Re: POWER MAINTENANCE OUTAGE

WORKING GAL · ‎11-15-2011

@hennypenny - Hi to you also! Glad to know of a close neighbor to our city of Simi Valley. What is interesting is that everytime they predict sundowner winds for Santa Barbara (like the past couple of nights), we get warm winds starting about 11:00 p.m. for a few hours. I guess they travel down our way but weaker than you get them. I worry when they predict those winds for your area because of the fire danger. I must say our E. Ventura County weather is getting hotter and hotter each summer. We moved here in 1972 and didn't have AC until 1977. We would only get about 2 weeks of intermittent hot weather and could get by with fans. Not today!

Have a safe summer and fall.

puttypiesmom · ‎10-11-2017

@Mominohio wrote:
@WORKING GAL wrote:
@kdgn - We're taking all the precautions you mentioned that we can. We've been through this in the daytime for 6 hours about 4 times. I will bag up all the ice from our icemaker in Ziploc bags and place in the freezer. We'll also buy a bag of ice and put some perishables like milk, cottage cheese, etc. in one of our coolers.
Thank heavens we just put in a new larger AC system so we'll be able to cool the house down more prior to the outage. Thanks for the suggestions. It is still an annoyance!

I have to wonder if everyone taxes the system to over cool their homes prior to the outage, it could cause a failure from overload before the planned outage.

I can't suggest any stronger than for people to get backup generators, either the portable ones, or the stand by ones that come on and off as soon as the power goes out. They can be a bit of an investment for some people, but such peace of mind for things like this, and worse.

Many of the whole house automatic generators are noisy and won't pass the decibel requirements if the homes are close together as many are in Ca. Nothing but densely populated areas and when the grid goes down it magnifies sounds even further. Neighbors who are hurting and don't have a backup generator will come knocking on your door and expect you to be a good Samaritan. No man is an island and if you don't help your fellow man, there will be heck to pay when the power does come back on.

Installation of an automatic generator is something you should not do yourself and that means hiring both an electrician and a plumber.

Homes in wealthy Calabasas probably all have backup automatic generators. Those not in a wealthy neighborhood maybe have 5 or less and the noise will be deafening and you will have people calling on you, that's a given.