Power out - need assistance

[michika]

Let me know if you still need anything.

[Myka]

Yikes. Did it work out ok?

[asylumdown]

Thanks guys! It all worked out ok, other than me being a completely ruined mess today for lack of sleep. My car wasn't able to run the return pump, which would have been optimal, but it was able to run an MP40, MP60, and the pump for the biopellet reactor no problem. I had to manually lift my garage door in the pitch black and do everything with a flashlight (my house is DARK with no power), and I scavenged an extension cord that was part of my ATO system in the basement and daisy chained it with another extension cord and a power bar with a really long cord to get it to reach.

Power was only out for about 3 hours, which in the grand scheme of things probably wouldn't have hurt the tank at all, but when I talked to Enmax they said that at that time of night it would take 2 hours for them to even get a crew to our area, and then depending on what had caused the fault, could take an indeterminate amount of time to fix. He said they usually get it back up within two hours of getting to the site, but when the faults are caused by several days of hot weather and involve underground lines it can take 6 hours or more for them to bypass them. I didn't feel like waiting for three hours and be faced with an emergency recovery situation at 3am if the power didn't come back on until today.

I think I'm still gonna consider a generator though, after 2 hours of running three pumps the adapter in the car was freaking hot and starting to smell like burning plastic. Not sure it would have lasted much longer, and I don't like the idea of needing to run my car in the garage during a power outage.

On another note, having zero flow in my tank for the 40ish minutes it took me to get everything hooked up and running was enough to create the creepiest and grossest bristleworm bonanza on my sand. I'm starting to wonder if it's actually a problem. They ALL came out. I took a video that I'm trying to figure out how to upload to photobucket, it's well and truly gross. My tank's biomass is easily 50% bristleworms.

[kien]

Glad it all worked out! Only 3 hours, lucky!! :-)

And ya, I was too paranoid to run my generator in my garage when my power went out. I left it on my deck out back and ran the cord through my kitchen window.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by kien

Glad it all worked out! Only 3 hours, lucky!! :-)

And ya, I was too paranoid to run my generator in my garage when my power went out. I left it on my deck out back and ran the cord through my kitchen window.

dude I still have nightmares thinking about what happened to you. The fact that I don't already have a proper generator after reading your story... ugh. I practically deserved that power outage for my own stupidity. I tried to sleep on the couch because my car has an electronic key and won't allow itself to be locked from the outside if the key isn't in it and the car is running, so I basically had my car running unlocked, perfectly accessible to anyone who walked by in the middle of the night. Hence the not getting any sleep until after the power was back on and I had put everything away and locked it all back up. Not something I really want to ever do again.

[MarkoD]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

dude I still have nightmares thinking about what happened to you. The fact that I don't already have a proper generator after reading your story... ugh. I practically deserved that power outage for my own stupidity. I tried to sleep on the couch because my car has an electronic key and won't allow itself to be locked from the outside if the key isn't in it and the car is running, so I basically had my car running unlocked, perfectly accessible to anyone who walked by in the middle of the night. Hence the not getting any sleep until after the power was back on and I had put everything away and locked it all back up. Not something I really want to ever do again.

Glad it all worked out.

With your car running you can pull the actual physical key out and manually lock the doors of the car. In case you ever need to

[pinhead]

Our power was out for 12 hours on Thursday night with the thunder and lightning storm that hit the Lower Mainland.

I lost 90% of my livestock in a 5 day power outage in the big windstorm in winter of 2006. The 10% that survived (including fish) had no heaters and no circulation pumps so they can withstand some pretty poor conditions.

After that loss, I have upgraded in tank size twice. All I have invested in is a battery powered air pump. It is one I got at Petsmart that plugs into an outlet and turns on when the power goes out - it costs less than $15. In the 12 hours, the temperature in my 90 gallon only dropped by a few degrees. Oxygenating the water and keeping a little flow going was enough to breeze through the outage with no problems.