lost power and our dog and I hunkered down and decided to ride things out. We did not have any kind of a heat source so by the second morning temps in the house were down to 50 degrees. It was actually warmer outside than it was inside. I did have two nice sleeping bags which kept me nice and toasty at night. I had a few flashlights, all AA and AAA powered. They were good for moving around the house but not much more. I wasn't even able to read at night. The only hot meal I had had was a Dunkin Dunuts coffee on the second morning. All the food in the fridge and eventually the freezer went bad even though I filled the freezer with 8 16lb bags of ice. In retrospedct I probably waited too long before filling it up.

This experience has definitely opened my eyes to what can happen when one is unprepared. So, I have already started to gather all the things I think I will need during a prolonged power outage, starting with a generator which I got last week. So far on my list of other things to get are kerosene/oil lanterns, a portable cooking stove, a lot of spare batteries, gas for the generator, an alternate heat source; potentially a kerosene heater although I do not know much about them. I also need to find a way to tie in the generator with the oil burner and a couple of circulator pumps.

 

[green_metalflake]

Regarding cell/phone service,

One thing to keep in mind, land lines usually continue to work when mobiles go down. However, if you have Verizon FIOS (or any other phone system that uses a proprietary interface between your land line phone and the outside pole) the backup battery in the interface will eventually die. In other words, your land line phone will be useless too. If you are using a cordless phone, its batteries will soon die and it will be useless as well.

I did not get a chance to put this in action even though I have the gear to do so. I bought a lineman's butt set (phone) at a flea market this year for $5. Butt sets have a 2-wire lead coming off with alligator clips on the end. If you go into your garage and follow your phone line from the interface you will see where it connects to a surge arrester. From the surge arrester, the wire goes out to the pole. The phone line from the interface will be 2-conductor and thin, maybe 3/16" or even less. If you take the butt set and connect one alligator to one connector on the surge arrester and the other alligator to the other, in theory you should have a dial tone and make calls. It also does not matter which connector goes onto which terminal, the butt set works either way. This is a butt set -



You could also just install a modular jack right at the surge arrester and then plug any old style phone into it. I say old style, hard line phone because you do not want batteries that go dead. Old phones where totally self-contained. If the phone line still has integrity and has not been torn down by trees, you likely can still make and receive calls even when the cell service is kaput.

 

[Prepper]

One oddity is that on the last night, a lamp ran out of fuel so I poured some more lamp oil (pretty sure it was paraffin wax) into it. It lit, but it also reeked and i had to shut it down. I'm not sure what is going on here... I have never put kero into these lamps, only "lamp oil" although different brands, and that lamp was last filled years ago so I don't know what brand it was. Maybe there are different kinds of lamp oil I'm not supposed to mix? I guess I got to clean this somehow, remove all the oil and toss the wick. Hopefully that'll do it.

 

[excoastie]

Well, we just now got power back! Eight days without power. We have a generator so we were okay. We were easily prepared. I could run my freezer, fridge, a small infrared heater, the TV & VCR at once. The worst part was not taking a warm shower! I was stinking!! Those little, cold-water bird baths didn’t work so well. My neighbors all asked me about being prepared with generators, food, etc. Thank you Jesus! Why does it take a disaster to awaken some people? So now I will spend the next few weeks helping my neighbor’s improve their preparedness.

The one thing I needed was a Coleman stove. I didn’t have a hot cooking source other than the microwave, which worked fine if I disconnected the heater. So, overall, we lasted okay.

 

[RichM]

I was just looking for it, but I haven't found it yet...

A while back, someone posted a very good weekly shopping checklist that does a very nice job of building an emergency supply stock by simply adding a few things to each week's grocery lists. It did a nice job of prepping without breaking the bank.

If I can find it, I'll post the link. I think that it was from one of the Carolina's state emergency management agencies, but I'm not positive...

 

[Cabinetman]

Here's the thing. We tend to think of power loss as something local. What we found here was that it was more regional, pushing the boundries further away from us. Then, when the rush to resupply (fuel) occured, it pushed those boundries even futher out. So, to find fuel or food or an open convenience store or restaurant, you had to travel ( in my case) at least 50 miles! No kidding. We didn't do that. We did head to Chicopee which is only 15 miles from here but guess what? The fuel wasn't available. We would have had to continue north to North Hampton or much further (Deerfield?) to find gas from Enfield. Our alternative was to travel way south to the shore for the same.

So, losing those sources and losing cell service put things into a different perspective than we've ever had here before. I won't be caught in those circumstances again, period.

Rome

 

[JimB]

just heard on the news that 38000+ are still without power.

not a typo here. thats in Mass. only.

 

[Dream to Dream]

We did alright at my household. I'm glad that I decided to have the chimney cleaned out this past September "just in case we need it." Used the fireplace to keep warm, hunkered down in the living room, and dealt with the 55-60 degree heat. I had an old copper kettle that I used to boil water in the fireplace to make coffee and oatmeal in the mornings. We bought a cast iron slab for the back of the fireplace to help radiate heat.

For future reference...

1. I need to either buy a small generator to run my refridgerator during an outage, or find an alternate way to store food when outside temperatures are not cold enough for safe storage.

2. Hot water is nice. Keep current natural gas hot water tank.

3. While cooking in the fireplace was... interesting... I would like another option besides my grill outside.

4. I now have lots of firewood for next year.

Maybe a wood stove would be a good investment. Are there effective units that install into a fireplace and include a cooking surface? I don't have a lot of room for a stand-alone unit.

 

[Gator9329]

.

 

[dwarven1]

REI has them, IIRC ( for the Camping Gaz style lanterns) Some are even low-radiation!

Does REI sell the Camping Gaz cylinders, do you know? I bought one of those burners for a bike trip 12 years ago, and still had one full canister (I just found out) - used it for a few minutes yesterday at the Steel Challenge to heat water for hot chocolate, so it does still work. Just want to have a few more cylinders for it.

 

[green_metalflake]

We did alright at my household. I'm glad that I decided to have the chimney cleaned out this past September "just in case we need it." Used the fireplace to keep warm, hunkered down in the living room, and dealt with the 55-60 degree heat. I had an old copper kettle that I used to boil water in the fireplace to make coffee and oatmeal in the mornings. We bought a cast iron slab for the back of the fireplace to help radiate heat.

For future reference...

1. I need to either buy a small generator to run my refridgerator during an outage, or find an alternate way to store food when outside temperatures are not cold enough for safe storage.

2. Hot water is nice. Keep current natural gas hot water tank.

3. While cooking in the fireplace was... interesting... I would like another option besides my grill outside.

4. I now have lots of firewood for next year.

Maybe a wood stove would be a good investment. Are there effective units that install into a fireplace and include a cooking surface? I don't have a lot of room for a stand-alone unit.

Where did you get the cast iron for your fireplace? I've been considering getting a 3/4" steel plate cut but have not found anything yet that is large enough. My blacksmithing instructor does his steaks in the fireplace during the winter. He gets the logs going with a thick ember layer, rotates one so embers are up, and puts the steaks right on it. Says they are fantastic, I've not tried it. He knows food though so I tend to take him at his word.

 

[MrsStrangeNH]

We were only out for 2 days, so no biggie. The most annoying thing was losing landline phone the second day because FairPoint sucks and lost their backup at the CO. Happened last time too. For cellphone backup power, I just plugged into my portable car jump battery via the DC out.

 

[Cabinetman]

Green_metalflake, your blacksmith has that steak cooking down pat. You MUST, however, ONLY have a thick bed of HARDWOOD coals, no pine or other soft wood. Also, no paper or any other crap that might make your steak taste terrible. You can also use lump charcoal. Start your fire and let it become established. Then pour some of the lump charcoal into it and use that as your coal bed.

Those charcoals are about 1500 degrees. They will sear the meat and cook it pretty fast. The only way for you to know know how long is to try it and time it. When you pick up the steak, you might have one or two embers follow it up but they'll just fleck off. Use very long tongs unless you don't want any hand or arm hair every again. They'll be the best steaks you've every eaten and there's no cleanup!

Rome