@Cerridwyn@Kyeh I put wireless temperature sensors with alarms in my freezers so I don’t have to guess or open the door to check. Also helps to alert someone if the door was somehow left ajar.
@kuoh@Kyeh I am going to go look at that. Not that I’ve had problems down here. But when I stayed in a Airbnb for 6 weeks when I was moving for work they had I like to call them clever appliances. No apps no Internet of Things but some appliances that did things that were useful and that was one of them
@Cerridwyn@kuoh@Kyeh you can just put a Bluetooth or wifi sensor in one and track it.
Obviously the Bluetooth ones are limited to your phone being in the house. In theory
Which is what I prefer. I’ve got several Bluetooth temp sensors and water leak monitors from govee
Which are pretty cheap and store enough data but… I could delete their app entirely because I’m running a home assist server on a cheap puck style pc and it updates near realtime. Faster than they do.
And I could set up Internet access to check them but not a fan…
You can definitely use cheap sensors and home assist to trigger alarms like the freezer temp got too high.
The reason I like Bluetooth/zwave/zigbee/home assistant is I’m not sending any data to anyone by default. I do still use their app/I’m not too concerned. But it’s my phone to the sensor. Which they may be getting data via the app.
If I leave the house. No data. Unless I wanted to set up remote control/home assistant for outside connectivity. Which I control. Battery backup for the modem/switch anyway.
@kuoh@Kyeh@unksol
no apps for me. I like the idea of an alarm or monitor. if i’m not home, there is nothing i can do about it and don’t want to have it cause anxiety because i can’t get home to it
@Cerridwyn@kuoh@Kyeh well most people are a little more social than I am. You probably have a neighbor or friend who has a key? Maybe checks on the cats/chickens if you were gone a week? (Yes not everyone has such an infestation)
That being said other than that the only real disaster I can think of would be the heat going out and a pipe freezing. Massive water damage… But that’s latitude specific and I shut the main valve if I’m gonna be gone anyway?
Still would be good to have someone to call. Emergency contact
@Clumber@ratman I have the Kenwood power station I bought here on Meh to power my CPAP machine in that situation. (and for my ham radio hobby) Not necessaily a cheap solution, but versatile, unlike the (expensive) battery packs made by the CPAP manufacturer.
For me, it’s having to dig out the generator and run the heavy extension cords to power the freezer, the fridges, the microwave, some lights, and a couple of fans. (And charge up the various power bank units.) So far, we haven’t had an outage here that was long enough to make me want to power the washer and dryer. Since we use gas for the range, oven, and water heater, that functionality tends to be failure-resistant.
At this point, we’ve accumulated enough large power banks to provide lighting and such after dark, so I only run the generator during the day. It’s not big enough to power the AC, which will become more of a problem as time goes on.
@werehatrack You might consider installing a soft starter on the AC compressor. It might lower the startup current enough for your generator depending on the relative sizes.
@werehatrack We have a transfer lockout switch wired into the main panel, so I just have to wheel the generator down from the barn, flip the switch and start the gen. The generator will power the well pump (most important - can’t flush the toilets more than a couple times without power to the well!), the refrigerator and lights, but not the heat pump or water heater. However, we have both a fireplace (main floor) and a wood stove (basement rec room), so we can fire those up if needed. And the kitchen cook top uses propane (just have to light the burners with a match).
@macromeh Heating during power-failure season in SE Texas is seldom an issue. A/C is a different issue, of course. Sadly, basements are very rare across the South, so below-grade cool spaces aren’t a reality.
@kuoh@werehatrack I think I did know you were texas but I would have thought AC would be more important…
Texas with it’s own grid is kinda an outlier. Then lying that it was renewables not it’s gas plants/pipelines freezing… Eh… I hope they fixed that. Gas is still the most efficient was to heat up north
@kuoh@unksol Most power outages of more than a few hours here are due to a hurricane, and most of those are historically likely to hit in September or October, which used to be past the worst of the summer heat. And here I sit, in the last week of December, with the AC running…
We’re on well water. When the power goes out →no running water→no flushing.
We do have a little luggable generator we can hook up to the well (and just the well) but typically when the power goes out it’s during weather unpleasant to go out in dragging a generator across the acre to the wellhouse. The power likes coming back about 15 minutes after we’ve gotten the generator set-up and dried ourselves off and demuddied our footwear.
WE LOVE LINECREWS FIXING POWER OUTAGES!
Stay Safe, heroes!
@Clumber Always remember that you still get one flush (per toilet) when the water’s off.
(But because it’s just 1, it’s safest to pretend it’s 0. And always check that the tank is full before you make assumptions relying on that flush…)
@xobzoo That is true, and we do have plenty of stored water for such things. As you say, it is best to think 0. Generally we get a bit hoardy with water during power outages because critters are priority, plus it’s trying enough to avoid habitual flushing (just like habitual turning light switches walking in & out of a room) without adding variables.
@Clumber@xobzoo In the third winter after moving into our rural house (with well water supply), the power went off on Christmas Eve (big ol’ snow storm). At the time, we had three small children (in addition to my wife and I). Flushing the toilets became a big issue after the first day without power. We finally resorted to melting big pots of snow on the propane cook top to dump into the toilets for flushing. (Pro tip: it takes a large volume of snow to get even a 1/2 gallon of water!)
Not fun - it was after that experience that we wired the house panel for the generator!
@Clumber@macromeh@Star2236@xobzoo I’ve only had the power go out for a couple days shortly after I bought the house. I think 10 years ago. I filled a bunch of 2 litter bottles after just in case. Never used them.
Obviously with a well you also have the pressure tank. If you have a traditional water heater there is 50 gallons.
My well is artesian so it might bring in some water without the pump… I keep meaning to test that. Would be less than 10 PSI but still handy in an emergency
the quiet??? generators are NOT quiet. i dont use one but i hear the neighbors’. despite that, i don’t mind a power outage for a day or two. gas water heater + wood stove = no problems. summertime power outage is a bit worse if the freezer and fridge stuff goes bad
@Kyeh@spacemart I have two neighbors with whole-house auto-switching generator units that aren’t loud at all. By contrast, my own 8kW unit would keep us awake if I ran it at night, so I don’t. Conveniently, the tank is good for right at 13 hours of operation with typical loads, so I usually fill it up in the morning and then just run it until it shuts down.
I hope to be able to budget for payments on a whole-house unit in 2027, assuming I can budget for a new roof in 2026. (Neither of these things is even remotely certain right now.)
@Mandamm@Clumber Our house wiring is fed by two main panels. The circuits are strategically divided and when active the generator feeds one panel and not the other. So when we have the “critical” circuits powered by the gen, the other “aux” circuits are without power. When the mains come back up, we know because lights on circuits of the non-gen panel come back on.
The Internet is a more frequent problem here. And they used to at least have a tool that would acknowledge an outage.
Now it’s just. Wait for them to fix it. If you call it in it’s just a waste of your time. How hard can it be to post on your page “there is an outage estimated repair time is blah”
The worst is laundry. You’re gonna keep generating dirty clothes, and you’re not really gonna walk to the river to bang them off of rocks to clean them. And if you’ve got a load going when the power cuts, are you taking the hour to finish it in the sink? Worst part.
@Nate311
Thankfully I have enough clothes that I could last at least four or five days at any given time. I try not to do laundry with less than a week’s worth of underwear still available. As for shirts/t-shirts/pants, I could probably go a month without absolutely having to do laundry.
Leaving clothes in the washer for a couple of days wouldn’t bother me in the least.
@chienfou I understand. I’ve got an absolute stockpile of New Balance underwear from meh. It’s the kids, man. I feel like after a few days we’d be buried in dirty clothes.
@chienfou@Nate311 Oh, man. It’s a double whammy. Kids make so much laundry. AND with the power out, they’re GOING to be outside and running around. In the mud, probably.
Thankfully locally we don’t have too much trouble with long power outages. Generally my power will come back on within a couple of hours. Of course that could change with the right combination of winter weather / tornado / hurricane track, but in 30 40 years it’s been extremely rare for me to be out of service for 24 hours.
If worse comes to worse we can always hang out in the RV for a couple of days.
@chienfou The worst power outage we have experienced here (rural NW Oregon) was in the early 2000’s. Power went off on Christmas Eve and was off for 4 days. Unusually heavy snowfall knocked trees down on power lines and utility crews couldn’t make it out for repairs. Christmas dinner that year was canned soup heated on the gas cooktop.
Most other outages here have been <24 hours. We just had one a few weeks ago after a big windstorm - our power went out at 1:30AM and was back on by 5:00PM.
@macromeh
Our worst was hurricane Opal (OMG 30 years ago!) Even though we’re 200 miles from the coast it was still a hurricane when it came over us in central alabama. Those winds following days of torrential rain meant the end of a lot of trees locally… including one oak in our backyard that fell across the top of our roof. Thankfully it basically tipped over and didn’t crash down so it just broke the ridge line but didn’t crush the house. We were out a few days that time
@chienfou I was in Tillamook Oregon during the 1962 Columbus Day Storm. Lots of destruction. I was a young child and my strongest memories are of using camping equipment for lights and cooking for a week until things were cleaned up and power was back on. Like a camp out - fun!
Before a whole house Generator was installed, the two things that were the worst was the discomfort during the two bad seasons, and of course, you would have to have candle to read after dark.
A power outage is very rare where I live. The worst we had was when a hot air balloon crashed down from the sky and landed in the power lines killing all five occupants.
@kittykat9180 Last year, a derecho spawned tornadoes that took out eight of the megavolt transmission towers about half a mile north of me, and put lots of old, heavy, tall trees onto the roofs of houses in my neighborhood.
Earlier this year, I eliminated that as a danger for my own house.
@werehatrack a house two doors down from mine has a very large dead tree. We get heavy winds here. I’m waiting for the day that a large branch comes crashing down on the house.
@ybmuG It is, unless your neighbor on the street behind you is running a genny 24/7. We had a baad storm move thru Tulsa and half the town was blowd up. Trees and lines blown down. Many people ( including me) had extensive roof damage. Cell service was all messed up…I lasted one night at home but that darn generator just droned on, and on, and on.
I lucked out and was able to score a room at a Hampton Inn that had just got their power back on. There were no rooms available anywhere in town.
It was glorious, air-conditioning, cable TV, long hot showers. I camped out there until power was restored, making daily visits to feed the livestock and check on things.
Extended power outage in Houston is usually due to a hurricane. The worst part is hauling the big ole generator to the backyard and hooking it into the natural gas line and the extremely heavy generator cord to hook it to the house power. At that point I can run almost everything in the house.
The worst has to be the uncertainty of when power will come back online. They have trackers to show what percentage of a town is out of power. In my last town we were always in the last 2% to have our power restored. The longest I think we went without power was 9 days in an ice/snow storm.
No power.
Worrying about is it going to come on before the crap in the refrigerator goes bad
@Cerridwyn This!
@Cerridwyn @Kyeh I put wireless temperature sensors with alarms in my freezers so I don’t have to guess or open the door to check. Also helps to alert someone if the door was somehow left ajar.
https://a.co/d/b1ow734
KuoH
@kuoh @Kyeh I am going to go look at that. Not that I’ve had problems down here. But when I stayed in a Airbnb for 6 weeks when I was moving for work they had I like to call them clever appliances. No apps no Internet of Things but some appliances that did things that were useful and that was one of them
@Cerridwyn @kuoh @Kyeh you can just put a Bluetooth or wifi sensor in one and track it.
Obviously the Bluetooth ones are limited to your phone being in the house. In theory
Which is what I prefer. I’ve got several Bluetooth temp sensors and water leak monitors from govee
Which are pretty cheap and store enough data but… I could delete their app entirely because I’m running a home assist server on a cheap puck style pc and it updates near realtime. Faster than they do.
And I could set up Internet access to check them but not a fan…
You can definitely use cheap sensors and home assist to trigger alarms like the freezer temp got too high.
And trigger things off that
@Cerridwyn @kuoh @Kyeh I prefer the ones with a display but maybe for a freezer… If it’s reliable. I do not have one.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R586J37
The reason I like Bluetooth/zwave/zigbee/home assistant is I’m not sending any data to anyone by default. I do still use their app/I’m not too concerned. But it’s my phone to the sensor. Which they may be getting data via the app.
If I leave the house. No data. Unless I wanted to set up remote control/home assistant for outside connectivity. Which I control. Battery backup for the modem/switch anyway.
@kuoh @Kyeh @unksol
no apps for me. I like the idea of an alarm or monitor. if i’m not home, there is nothing i can do about it and don’t want to have it cause anxiety because i can’t get home to it
@Cerridwyn @kuoh @Kyeh well most people are a little more social than I am. You probably have a neighbor or friend who has a key? Maybe checks on the cats/chickens if you were gone a week? (Yes not everyone has such an infestation)
That being said other than that the only real disaster I can think of would be the heat going out and a pipe freezing. Massive water damage… But that’s latitude specific and I shut the main valve if I’m gonna be gone anyway?
Still would be good to have someone to call. Emergency contact
No lights
Food spoiling in the fridge.
Losing control
/giphy I have the power
Anxiety my phone battery is going to die before the power comes back home (and wishing I had bought one of those Meh power banks).
That the power will eventually have to come back on.
My CPAP stops, preventing me from sleeping the outage away!
@ratman
Yeah, that extra sucks - Spouse has that hassle, too. And then neither of us can sleep the outage away.
@Clumber @ratman I have the Kenwood power station I bought here on Meh to power my CPAP machine in that situation. (and for my ham radio hobby) Not necessaily a cheap solution, but versatile, unlike the (expensive) battery packs made by the CPAP manufacturer.
For me, it’s having to dig out the generator and run the heavy extension cords to power the freezer, the fridges, the microwave, some lights, and a couple of fans. (And charge up the various power bank units.) So far, we haven’t had an outage here that was long enough to make me want to power the washer and dryer. Since we use gas for the range, oven, and water heater, that functionality tends to be failure-resistant.
At this point, we’ve accumulated enough large power banks to provide lighting and such after dark, so I only run the generator during the day. It’s not big enough to power the AC, which will become more of a problem as time goes on.
@werehatrack You might consider installing a soft starter on the AC compressor. It might lower the startup current enough for your generator depending on the relative sizes.
KuoH
@werehatrack We have a transfer lockout switch wired into the main panel, so I just have to wheel the generator down from the barn, flip the switch and start the gen. The generator will power the well pump (most important - can’t flush the toilets more than a couple times without power to the well!), the refrigerator and lights, but not the heat pump or water heater. However, we have both a fireplace (main floor) and a wood stove (basement rec room), so we can fire those up if needed. And the kitchen cook top uses propane (just have to light the burners with a match).
@macromeh @werehatrack lol trying to guestimate how far north you are based on both gas heat being ideal but AC also needed. That’s where I am.
I don’t usually “require” the AC. I’ll live if the power is out. but it ran a lot in August.
No generators needed yet but they are building moronic data centers in the area so… Time will tell
@macromeh Heating during power-failure season in SE Texas is seldom an issue. A/C is a different issue, of course. Sadly, basements are very rare across the South, so below-grade cool spaces aren’t a reality.
@kuoh 6kW won’t run a four-ton compressor plus the blower.
@kuoh @werehatrack I think I did know you were texas but I would have thought AC would be more important…
Texas with it’s own grid is kinda an outlier. Then lying that it was renewables not it’s gas plants/pipelines freezing… Eh… I hope they fixed that. Gas is still the most efficient was to heat up north
@kuoh @unksol Most power outages of more than a few hours here are due to a hurricane, and most of those are historically likely to hit in September or October, which used to be past the worst of the summer heat. And here I sit, in the last week of December, with the AC running…
@kuoh @werehatrack mmm good luck?
@unksol At 62 ft above historic mean sea level, I’m not worried about coastal flooding yet.
The protective force fields all shut down.
(You’ve seen Enterprise vs Klingons and know what a bitch that is???)
@phendrick It’s the lack of the deflectors that’s really scary; those incoming photons can be amazingly energetic.
We’re on well water. When the power goes out →no running water→no flushing.
We do have a little luggable generator we can hook up to the well (and just the well) but typically when the power goes out it’s during weather unpleasant to go out in dragging a generator across the acre to the wellhouse. The power likes coming back about 15 minutes after we’ve gotten the generator set-up and dried ourselves off and demuddied our footwear.
Stay Safe, heroes!
@Clumber Always remember that you still get one flush (per toilet) when the water’s off.
(But because it’s just 1, it’s safest to pretend it’s 0. And always check that the tank is full before you make assumptions relying on that flush…)
@xobzoo That is true, and we do have plenty of stored water for such things. As you say, it is best to think 0. Generally we get a bit hoardy with water during power outages because critters are priority, plus it’s trying enough to avoid habitual flushing (just like habitual turning light switches walking in & out of a room) without adding variables.
@Clumber @xobzoo In the third winter after moving into our rural house (with well water supply), the power went off on Christmas Eve (big ol’ snow storm). At the time, we had three small children (in addition to my wife and I). Flushing the toilets became a big issue after the first day without power. We finally resorted to melting big pots of snow on the propane cook top to dump into the toilets for flushing. (Pro tip: it takes a large volume of snow to get even a 1/2 gallon of water!)
Not fun - it was after that experience that we wired the house panel for the generator!
@Clumber @macromeh @xobzoo
That was my dads house but lucky for us we lived on the lake so we carry up lake water to flush the toilets.
@Clumber @macromeh @Star2236 @xobzoo I’ve only had the power go out for a couple days shortly after I bought the house. I think 10 years ago. I filled a bunch of 2 litter bottles after just in case. Never used them.
Obviously with a well you also have the pressure tank. If you have a traditional water heater there is 50 gallons.
My well is artesian so it might bring in some water without the pump… I keep meaning to test that. Would be less than 10 PSI but still handy in an emergency
the quiet??? generators are NOT quiet. i dont use one but i hear the neighbors’. despite that, i don’t mind a power outage for a day or two. gas water heater + wood stove = no problems. summertime power outage is a bit worse if the freezer and fridge stuff goes bad
@spacemart Yeah, 2 doors down from me they have a full house generator that goes on automatically even for short outages, and it’s LOUD.
@Kyeh @spacemart I have two neighbors with whole-house auto-switching generator units that aren’t loud at all. By contrast, my own 8kW unit would keep us awake if I ran it at night, so I don’t. Conveniently, the tank is good for right at 13 hours of operation with typical loads, so I usually fill it up in the morning and then just run it until it shuts down.
I hope to be able to budget for payments on a whole-house unit in 2027, assuming I can budget for a new roof in 2026. (Neither of these things is even remotely certain right now.)
@Kyeh @spacemart And I just remembered that my generator is 8kW surge, but only 6.5kW sustained.
@Kyeh @spacemart @werehatrack yeah. The roof is definitely a hit. Hopefully interest rates come back down but…
Inverter generators came a long way and are way quieter and more fuel efficient
When the power goes out, I lose the ability to turn the TV up proportionally to the mouth of my wife so as to drown out her voice.
@Pavlov You might consider using some flesh colored ear plugs as a temporary measure.
KuoH
@Pavlov
That’s so sad…
@chienfou Is joke for internets. Is not realz.
@Pavlov
/giphy whew
The worst thing about a Power Outage is not knowing when the power will come back on…
@Mandamm EXCELLENT point!
@Mandamm @Clumber Our house wiring is fed by two main panels. The circuits are strategically divided and when active the generator feeds one panel and not the other. So when we have the “critical” circuits powered by the gen, the other “aux” circuits are without power. When the mains come back up, we know because lights on circuits of the non-gen panel come back on.
@Clumber @macromeh @Mandamm lol it’s not if though it’s WHEN for those of us without generators.
The Internet is a more frequent problem here. And they used to at least have a tool that would acknowledge an outage.
Now it’s just. Wait for them to fix it. If you call it in it’s just a waste of your time. How hard can it be to post on your page “there is an outage estimated repair time is blah”
Around here it usually means a lot of cleanup after the hurricane.
Thankfully none this year.
The power actually just went out here about an hour ago and it’s so uncomfortably quiet. Even the dogs don’t know how to handle it.
The worst is laundry. You’re gonna keep generating dirty clothes, and you’re not really gonna walk to the river to bang them off of rocks to clean them. And if you’ve got a load going when the power cuts, are you taking the hour to finish it in the sink? Worst part.
@Nate311
Thankfully I have enough clothes that I could last at least four or five days at any given time. I try not to do laundry with less than a week’s worth of underwear still available. As for shirts/t-shirts/pants, I could probably go a month without absolutely having to do laundry.
Leaving clothes in the washer for a couple of days wouldn’t bother me in the least.
@chienfou I understand. I’ve got an absolute stockpile of New Balance underwear from meh. It’s the kids, man. I feel like after a few days we’d be buried in dirty clothes.
@Nate311
D’oh
/giphy face palm
@chienfou @Nate311 Oh, man. It’s a double whammy. Kids make so much laundry. AND with the power out, they’re GOING to be outside and running around. In the mud, probably.
When the power goes out, my whole house generator automatically kicks on. It sounds like a lawnmower running next to the house.
@olperfesser same here!
Thankfully locally we don’t have too much trouble with long power outages. Generally my power will come back on within a couple of hours. Of course that could change with the right combination of winter weather / tornado / hurricane track, but in
3040 years it’s been extremely rare for me to be out of service for 24 hours.If worse comes to worse we can always hang out in the RV for a couple of days.
@chienfou The worst power outage we have experienced here (rural NW Oregon) was in the early 2000’s. Power went off on Christmas Eve and was off for 4 days. Unusually heavy snowfall knocked trees down on power lines and utility crews couldn’t make it out for repairs. Christmas dinner that year was canned soup heated on the gas cooktop.
Most other outages here have been <24 hours. We just had one a few weeks ago after a big windstorm - our power went out at 1:30AM and was back on by 5:00PM.
@macromeh
Our worst was hurricane Opal (OMG 30 years ago!) Even though we’re 200 miles from the coast it was still a hurricane when it came over us in central alabama. Those winds following days of torrential rain meant the end of a lot of trees locally… including one oak in our backyard that fell across the top of our roof. Thankfully it basically tipped over and didn’t crash down so it just broke the ridge line but didn’t crush the house. We were out a few days that time
@chienfou I was in Tillamook Oregon during the 1962 Columbus Day Storm. Lots of destruction. I was a young child and my strongest memories are of using camping equipment for lights and cooking for a week until things were cleaned up and power was back on. Like a camp out - fun!
Before a whole house Generator was installed, the two things that were the worst was the discomfort during the two bad seasons, and of course, you would have to have candle to read after dark.
A power outage is very rare where I live. The worst we had was when a hot air balloon crashed down from the sky and landed in the power lines killing all five occupants.
@kittykat9180 That’s a bad day.
@kittykat9180 Last year, a derecho spawned tornadoes that took out eight of the megavolt transmission towers about half a mile north of me, and put lots of old, heavy, tall trees onto the roofs of houses in my neighborhood.
Earlier this year, I eliminated that as a danger for my own house.
@therealjrn yes, it was very sad. I recall that the balloon trip was a retirement gift.
@werehatrack a house two doors down from mine has a very large dead tree. We get heavy winds here. I’m waiting for the day that a large branch comes crashing down on the house.
@kittykat9180, Oh! That’s extra sad…
The quiet is the BEST part.
@ybmuG It is, unless your neighbor on the street behind you is running a genny 24/7. We had a baad storm move thru Tulsa and half the town was blowd up. Trees and lines blown down. Many people ( including me) had extensive roof damage. Cell service was all messed up…I lasted one night at home but that darn generator just droned on, and on, and on.
I lucked out and was able to score a room at a Hampton Inn that had just got their power back on. There were no rooms available anywhere in town.
It was glorious, air-conditioning, cable TV, long hot showers. I camped out there until power was restored, making daily visits to feed the livestock and check on things.
Extended power outage in Houston is usually due to a hurricane. The worst part is hauling the big ole generator to the backyard and hooking it into the natural gas line and the extremely heavy generator cord to hook it to the house power. At that point I can run almost everything in the house.
The worst has to be the uncertainty of when power will come back online. They have trackers to show what percentage of a town is out of power. In my last town we were always in the last 2% to have our power restored. The longest I think we went without power was 9 days in an ice/snow storm.