<VV> Computing by Candle Light

[Ken Wildman]

Wednesday night a massive ice storm hit our area.  At first it was very 
pretty with all the tree limbs coated in ice and twinkling.  After a few 
hours accumulation the weight of the ice started bringing branches 
down.  We thought we heard someone knocking at our back door, but it was 
actually the sound of the wire clamps holding the powerline down to the 
meter pulling out of the house in rapid succession.   A heavy branch hit 
the power line to our home and pulled the electric meter off of the 
house.  I looked out the window and in the dusk light saw the electric 
meter apparently floating in mid-air, face down.  It was actually still 
attached and stretched between the power pole and the house.  A few hours 
later the power went out completely through out the village.

We called the power company when the meter and house parted company and 
they told us to schedule our electrician to come out and fix "his" part 
when the power company people came to make repairs.  Only problem was that 
they didn't know when they would be able to come.  That made "scheduling" 
somewhat difficult.   :)

We spent a frozen Thursday night in the house with temperatures inside down 
to about 42deg. Fahrenheit.  That doesn't sound too bad until you consider 
that the recommended temperature for a refrigerator is about 
40deg.  Sitting in the house was about like sitting in the fridge.  So, on 
Friday I made a reservation for the night at a motel in a nearby city.

On Saturday, our electrician came and made all the repairs that he was 
responsibile for, and with the power completely disconnected from the 
house, I felt safe in connecting the RV generator to the garage plug that 
usually keeps the RV batteries charged during the winter.  Running the 
generator now fed 110v AC back into the house wiring and we could run the 
furnace and the lights on one of the two "legs" being supplied by the 
garage wiring.

The routine settled down to running the generator until the house was back 
to it's normal 68deg., then turning it off for awhile, then re-starting it 
when the temperature inside dropped to about 60deg.  We timed bedtime 
around the last "run" and started each night's sleep at 68 and awoke to 
temperatures in the high 50's.  This morning I ran out to start the 
generator and nothing happed except for a rat-tat-tat sound from the 
starter.  I switched from the coach battery to the house batter, but still 
not enough current to get a start.  Eventually, I decided to try with both 
batteries connected into the circuit, and it worked!  The generator started 
and I ran it for about an hour charging the two batteries.  When they were 
charged I connected the generator back to supplying the house and got some 
heat going again.

Dealing with the heating situation and other chores like lawn cleanup, 
etc.  I only hooked up the laptop-cellphone long enough to download some 
accumulated e-mail, about 350 messages worth.  Of course the best cell 
phone reception in our house is in a room with no available lighting, so I 
was reduced to reading the keyboard by candle
light.  I've finally got the phone and laptop sufficiently charged to start 
sending mail.

It's now about 1:30pm Monday afternoon.  The best information so far is 
that we should have full power restored no later than Wednesday 
evening.  From the looks of town I'll be pleasantly surprized if they make 
that deadline.  Ada looks like a battle-zone.  They even ran the snowplows 
just to move tree limbs out of the streets.  Every street has 5 or more 
individual powel lines down.

Two general observations from our experience.  First, our little Corvair 
powered motorhome with it's 2.8Kwatt generator turned a frozen disaster 
into just an inconvenience.  I'm amazed at how much of the house can be 
handled by that little unit.  and Second, this was our first opportunity in 
over 30 years of Newfoundland ownership to discover just how hard it is to 
see a big black dog on the floor when all the lights are out.   :)

Stay warm,
Ken