Hurricane Season Dress Rehearsal
Power has been out for the last 2 hours or so. The other end of the street is flooded above my car's bottom door seam so no driving around for me. Since I was stuck in the house I thought it might be a good idea to see what it takes to crank back up to the mode I was operating in during IKE.
You know that old observation that when you make the last payment on the car and the warranty goes out, everything starts falling off the car? Well yesterday I made the last of the three insurance-reimbursement payments to the roofer finally after wrestling with the mortgage company to get my insurance money back and which I received the day before. So of course today is the first day "post-warranty"!
IKE and his collateral damages are still a very fresh memory. My re-shingled and repaired roof is about a month old, maybe. Yeah buddy. I just can't wait for the next hurricane to come visit. I still have 2 tons of downed tree trunks, limbs, etc in the back yard.
Today winds were blowing about 60 to 80 mph and the roof seems to be OK. My own little part of the house refurbishment was to rebuild the porch roof and its almost done. I haven't had 2 dry days in a row and a weekend to be able to properly cover the plywood with shingling, so it leaks here and there. But its better than it was a month ago.
One thing I've learned in the interim since IKE is the joy of owning an air compressor and a framing style nail gun. Without that pair of tools, no porch roof. Yes sir. No more swinging a 14 oz or a 1 1/2 pound hammer for me.
I'm very happy to report that the 5.5KW generator is running just fine. The refrigerators are happy. The new UPS I bought seems to like running on the generator as does the old P3 equipped Xubuntu computer and LCD panel, so I'm kind of set for the next hurricane, I think.
The hurricane box needs replenishment for the usual consumables, batteries, blue tarps (the unofficial flag of hurricane damage solidarity) and a couple of new rolls of duct tape etc. I might want to buy a few more AC extension cords. (With the recession now an acknowledged reality, its not so amazing to see how many roofs STILL have blue tarps on them.)
So over-all a decent rehearsal. Now its time for the power company to do its rehearsal and turn the power back on. We'll see what happens.
Update: Power is back on after about 2 ½ hrs, not bad actually. Never fails. I saw the power company bucket truck at the usual power pole where the local branch breaker is located. That was of course on my way back from buying 15 gallons of gas for the generator! Ha!