Oops...

[altivo]

[Cell phone post] Snow stopped. And the power went off almost simultaneously. Hope this
doesn't last too long.

[Edited later] Back on at 4:15 pm. Total outage 75 minutes. That's better than their usual record here.

Discovered that both my UPS units work. Gary's, however, failed this time. He's gonna need a new one probably, it's eight or nine years old.

Had to restart the aquarium pumps by hand. I don't remember ever having that problem before. We started the woodstove up as soon as the power died. It takes an hour to get going well. I put the teakettle on top of it so I could make tea. The kettle finally boiled shortly before the power came back on. ;p

Comments

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Probably just needs a new battery. They're fairly standard sizes, and cheaper than a whole new unit.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

If the unit were APC or Tripplite (for example) and had a marked battery replacement door on it, that would seem likely. It's a Cyberpower, though, and I just replaced a smaller unit from the same maker that had "no user serviceable parts inside." We'll check, of course, but given the history of trouble with that unit, it may be time to just buy something else.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

It'll probably have a battery you can replace though, hmm though if you've had issues, another APC might be worth it :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually I've had more issues with APC than with any other UPS, probably because I've dealt with more APC units. On the whole, none of them seem that reliable, and especially not once they are past warranty. Either they never warn you that the battery is going out, or else they do tell you the battery needs replacing but when you replace it they still don't work right. Tripplite and Cyberpower have the additional black mark that they claim "Linux compatible" but only provide drivers that are so obsolete they can't be used.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

We've been fortunate not to have any power outages during the winter. I've been trying to get the guy who owns this place to buy an emergency generator, just in case. The heater is propane, but it still requires electricity to start it and run the fans. We don't have a wood stove or a fireplace, except for an ancient stove out in the (non-attached) garage. It probably hasn't been used in decades, and we don't have any wood for it. If we had a major snowstorm, cold snap and power outage, we'd be screwed.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Not a situation I'd want to be in. Alternative heating method was one of our criteria when we were shopping for a place ten years ago. I would have been delighted to have found a farmstead old enough to have a windmill water pump as a backup too, but that was asking too much. We bought a generator instead, and had the requisite wiring added so the generator can supply selected house circuits (refrigerators, freezers, well pump, amateur radio equipment) but it's a small generator set and won't power the heat pumps. The switchover to generator power is entirely manual: roll generator into position, plug into house wiring, start it up, switch desired circuits over. However, that whole setup was much less expensive. It was about $2K total, generator plus wiring changes by an electrician. The automatically activated systems that run on propane started at around $12K.

[soanos.livejournal.com]

Yes... The electricity grid seems a bit flaky out there. Glad to hear the power came back on quickly enough. :)