At 7.00am this morning just as I was doing breakfast etc., I'd recently thrown out the main phone as it was playing up, the two cordless phones rely on electrickery so they were no good :(
I checked on 72 year old neighb as she has a chair lift, but she was downstairs making tea ... how are you boiling the water then, I asked, on the gas hob of course!
Blow me down, I'd forgotten all about putting a pan on the gas to make tea, being as I'm semi-senile :)
Things to do today:
Buy a proper phone.
Put phone numbers of neighbs where I can actually find them, instead of on bits of paper stuffed into the drawer.
Find out where I've 'hidden' the phone book.
Buy 2 new Lantern (type) batteries for torch.
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>>Blimmin power cut!!
Lots more to come....we are lsoing 20% of installed base generation in the next few years....we will be 70% reliant on gas powered stations.
Wind might have caught the headlines but it only works when there is a wind...not when you want the power.
A few coal powered stations would not go amiss
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Oh, and the other thing is that we've got a private water supply, so no leccie, no water :)
And, although the boiler is an oil jobbie, it won't fire up or pump without ... !
If (and when) power cuts become more frequent in the UK, I'm maybe in a better position than some because our main heating is via a multi-fuel stove, and we have a gas hob (bottled gas)
But as far as the water supply is concerned, I could always reg up a cheap petrol gennie to work the water pump.
S'funny how we all rely sooooooo much on something that we take for granted, until it's gorn!
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You could also stick a pan of water on your multifuel stove in a pinch, Dog.
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Yes, I did think of that Cc, it's got a flat top so I could even stick some b/beans on there + an orseburger or two.
:}
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Hmm. Most we've ever done with ours is roast a few chestnuts in the season.
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I don't light mine until 3.00pm, bank it up to the gills, then just leave it, so it's a tad cool come the morn :}
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I run both our PCs from Uninterruptible Power Supplies as we used to get regular power cuts. Something to do with MEB fitting cheap cables in the 1970s a giving all kinds of earthing problems..
Last time it occurred, the mains spiked to 280V and destroyed a couple of PIRs and our TV amplifier: EON paid for replacements..
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Interesting, I've never heard of one of those before www.ebuyer.com/store/Servers/cat/UPS
I'm not doing too bad though really as it's the first power cut in the 2 years we've been here.
I had lightning knock out my modem and mains fuse box in the naughties (painful!)
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>> Interesting, I've never heard of one of those before www.ebuyer.com/store/Servers/cat/UPS
>>
Just be careful that you understand what you're getting - the 'back-UPS' type products switch over to battery when the supply drops below (or goes above) the set voltage. Some kit seems to get caught out by the switch-over. I got one after I lost my NAS after our power went off and on several times in a few mins. We don't normally get many cuts, even though we're in a rural area, but we do get a lot of glitches and our mians runs high - it's typically 248V.
Oddly, my laptop, even with its battery in, and connected by a hefty charger through its docking stations, almost always crashes when the back-UPS cuts in.
A proper UPS runs the attached equipment all the time, so there's no switch over.
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Thanks Bill, I must admit I've never had any trouble in the 12 years I've been on-line, apart from lightning knocking out my modem and fusebox many years ago up on Bodmin Moor.
I've recently taken out a very good house + contents insurance policy with AXA, so if the worse came to the worse I'd just have to make a claim for the first time in 9 years.
//{ ´°`(_)´°` }\
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We used to have powercuts here regulary.They whoever they are did some work last year things have inproved fingers crossed.Without electricity supply and gas we are in the doo doo unfortenately modern live.
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Better get some candles in then Ducky :)
"Lots more to come....we are losing 20% of installed base generation in the next few years....we will be 70% reliant on gas powered stations".
Last edited by: Dog on Fri 1 Mar 13 at 13:27
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Never mind Ducky, Doggy.>) I past caring Dog whatever happens happens daughter got one of thes wood burners fire plenty of heat and cheap to run.They've got a proper chimmney do.Ive looked at solar power can't see the point when you need it in winter for central heating no sun or enough light.
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Pity you can't (we all can't) fly sowf for the winter Dutchman, y'all feel a whole bunce better for it.
Does your daughter burn wood (as in "wooden shoes") or solid fuel Dutchie?
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"I run both our PCs from Uninterruptible Power Supplies as we used to get regular power cuts."
Exactly what you say, Mad. We get a couple of power-cuts every week, more or less. A couple of years ago, they were 5 or 10 minute cuts - and the occasional afternoon. Now they just flick off and on in a second. We had to buy UPS batteries because before that I had a terminal Mac problem, externals bits and bobs that died, two newish tellies, a hard disc tv recorder thingy that lasted 6 months and a Wii console packed up too. It's like continually yanking the plug out and sensitive electronic gubbins clearly don't like it.
Whenever a power-cut lasts more than a few seconds I have to leg it up to my office, save any projects I'm working on and shut down both Macs properly. I get about 3 minutes before the UPS batteries are flat.
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Come to Wales, the Home of the Power Cut.
But they are called outages, which makes it all right.
I read a thread on another forum started by someone in Nigeria where apparently there are several different suppliers using different supply networks. People run extension leads from neighbours on a different network in the hope that one of them might be working.
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>> People run extension leads from neighbours on a different network in the hope that one of them might be working.
Rich people have a Honda or other generator as back-up, as I am sure they do in other countries subject to power cuts.
Phone and power cuts were the bane of my life journalizing in Africa. Telex wouldn't work without power even if the phone lines were open.
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>>I read a thread on another forum started by someone in Nigeria where apparently there are several different suppliers using different supply networks<<
Contrast that with the Cyprus Electricity Authority who have a near monopoly on electricity generation and they have been charging like the light brigade ever since one of their main power stations blew up a few years ago:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/cyprus/8629594/Cyprus-explosion-knocks-out-islands-electricity-plant.html
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>> "I run both our PCs from Uninterruptible Power Supplies as we used to get regular
>> power cuts."
>>
>> Exactly what you say, Mad. We get a couple of power-cuts every week, more or
>> less. A couple of years ago, they were 5 or 10 minute cuts - and
>> the occasional afternoon. Now they just flick off and on in a second. We had
>> to buy UPS batteries because before that I had a terminal Mac problem, externals bits
>> and bobs that died, two newish tellies, a hard disc tv recorder thingy that lasted
>> 6 months and a Wii console packed up too. It's like continually yanking the plug
>> out and sensitive electronic gubbins clearly don't like it.
>>
>> Whenever a power-cut lasts more than a few seconds I have to leg it up
>> to my office, save any projects I'm working on and shut down both Macs properly.
>> I get about 3 minutes before the UPS batteries are flat.
>>
I no longer buy replacement batteries for a UPS.
They are so expensive new, it's better and cheaper buying a used UPS from ebay - from a company specialising in them - who fit them with new batteries - and sell them for less than the price of a new battery (retail prices are a ripoff)
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Hard luck Dog.
When we had building work done a few years ago I had a proper isolation switch installed so I can run the fridge and central heating off a little 1KvA generator. At that time we thought that Mrs H's parents might need to live with us. Works well until Mrs H or the Lad forgets and switches on the microwave. We have an Aga that cooks and heats the water which gets its oil by gravity and a couple of Tilley lamps, so quite resilient to power outages.
I've also programmed into the mobile Northern Electric's power cut number so we can report a power cut and get information about when power will be restored.
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so we can report
>> a power cut and get information about when power will be restored.
>>
That would be useful. It's the not knowing that's the real frustration.
It might be anything from 10 seconds to several days. Sometimes it goes off and it seems like a long one, so we start up lanterns etc, get the Tilley pumped up. Then the power comes back on again, we turn the lamps out, then the power goes again.
The excuse is that rural transmission lines are more vulnerable to falling trees and damage by cows etc, but that doesn't explain the short cuts which they manage to fix in 10 minutes.
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We have the odd cut here - we were told that supplies were vulnerable here after we moved in, never been off long enough for it to be a problem. We had the mother of all thunder storms last summer which blew out the leccy for a while. Also blew one of the powerline adaptors for the internet. Must have been a direct hit.
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>> We have the odd cut here - we were told that supplies were vulnerable here
>> after we moved in, never been off long enough for it to be a problem.
>> We had the mother of all thunder storms last summer which blew out the leccy
>> for a while. Also blew one of the powerline adaptors for the internet. Must have
>> been a direct hit.
Nah, a direct hit anywhere between you and your transformer blows the sockets off the walls. Seriously.
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Just had another power cut, PC was asleep, but when I fired it up again the 4 windows I had open were still there!
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Blimmin power cut!! - Falkirk Bairn
