Swedish preparedness pamphlet

[Broch]

We used to have power cuts lasting 3 or 4 days. I found a solution to that: I bought a 5.5Kw generator - miraculously we've not had a long power cut (longer than an hour) since

We did have two separate days of planned maintenance power cuts this year when my daughter and son-in-law were staying (waiting for work to be completed on their house) and both needing to work from home, so the genny has been used.

 

[Woody girl]

In the 26 and a half years I've lived here I've been totaly cut off with severe snow, flooding and trees down across the road. We used to have many power cuts, but since an up grade they rarely last more than an hour or two.
I've had plenty of practice at coping , keep tinned food, camp gas stoves, plenty of gas, and also several gallons of water.
The worst was being snowed in for a week and we couldn't get a coal delivery to the house, and had to arrange for it to be dumped at a friend's house, collecting it bag by bag, and ferrying it down the hill to the house. Now I also keep plenty of coal and kindling in.
What does worry me, is that everytime there is a power cut, Internet and mobile phones go down immediately, as will my landline now.
My son slipped and broke his arm in the snow in, in those days we could phone for help and they sent mountain rescue land rover to take us to the hospital.
It worries me as to how anyone could call for help in a similar situation if the power was out. We are over 20 miles from hospitals, couldn't even call for fire brigade if someone had a candle accident for instance.
Improvement to infrastructure isn't always the improvement they tell us it is. In fact I feel often it makes things worse.

 

[slowworm]

I forgot about being cut off by the snow a few years ago. It didn't take much to fall to drift across and block our Devon lane. It then froze and as it's fairly steep the ice stopped any traffic for almost a week IIRC. It didn't affect us as we work from home and didn't need to go out.

 

[slowworm]

We used to have power cuts lasting 3 or 4 days. I found a solution to that: I bought a 5.5Kw generator - miraculously we've not had a long power cut (longer than an hour) since

We almost bought a large petrol one when we bought the house but it wouldn't have been used much so glad we didn't. Now my OH is doing more work from home some form of battery bank seems wise.

 

[Broch]

I look forward to being cut off by the snow (last time several years ago).

 

[HorseGuy]

Just wondering what examples members here have of the longest period or duration that they have had for an unpredicted event where they had upheaval to their day to day life.

Luckily I've never had to cope with any long term service cuts. A couple of days without water and a couple of hours without electric is the longest I've ever experienced.

For the power cut I didn't even bother to dig out my 12v to 230v portable inverter and 12v Leisure battery (which is always topped up and ready in case it's ever needed for use on an electric fence somewhere). Once that I had checked the power cut was only local and not anything more serious or wide-spread I just popped on some headphones and listed to my MP3 player for a while.

For water cuts I keep a couple of spare 5 liter water bottles at home which are regularly rotated with fresh water (using the old water to flush the toilet so as not to waste it). That was just enough to last us for cups of coffee and economic flannel washes for two days. Had the water cut lasted for any longer I would have probably just gone to the supermarket to buy some more even though we have a local freshwater spring which the horses drink from and I have a water filter which could have been used.

So nothing particularly insightful but those were my only experiences.

 

[bearbait]

Out of interest how long does a gas bottle last you ? I'm assuming its one of the larger 47kg units?

Yea, the 47KG ones. I checked back and it looks like it's coming up to three years since I replaced one of the bottles. The oven is electric but the 4-burner hob is gas. It's used for cooking and also for boiling water for teas and coffees, and re-seasoning my cast iron cookware too.

 

[TeeDee]

Yea, the 47KG ones. I checked back and it looks like it's coming up to three years since I replaced one of the bottles. The oven is electric but the 4-burner hob is gas. It's used for cooking and also for boiling water for teas and coffees, and re-seasoning my cast iron cookware too.

Thats a lot of potential back up redundancy for a small physical footprint.