After every storm or rain event I like to review and analyze our preparedness. All and all everything worked as it should but I did have just a couple things that could use refinement.
1) Don't underestimate a storm. I wasn't overly concerned about this storm as it was barely a tropical storm and it was small. I figure if we lost power it may only be a couple of hours so I didn't break out the gen sets till the next morning. We cooled the house way down before the lights went out and had the solar fans so we were comfortable but come morning and still no power I had to set the gens up, not a huge problem but I should have had them at the ready the night before so all I had to do was throw a switch. All that's really involved is getting the gens out of their little shed on the carport, plug in the Auto transfer switch for the whole house and run a cord from the small gen to our window unit in the bedroom and done, easy-peasy. Not having them ready is on me.
2) Organization. Most of our radios, back up coms, batteries, spare flashlight, etc. are located in one place in the Mud room by the breaker box, but a few items were not. That's an easy fix. MG had the kitchen well in hand. We could cook, had coffee, and plenty of food.
3) While turning breakers on for necessary items I noticed a couple breakers were not marked correctly. That's an easy fix as well and that's on the electrician who installed the panel and the previous owners.
All said and done it went fairly well. The only real issue was we had no internet and no cell service, even when we were on the gen, nothing. That's unusual for cellular. Spectrum texted they were down almost as soon as it began to rain (Not surprising) but to lose cell service? Lots of areas around us got way more rain then we did so the outage was far reaching. All tolled including yesterdays rain we got almost 5" but towns 20 miles away got 10-12 inches.
One more final thought. As I was sitting in the dark in between rain bands worrying about the creek behind us I realized how absolutely dark and quite everything was. No sound, no light. No humming from the refrigerator or AC, no phone, nothing. Just pitch black and quite, even outside. I wouldn't have been able to see the creek rise if I didn't have a flashlight. It was kind of nice but a little eerie. Yeah, I decided I'll keep my modern conveniences if you don't mind.
1) Don't underestimate a storm. I wasn't overly concerned about this storm as it was barely a tropical storm and it was small. I figure if we lost power it may only be a couple of hours so I didn't break out the gen sets till the next morning. We cooled the house way down before the lights went out and had the solar fans so we were comfortable but come morning and still no power I had to set the gens up, not a huge problem but I should have had them at the ready the night before so all I had to do was throw a switch. All that's really involved is getting the gens out of their little shed on the carport, plug in the Auto transfer switch for the whole house and run a cord from the small gen to our window unit in the bedroom and done, easy-peasy. Not having them ready is on me.
2) Organization. Most of our radios, back up coms, batteries, spare flashlight, etc. are located in one place in the Mud room by the breaker box, but a few items were not. That's an easy fix. MG had the kitchen well in hand. We could cook, had coffee, and plenty of food.
3) While turning breakers on for necessary items I noticed a couple breakers were not marked correctly. That's an easy fix as well and that's on the electrician who installed the panel and the previous owners.
All said and done it went fairly well. The only real issue was we had no internet and no cell service, even when we were on the gen, nothing. That's unusual for cellular. Spectrum texted they were down almost as soon as it began to rain (Not surprising) but to lose cell service? Lots of areas around us got way more rain then we did so the outage was far reaching. All tolled including yesterdays rain we got almost 5" but towns 20 miles away got 10-12 inches.
One more final thought. As I was sitting in the dark in between rain bands worrying about the creek behind us I realized how absolutely dark and quite everything was. No sound, no light. No humming from the refrigerator or AC, no phone, nothing. Just pitch black and quite, even outside. I wouldn't have been able to see the creek rise if I didn't have a flashlight. It was kind of nice but a little eerie. Yeah, I decided I'll keep my modern conveniences if you don't mind.
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