Prepping Pays Off For The Stormfeather Household.

[Stormfeather]

So I am currently up in New York training soldiers for deployment, when HH-6 calls me and warns me that there are sme heavy thunderstorms that are rolling thru her AO back at Homestead-1. So, naturally, I ask if the gennys are fueled, water and all the normal heavy storm precautions taken, and she tells me yes, check, check, and check. So, no biggie, we've been thru storms before, and we all knew what to do. Fast forward to the next morning, and I get a somewhat desperate phone call Saturday morning. Apparently the storms took out 7 large trees on the property near the house, the closest one to the house landing on the garage taking out the power lines to the house in the process. Because the winds were so loud, she didnt hear the trees fall, and apparently this all happened at some point late at night.
So, HH-6 fires up the gennys, hits the power transfer switch, and badda-bing, back in action. So while we have power at the house, we still have an issue with trees strewn all over the yard and downed power lines across the garage. HH-6 was smart enough to kill the breakers to the garage, so there was no need to go up there quite yet. I tell her to take out the local call list, (which she had already done!) and lo and behold, within 30 minutes, we had 6 people at the house with chainsaws, trucks, saws, and a log splitter. The power company came out and took care of the lines today, and we are now back on-grid without a single hiccup or disruption to the household minus the kids having to help clean up branches!
I have to admit, I am kind of happy, impressed, satisfied, and comforted knowing that HH-6 managed to pass her first test of fire when it come to what to do in a household emergency when the power goes out and she has to make it thru the weekend with no juice. I am pleasantly comforted knowing she can handle herself when she needs to!

[bacpacker]

Sounds like you have a good plan and everyone knows how to work it. Can't beat that. I'm really glad the damage wasn't any worse.

[ElevenBravo]

Cool beans!

EB

[Brownwater Riverrat 13]

OUtstanding, nice to have a warm fuzzy. But I know you were still worried. You have quite the little warrior on your hands, you should be proud. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm? I wonder how LadyHK would do?

[helomech]

Awesome glad your wife has a hold on things. My wife has to deal with everything around here, since I work away from home every other week. She regularly has to use the tractor to remove fallen trees from the road, hook the generator up, and take care of any unexpected things with the aquaponics, chickens and such.

[ak474u]

And... THAT is what this whole lifestyle choice or whatever you wanna call it is all about.

[ladyhk13]

Fail terribly considering bwrr13 has never even fired up the new genny in front of me nor has he ever shown me what to do to hook it up to the house. It's just sitting out in the apple barn where it's been since we bought it. Since we really don't know most of our neighbors very well I don't suppose I would be calling anyone for help. I would do whatever I could on my own and wait until he got home. I'm sure I would survive though as long as it wasn't in the winter. No heat would be very bad so I guess I would take the animals and find a hotel if it came down to it.

[ak474u]

Fail terribly considering bwrr13 has never even fired up the new genny in front of me nor has he ever shown me what to do to hook it up to the house. It's just sitting out in the apple barn where it's been since we bought it. Since we really don't know most of our neighbors very well I don't suppose I would be calling anyone for help. I would do whatever I could on my own and wait until he got home. I'm sure I would survive though as long as it wasn't in the winter. No heat would be very bad so I guess I would take the animals and find a hotel if it came down to it.



Ooh.... BWRR has some splainin' to do!

[msomnipotent]

Fail terribly considering bwrr13 has never even fired up the new genny in front of me nor has he ever shown me what to do to hook it up to the house. It's just sitting out in the apple barn where it's been since we bought it. Since we really don't know most of our neighbors very well I don't suppose I would be calling anyone for help. I would do whatever I could on my own and wait until he got home. I'm sure I would survive though as long as it wasn't in the winter. No heat would be very bad so I guess I would take the animals and find a hotel if it came down to it.

Make sure it still has a charge! I keep telling my husband to help me fire up our generator to make sure it works but he never gets around to it. I know you are supposed to plug in a drill and turn the chuck to recharge it. I had it saved in my computer, but of course the stupid thing crashed two weeks ago and I'm still waiting for a new one to be shipped.


Was that the storms on Sunday, Stormfeather? I was camping just north of Tomah and had to take down my tent in that crap. I'm still drying things out in my yard. Fun stuff! I'm not at all surprised to hear she took care of it herself. She seemed to be very capable when I met her!

[Stormfeather]

Make sure it still has a charge! I keep telling my husband to help me fire up our generator to make sure it works but he never gets around to it. I know you are supposed to plug in a drill and turn the chuck to recharge it. I had it saved in my computer, but of course the stupid thing crashed two weeks ago and I'm still waiting for a new one to be shipped.


Was that the storms on Sunday, Stormfeather? I was camping just north of Tomah and had to take down my tent in that crap. I'm still drying things out in my yard. Fun stuff! I'm not at all surprised to hear she took care of it herself. She seemed to be very capable when I met her!

Waitaminute!!! You was camping out by us outside of town and you even didnt drop us a line??? :P

Yes it was, that was the storms that hit us.

[Katrina]

Glad she was on top of things. Glad nobody was hurt or too damaged. Had occasion to test out the standby last year ,power was out in winter for about ten days here. Son2 and family spent the week with us ,warm ,dry till power was restored at their house. they were here about 7-8 days.Son 2 now has gas Genny ready to go for this year basically to keep the sump running, they'll come here again if it goes longer than a day or two. his Genny is small one but it will run about ten hours before needing gas.They are working on saving for a standby and looking into solar as well.

[2die4]

They have a good teacher. It does bring peace when you know your significant other can hold the fort down just as good as you.

[Brownwater Riverrat 13]

Ooh.... BWRR has some splainin' to do!

OH, she's full a crap on "some of those thing" she knows the neighbors and we have a fire place and plenty of wood. As for the generator.......she's right. she might be able to start it once O show her how but she'll nver get it out of the apple barn to get it close enough to the house to hook up. It's too heavy. (neighbors) I bought a transfer switch to install but decided not to do it because we put the house on the market and I decided to use it for the next place. Hmmmmmm? Now we took it back off the market due to the "situation" with the other property. Soooooo, what to do? But that doesn't change the fact that I haven't taught her how to pull her arms out of socket or learned how to use the electric start either.......Doom on me.

[ladyhk13]

Ha! he's too funny. Anyone who has a regular fireplace without a heat blower knows that it is for looks only. A fireplace actually pulls the heat out of your house and unless you are sitting right in front of it you actually get no heat from it without a blazing fire going so I wouldn't start a fire for heat. I would actually go out to the apple barn and hunt up the little propane heater that he bought for camping and go into one of our smaller bedrooms and sleep in there with a window cracked for ventilation in order to stay warm if needed. As far as lights or electric I would just use candles and not open the fridge unless I actually had to.
We know 2 neighbors but I would never go ask them to take on a project of cutting down trees and clearing stuff, we don't have that kind of group here. We don't really socialize with them to the point where I would ask them to do that kind of work. We stop by and say hello and they are super nice but to ask them to do something like that I don't feel comfortable. BWRR asked one of the guys to help him split some wood over a month ago and the guy said he would but he never showed up. He is just too busy with his own stuff.
I guess that's why I'm so stressed about getting our property settled and our group on track. I feel so alone and isolated.

[Domeguy]

BWRR asked one of the guys to help hisome wood over a month ago and the guy said he would but he never showed up. He is just too busy with his own stuff.
I guess that's why I'm so stressed about getting our property settled and our group on track. I feel so alone and isolated.[/QUOTE]

This is when you hop in the short bus with the pets and come on over, or call me and I'll bring you over, or do my best to fix up what ever you need. As BWRR says, the night is your friend, well so are your dome neighbors. 24/7.

[Gunfixr]

That's awesome, Stormfeather.
As much as we guys like to protect our ladies, I know personally I want her to be able to take care of herself if I'm not around.
While I don't want her to have to do it, I realize she may have to.

Now you know she can.

[ladyhk13]

BWRR asked one of the guys to help hisome wood over a month ago and the guy said he would but he never showed up. He is just too busy with his own stuff.
I guess that's why I'm so stressed about getting our property settled and our group on track. I feel so alone and isolated.

This is when you hop in the short bus with the pets and come on over, or call me and I'll bring you over, or do my best to fix up what ever you need. As BWRR says, the night is your friend, well so are your dome neighbors. 24/7.[/QUOTE]

Thanks Domeguy...it actually wasn't a big deal, it can wait. The guy has a logsplitter and we were hoping not to buy one right now and the wood isn't needed at this point, it was more just to get it out of the way. We're good here. BWRR actually hardly ever leaves me alone so if something happens we can handle it together anyway. If something REALLY bad happened I'm sure we could call on the neighbor he would make time to come down. It's just that he works full time at a factory and is a full time farmer to boot so I don't even know when he even sleeps. I would hate to ask him to do anything that wasn't a true emergency like life or death.

[mitunnelrat]

Bravo to her, though I have to say I'm not at all surprised to hear you have a capable, industrious wife. Its almost more interesting to hear you had a plan that survived first contact :D

[MegaCPC]

Preps - turning possible oh shit moments into minor inconveniences.

Small(er) events like that are good practice. Glad to hear everything worked how it should have.

[msomnipotent]

Waitaminute!!! You was camping out by us outside of town and you even didnt drop us a line??? :P

Yes it was, that was the storms that hit us.

I had every intention of giving you guys a holler, and visiting the farmer we got the kitten from. But to make a long story short, it was not a good weekend and we would not have been good company. I'm still not good company!

[Stormfeather]

That's awesome, Stormfeather.
As much as we guys like to protect our ladies, I know personally I want her to be able to take care of herself if I'm not around.
While I don't want her to have to do it, I realize she may have to.

Now you know she can.

Yes, its a good feeling knowing things can be taken care of, sometimes I forget im not the only one that knows what to do.


Bravo to her, though I have to say I'm not at all surprised to hear you have a capable, industrious wife. Its almost more interesting to hear you had a plan that survived first contact :D


Yes, it surprised the hell out of me, glad as hell she worked thru her first contact drill and came thru pretty much unscathed.