After the Storm

[BakerAunt]

Northern Indiana had a major weather event last night--rain and very high winds--our power went out at 6:15 p.m. as we were eating dinner. (I pushed my husband to go ahead, "while we still have power," and he is glad he agreed.) Our power was out until shortly after 2 p.m. the next day, so it was close to 20 hours. We did not open either of the two refrigerators or freezers, and now that power is back, we will leave them closed until dinner (and hope that we do not lose power again, as sometimes there are intermittent outages after a major one). I am hoping that the food is ok, but I will probably need to use much of the new gallon of milk very quickly in baking.

This is the first time since we moved here that we have had a power outage of such a long duration. My husband plans to look into generators. It's not just the refrigerators but our water pump that goes out when we lose power (and there is also a pump on the grinder for our sewer system). We may also look into solar options.

We were fortunate to have no tree or house damage. We have heard reports that trees were down all over the region.

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[RiversideLen]

That storm rolled through here a little earlier, my power went out about 4:30 or so and remained out until just before 9 a.m. today. I'm glad it wasn't longer. Last night I went in the fridge to pull out dinner (leftovers) but otherwise kept it closed. I have a "weather station" that I use to monitor fridge and freezer temps. It has a sensor that sends the info wireless to a receiving unit and can accommodate up to 3 sensors. So I have one sensor in the fridge and one in each chest freezer. When the power came back on the fridge temp was in the 50's and I stuck an instant read in the milk and it registered about 52 degrees. Stuck the instant read in the ice cream, it was soft but not deformed, it registered somewhere in the low 20's and the ice cubes were in good shape so I'm not worried about anything that was in the fridge freezer. I will fast track many of the items that were in the fridge though. Both chest freezers (one in the basement and one on the main level) registered in the low 20's, almost identical. Since those temps were below freezing I am not worried about anything that is in them. My new freezer recovered it's temp much more quickly than the older freezer in the basement. I made sure my cell phone and external battery pack were fully charged. I was able to stream Netflix on the phone which made an otherwise boring evening tolerable.

[chocomouse]

I'm trying to talk my husband into getting a Tesla battery back-up for our house, but he is hesitant since it will cost around 14,000. We reaching the age that we will not recoup any long-term investments like that. My son and my sister have Teslas, and love it. They both also have solar panels, and they "sell" the excess electricity those generate back to the power company, and the power company "reserves" power for them during an outage. They don't even realize when they have switched from the traditional power onto the battery back up, unless they check their iPhones. Because we get a lot of sunshine in this area, they end up paying almost nothing for electricity.

[Joan Simpson]

I'm glad you all were OK from the storm.I saw lots of damage on the weather channel.We don't have a generator but they are so nice.My sisters daughter has the kind that when the power goes off it automatically comes on but runs on propane.My sister lives with them and she's on oxygen 24-7 so it's a blessing for her.Theirs was around 10,000.00.

[BakerAunt]

Sigh. I tried to post, then was told I was not logged in--even though I had answered and posted for the quiz, so my post disappeared. Let me try again.

Len--My husband was impressed with how you monitor your freezer and refrigerator temperatures. We may look into a similar set-up. We have two refrigerators with attached freezers, so we would need to monitor four locations, and one of the refrigerators is in the garage apt., which is a separate building, so I'm not sure we could monitor that one from the house. During our renovation, the cordless phone second receiver had some difficulty picking up from the interior of the main house.

We considered solar when planning our house renovation, but about the time we moved here, the legislature passed a law to "protect" the utility company from loss of revenue due to solar, and the result was that it would be the same price, and we would never recoup any of the money. We have not yet renovated the apt./garage, so it is possible that we could fit solar on the north side of its roof. The south side is shaded by a beautiful white oak during the spring, summer, and early fall.

I plan to look into some of the small solar panels that can charge a phone or other small electrics.

I managed to have my coffee yesterday when the power was out because with the gas top on the stove, I could use a match to light the burner. As for grinding the coffee beans, a few years ago Sur La Table had a sale which included a neat German coffee grinder, which I bought for just such an occasion. It works well, although I need to figure out how to adjust for a slightly coarser grind that will work for French press. (It was slightly "muddy.")

[RiversideLen]

BA,
this is what I use, Indoor/Outdoor Thermometer It comes with one sensor, you have to buy additional ones. You could monitor 3 locations with one and the fourth location would need a second set up. They claim it transmits up to 330 feet but for every wall it has to pass through, you can cut that by half. It would have to pass through the freezer wall, then the apartment wall, then your house wall so it's not likely you would be able to monitor the apartment freezer from your house but maybe from another location, for example, just inside the apartment door or garage.

I find it useful, I like knowing what's going on in my chill chests.

[Mike Nolan]

The thing about wireless thermometers is they operate on a limited set of frequencies, and that's not information they share with consumers, so if you buy two of them, even though they've got different brands on them, they may share the same frequency, which means they can't operate independently.

I bought a second one recently and it shares the same frequency with the one in the bedroom, so it is basically useless because one transmitter dominates the spectrum so the other one might as well be turned off.

Ones that handle multiple channels at least have a channel switch that can be used to support the other channels.

[RiversideLen]

Since the temps in my fridge was in the mid 50's for a number of hours, I decided to play it safe and tossed out salad dressing (there was just a serving or two left), mayo (about 1/2 bottle), milk, buttermilk, a small package of ham, some hummus and a few odds and ends. Those things might have been ok but the last thing I need is a case of food poisoning during the pandemic. Packaged cheese should be ok, right?

[Mike Nolan]

My experience is that if it hasn't been opened, the effect should be minimal, if it was an opened package it might start going bad faster.

[BakerAunt]

We will mull over this information on monitoring refrigerator and freezer temperatures. It would probably need to be one sensor in each building.

We have fast tracked whatever was open in the refrigerator, and it seems to be fine.

[RiversideLen]

I have an electric stove, we originally had gas but my wife decided she wanted electric so we did the change. I have a butane fueled camp stove, one burner, to use during a power outage. It may not be ideal but it's better than nothing and it's easy to stow away.

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