Powerless–Really

The electricity went off at 7:40 this morning. Seven and a half hours later, I’m doing this with the laptop’s battery while using an improvised Internet connection.

We have tickets to a show tonight. At the moment it’s in doubt we can leave.

We are in the country. Without electricity we only have as much well water as remains pressurized.

This has stopped being fun.

3 thoughts on “Powerless–Really”

  1. I’ve played with the idea of getting a generator just big enough to run the well pump, and maybe a light or 2. Would be trivially easy to wire a plug/outlet into the cord going out to the well pump.

    (ok, fine, I’d probably hook the cable modem up to it too)

  2. Heem,

    A generator is a good idea for anyone on a well, or for that matter anyone who needs heat after an ice storm!

    I don’t know your background with such things, but you should know (if you don’t already) electric motors, such as your pump, will require up to three times the starting amperage. In other words, if a motor draws 5 amps running, it could draw 15 amps for a brief period to get it going.

    I have a 5,000 watt Generac unit that has never failed me, and I’ve needed it quite a few times over the past 10 years.

    The trick here is, you can’t wait till the lights go out to run it. I start mine once a month and cut the house over for 5 or 10 minutes to give it exercise and make sure it’s up to par.

    One other thing, if you do get one, please, please don’t let it back-feed power into the grid. The power company gets real cranky when you knock a lineman off the pole.

    If you already knew all of the above, forgive me.

    Now I’ll return this blog to its rightfull owner, Mr. Fox.

  3. I did know some of those things, but thanks for the tips. My plan is to keep it on a much smaller budget, and go with a portable style that you just plug items into, instead of actually wiring it into the house. Just enough to run the well pump really. I’ve even thought of using other methods to pump water up here, including a hand pump like they used in the old days (I’m in a 200 year old house with a hand dug well, so it’s relatively shallow)

Leave a Reply to Tom Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *