A Week Without Electricity

It's been a week since power went out on 14 September, and we're nowhere near Galveston. The cold front, boosted by remnants of Ike's energy, whipped through southwest Ohio with hurricane-force gusts and blew down trees everywhere. Power has been restored in most areas--cities and towns--but our dead-end rural street isn't on the list of areas the power company hoped to get to this weekend and next week. So far, the weather has been mild and dry.

We're luckier than many. We are on public water and use our well only for irrigation. And we have a generator.

Rather than go to the trouble of installing an isolation panel to allow us to power house circuits with the generator without conflict with public power, we run extension cords in the basement door and up the stairs. We can power a couple of lamps, refrigerator, freezer, TV, DVR. and computer. We unplug the refrigerator to make coffee in the morning, and we cook outside on the gas grill.

I didn't use the generator until the second day when realization that power was going to be out for several days sank in. But I turned it off at night, even though it's a quiet Honda, and it wouldn't start the next day.

The generator sits on a shelf in the shed most of the year. Until this week, I never bothered to throw out old gasoline or use a stabilizer such as Sta-Bil to keep gas good. My generator had a stuck valve.

Hondas are easy to take apart, and the valve springs can be removed with fingers. I worked the valve up and down with pliers until it worked freely, put the machine back together (Success! No lefover parts!) and it started on the first pull. It's been running ever since.

This generator has a demand throttle; it runs only as fast and hard as it needs to. Fuel burn is less than three gallons a day. I fill it first thing in the morning, at four in the afternoon, and again before going to bed.

Being without public power was inconvenient at first, but we're getting used to it. The biggest inconvenience is, we have to stay near home to keep the generator running. We want to drive to Boston to visit a friend, but we can't until power is restored.

I still flip on light switches when entering dark rooms. I hope we get power back before that habit has time to fade. One nice result of no power is, we don't eat much. Too much trouble. I'd wanted to lose about fifteen pounds, and ten are gone already.

The sun is going down, so I'll go grill our supper. Steak and salad and a glass of wine.

And it's time to fill the generator again.