2007.12.11 Still no Electricity

There's still no electricity at the homestead. I can't work on the new house in the icey rain, and I can't work in the dark. I wish I could.

It's the second day without electricity. I did see a service truck from the electric company in the area, and he was near some downed power lines, so hopefully we'll have electricity soon.

Lastnight, I couldn't get our generator started, so we couldn't put minimal power on things like the freezer and the refrigerator. That gave us an excuse to clean the refrigerator out and put that stuff in the carport, where the temperature was around 32 degrees and certainly wont get above 40 for a day or two.

I got out today and took the generator to a mechanic and he was able to get it started for us. So we'll have at least minimal power this evening, even if we don't have power to the whole house. I'm not sure yet how to wire it up properly so that things like the well pump can run. It's hardwired, rather than something that can easily be plugged in. I've heard rumors of being able to rig up a plug from the generator that can go into the dryer electrical outlet. Supposedly, you cut off the input power (from the grid) at the breaker box, and this prevents any "backflow" of power to the grid. Supposedly, this will power the house.Even if we don't do that, we'll at least be able to string a couple of cords from the generator to the freezer, refrigerator, and maybe one or two other items in the house.

Needless to say, without power, we'll not be doing much with the new house.

Update as of 20:18, the generator is running. We had the network router and two computers running this evening, along with the refrigerator and the freezer. So we're not roughing it, except for water. I had to fill 5 7 gallon jugs of water and haul them from my parents' house in Tulsa. Their house is fine, but there's a concern about the roof as trees from their neighbors disintegrated and part of the debris fell into their back yard and partially on their roof. I'm hoping there's no serious damage.Oddly enough, the one tree left in their yard actually didn't have any broken branches. Go figure!