11-11-14, 07:47 PM | #1 |
Supreme EcoRenovator
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Portland, OR
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Preparing for Infrastructure Lapses...
Sorry, I just couldn't think of a better title. I thought of "Preparedness" and I thought of "Surviving... etc.", but they all sounded so 'Guns and Dogs, and Bags of Beans', and I've been down that road, and that's just not where I want to go anymore.
But I think that preparing for temporary lapses of the infrastructure seems very much more civilized and realistic and likely to happen, and easier to prepare for. I can live with that one. Case in point: A month or so ago, the power went out, when it was night. I was lucky to remember the general area where I had last left my flashlight, and I "brailled" my way around in total darkness for 5 minutes or so (seemed like five hours) until I found one tiny LED single AA cell flashlight. That helped me find other stuff. So I used the inconvenient moments to take stock... Here's what I didn't have:
Here's what I did have:
Honestly, the first thing I did was to take a nice long hot shower because my gas demand water heater is always ready, and because I could. It made things much better. But it was quite startling to be in the midst of an outage (could have been a crisis, but it wasn't) and not have any communications. I couldn't even communicate my plight to anybody... that is a problem. Especially vexing because I know that the phone line (my dsl) is working... (at least, The Telco has it act together). But my connection to the Internet is out because some low voltage devices:
Then I realized that I have all the parts scattered about because I had started collecting the parts to build a "Lapse-Proof" battery backup to keep my fundamental stuff going. So I started thrashing about through my house with my tiny LED light looking for the pieces in the dark:
Turned out that the 12V power cables were the hardest to find, and one of the cables required some modification. So down I go into the gloomy dark basement, while holding the little flashlight in my teeth, I cut and modified the cable to fit the purpose. As I was bringing the modified 12V cable upstairs, the power came back on and the TV started yammering and all the rest of the house came alive... crisis over. So, at least, I have all the parts together in the same place, even if they are not assembled. LESSONS:
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I'm not an HVAC technician. In fact, I'm barely even a hacker... Last edited by AC_Hacker; 11-11-14 at 08:09 PM.. |
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