Our 5 day powercut in December 2022.

[Sneddle]

Thanks for posting that, Britcit. It's one thing to plan ahead and think about what a given situation would be like, but it's another to live through it.

[Britcit]

Britcit, that's really interesting, thank you for taking the time.

How about water? Did it keep flowing? I'm assuming it did, or you would have mentioned it, but I'm just wondering And did the chickens cope? They seem to have strayed quite a lot

The water kept flowing yes. I did keep an eye (and nose) on it to make sure if didn't seem to deteriorate. If we lost water we do have a sizable loch about 2 mins from the house.
The chickens mostly did okay, but a couple of them got flustered and wouldn't go in the coop. They kept trying to sleep on the snowdrifts so I would gather them up and shut them in. They figured it out after 3 days.

Thanks for that insight ...

Just general musings

Have you got snow / winter tyres / all season tyres and chains (or the modern textile equivalents) ?

I use all season tyres as luckily such extreme weather is pretty rare. On the whole it is warmer here in the winter than the rest of the uk. If there is even the slightest chance of ice, all the gritting trucks go out as Shetland Island Council have quite a.large budget to keep the roads clear. If we get heavy ice or snow, I just stay home lol. Bosses here are very understanding .

I will be building a shelter to house the genny, will keep in mind your advise on keeping it cool, so will allow plenty of air flow.

I have an abundance of gas canisters for those small briefcase stoves so may get a heater that can use them.

I have ordered a radio that is mains and usb, with 15 hours run on a full charge. I will also grab a couple of cheap aaa or aa powered ones as backup.

Spare plug oil and cord for the genny is now on my shopping list, thank you. I keep cold start on hand for my van.

I did consider running our central heating off the genny but was worried that it might fry any chips or circuits in it. I don't know how 'clean' the electric is from it and don't know enough about it to risk it. I may talk to the CH engineer next time he's here to service the boiler.

Did you use hot water bottles at all? Just wondering after the Youtube link posted the other day where the soldier operating in Ukraine recommended them. They are part of our stay warm strategy for low or no power personal warmth.

On the 2 nights my wife was home she used a hot water bottle. Both nights we found one of our small dogs under the duvet sleeping on the bottle lol. When she wasn't here I didn't bother as all the dogs just piled under the duvet with me and I was warm.
Biggest problem was in the morning, having to get out of a warm bed into a room that was 3 - 4 degrees Celsius.

Thanks for that. Part that got my attention is how fast the house became cold and lifeless (?)after a few days without warmth.

Yeah, that was quite unexpected. It really is hard to explain, but it changes the whole feel of the house and it didn't feel quite like the safe refuge you would expect. A lot of people we spoke to at the warm hub in the local hall said exactly the same.


I don't know if I said in either of my (very) long posts, but I was surprised at how many people really were not prepared for a weather event like we had combined with a power cut. A lot here have extra food and supplies in case we get cut off from the mainland. Multiple chest freezers are common, but not that many have gennys.
A few guys I work with had no alternative forms of heating, and really struggled. Had they lived close I would have got them to move in with us. We have 'many' spare rooms so could have accommodated them. But most of them live on other islands and we had no contact.

Needless to say, many are now working to plug that gap lol.

[deckard]

Interesting thread, thanks.

On the point of running a gas boiler off of a generator or inverter; small portable setups are IT systems, so isolated without an earth that some boilers use for the flame detection (I've no idea why). For those you'd need to make a neutral earth bond somewhere to make it an earthed arrangement, and thats not something to take lightly, it'd want to be a nice low impedance.