Power is out and I'm steamed...

[phillipsted]

Last friday, we had a really scary storm blow through the Washington DC/Maryland/Virginia area. The weatherman called it a "derecho". Basically, it was a line of thunderstorms that started in Chicago in the early afternoon and sped along at 80mph through Ohio, WV, and Pennsylvania. At 10:30, it hit our area in Northern Virginia like a freight train. One minute, the air was still and humid, the next minute, we had 80mph flat line winds, heavy rain, and lightning like I've never seen it. The storm lasted about half an hour and dumped over an inch of rain. Trees went down, power lines landed everywhere, traffic signals went dark. It was kind of a mess...

At the peak of the storm, more than 2 million electric company customers were blacked out. Our power went off at 10:30 Friday and just came back on today - 4+ days of 100 degree heat with no power.

We made the best of it - my youngest son the Boy Scout said it was like "camping inside your own house". I like his attitude.

So the electricity came back on today. But the A/C didn't. It sputtered and coughed for a while, then froze up. So now we are into our fifth day without A/C. It is approaching 90 degrees in my house as I type this.

Argh...

TedP

P.S. - on the plus side, I found some time to hand sand one of my new Mule Scales. I'm just about finished with it - Lignum Vitae on a ZDP-189 Mule...

[J32A2]

IT's a DRY heat right??

[Donut]

I hope your AC starts working. If it freezes up, can't you just turn it off to let it thaw and turn it back on?

That ZDP Mule sounds great, I traded my ZDP Mule a while back.

[MachSchnell]

It was a brutal storm, and the heat wave was scorching. We got lucky here in and only lost power on that Friday night around 11:00pm and had it restored before noon on Saturday. The Bethesda and Rockville area got smashed pretty hard and we had to go out and clear trees from houses on the weekend and all this week. We'll be back down there tomorrow to take another big tree down off of a house.

Most of the trees we worked that went down were completely uprooted. There was another bad storm in the Finksburg area about a month ago that did some real damage, but a lot of those trees were snapped in half and twisted up most likely from microbursts (It was really wild seeing the paths of destruction).

As for the AC, one of my neighbors had theirs go up but it ended up being a blown capacitor of some sort.

[tonydahose]

sorry, we have lots of power outagges on my block, well my side, the other side is lit up like a christmas tree in july, so i feel for you. it happened so much that i bought a generator so the food wont go bad. i really want one of those natural gas powered whole house generator but it is kind of pricey. again i feel for you. best thing i found if it is too hot to sleep in is get a bed sheet, soakk it in water, ring it out and put that on top of you....put a fan on and you should be GTG. good luck!

[The Mastiff]

I've been through two derecho events so far.

1)http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDere...l41969page.htm

2)http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDere...l41977page.htm

Both were memorable events. The energy and noise are amazing. They are truly scary. All most more scary than a hurricane which is much longer lasting but gives you much more notice. Derechos aren't recognized or announced as such until later a lot of times. In our cases we didn't have warning of the 69 one until we saw it coming and just thought it was a thunderstorm. I lived between cleveland and akron at the time.

The other one we just had warning of as a front that has been known to produce strong storms will be here later.

That one ( I was in michigan) was like being in a barrell rolling by guys hitting it with bats. I saw a rotor with that as it went by. I don't know why they often occur this time of year but there is a history of them.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/misc/AbtDere...facts#historic

[DRH]

P.S. - on the plus side, I found some time to hand sand one of my new Mule Scales. I'm just about finished with it - Lignum Vitae on a ZDP-189 Mule...

Please do post a pic when it is finished! Lignum is by second favorite wood ... absolutely stunning and has a fascinating history! (Taking the number 1 position for favorite wood has to be Snakewood, especially when it is highly figured.)

[The Deacon]

Hope you get cooled down soon Ted, and that you didn't lose too much food. Lignum Vitae/ZDP Mule sounds really great, looking forward to photos.

[Paradiggum]

Central Ohio got hit pretty hard as well. Our power just came back on but there are some that aren't going to get power back until Sunday. It was 96 today. Hope your AC comes back to life.

[Pinetreebbs]

I hope the air is back working soon. Hard to imagine we used to live without AC.

[Blerv]

Sorry to hear Ted . Time to find a Starbucks or spend more time in the library I guess.

[The Mastiff]

I hope the air is back working soon. Hard to imagine we used to live without AC.

I recall living like that in the aftermath of hurricane Fran down here. We were out for about 5 days. We made the best of it with huge cookouts in the neighborhood. Everybody was cooking everything in the freezer before it went bad. The nights were hot and extremely humid with no fans to drown out the huge mosquitos droning around.

One of the first things I bought after the stores restocked was a battery powered fan. Naturally there were other things. Some solar panels, chargers, adaptors for charging cells etc. I learned a lot.

Still, it wasn't as bad as a winter storm here with no power in the cold for 3 or 4 days. I hate ice storms worst of all I think. I ended up getting propane heaters for that too so I have about all I need now to survive a few days without power no matter what caused it.

On the other hand if I had to evacuate two pickup trucks can't carry all my stuff.

Stuff I used to get along fine without.

Heh!

[mkd]

you can expect longer delays when major storms hit and power is interrupted.there has been a steady decline in labor(mostly all union)because of corporate greed and the TREND OF THE INDUSTRY management.the big guys keep getting hugh salaries at the expense of lost blue collar jobs, wages and benefits.next time your power goes out take a look at all the ceo's coming to your rescue!not!i worked for a major midwest utility for 37 yrs and was lucky enough to retire recently.the company has downsizes from 1800 union workers to just over 1100 in the last 20 yrs.they went to outside contractors building the lines and a minimum work force to keep the lights on in day to day operations.when something like a major regional storm hits there are not enough people to go around whether they are their own employees or hired contractors.the contract work goes where they can make the most money and have no ties with any one company.add to the fact that they are skilled at construction and not necesarily maintenance and may not know the service territory they are sent to work in there is a loss of performance in getting the power grid back up and running.the other down side is the power industry is dangerous work and every year people are getting injured or killed because the quality of training for electrical workers is not the same as it once was.

[jackknifeh]

It amazes me what we can get used to. Normally we don't even think about electricity. It's just always there. When it goes out it's awful. First is the food you loose. Second is the normal things we live with. We were out of electricity for 12 days after huricane Opal many years ago. We had gotten used to not having it. We had to go into town every day to get free bags of ice FEMA was handing out. That was a normal run that we got used to. Then when the lights came back on it was almost like we had to get used to that all over again. You should have seen us when all of a sudden we had electricity. We were acting like our team had just won the world series.

Our AC did work Ted so I hope you get yours working soon (or already have). There is a capacitor in some of them that could be bad and that's not too expensive. You will just have to put off buying one less pretty nice knife. Or you can tell wife she can't get any new shoes or purses. Let us know how your AC comes along. I had AC problems recently so am sympathetic.

Jack

[phillipsted]

Well, evidently, our old A/C unit (vintage 1996-era 5 ton unit) had developed a slow coolant leak. When it sat idle for five days, the leak became worse - until we were down over 3 pounds of coolant. Since its an older unit, it takes expensive freon. So when the guy came to repair it, he told us we could put the repair price toward the cost of a replacement. So, we got our unit patched up and working - but we ended up dropping a few thousand dollars on a new system to be installed next week. It was time to replace it anyway - these things have a life expectancy of 10-15 years, and this one was 16 years old.

I'm waiting until the temps cool down a few degrees to do the install, though. Whew!

TedP

P.S. - I posted a couple of shots of my almost-finished Lignum Vitae Mule over in the Pics Forum.

[jackknifeh]

Well, evidently, our old A/C unit (vintage 1996-era 5 ton unit) had developed a slow coolant leak. When it sat idle for five days, the leak became worse - until we were down over 3 pounds of coolant. Since its an older unit, it takes expensive freon. So when the guy came to repair it, he told us we could put the repair price toward the cost of a replacement. So, we got our unit patched up and working - but we ended up dropping a few thousand dollars on a new system to be installed next week. It was time to replace it anyway - these things have a life expectancy of 10-15 years, and this one was 16 years old.

I'm waiting until the temps cool down a few degrees to do the install, though. Whew!

TedP

P.S. - I posted a couple of shots of my almost-finished Lignum Vitae Mule over in the Pics Forum.

Dang Ted. The guy that checked out your AC. Was his name Billy? Probably was because you got a similar story I did and Billy came to my house. Our option was a little over $2000 to fix ours (compressor) or get a whole new one. A lot of it was due to the new freon. It's not freon but I don't remember what it is exactly. Ours was exactly 16 years old. Good luck with your new one.

Stay cool,
Jack

[DeathBySnooSnoo]

At least it is back up and running. We are getting some pretty high temps up here too. 90 in the shade...plus whatever the humidity adds. I can't imagine going without A/C for that long! I think that I would be living in the movie theatre and the mall!

[SpyderNut]

Ted,
I am truly sorry to hear about your situation. I can empathize with you to some degree. Our power has been going off/on for the past week (mainly due to power shortages/surges). Here in NE Indiana, we've been under an extreme drought warning for about three weeks now. Our county and several neighboring counties also declared "burn bans" (which included absolutely no fireworks for the 4th). It was kind of eerie not hearing or seeing any fireworks on the 4th. Yes, there were a few "rowdies" who decided to go ahead and disregard the firework ban, but they were caught and charged with misdemeanors for disregarding the burn ban. In nearly thirty years living in Indiana, I've never seen it this dry. We've not had any rain to speak of for a good six weeks or more. Our lawn looks and feels like straw. Today, the actual temp was 105 degrees (which felt more like 115 with the heat index) . I suppose the only blessing is that we haven't had to mow our lawn since late May. My heart goes out to many of our farmers because their crops are suffering terribly. We need some rain desperately.

Hope all turns out OK with the new A/C unit. It's a bummer having to replace it, but hopefully it will give you many years of good service.