Just a quick update since I can’t post an article this weekend.
We took a quick vacation to Ohio last week to take our two youngest grandsons to the Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky. The kids had a ball.
Our first night in the hotel had a wicked storm, but that didn’t damper the fun.
That was an appetizer for the coming storms we’d have in Michigan.
We had back-to-back storms, the first flooding our street and yard, the second triggering tornado alerts, high winds dropping huge limbs in the newly formed lake surrounding our house, and shutting down our power until late yesterday (Satuday).
Incredibly, no water entered the house. We have a brick ranch home on a slab – no basement. We have a new roof, and that stayed intact.
Other than getting the opportunity to test our generator and blackout kit (again), we faired well. Now, the cleanup begins.
We cut our trip short by a day when we discovered the second storm was rolling in. It was a race to beat the storm home, first taking the kids back to Columbus and then driving home to Michigan. We made it home half an hour before it hit – just long enough to unload the truck.
We’ve had worse storms but haven’t had flooding like this in the 18 years since we bought the home. All in all, it wasn’t all that bad. Our blackout kit and procedure are dialed in pretty well.
Our Generator Is A Huge Blessing
We ran our generator continuously for about 36 hours, using 15 gallons of gas. I waited until morning before starting it up.
We have temperature monitors(Aff) in the freezers, so that helps determine when something has to be done. At this point, the food inside those freezers and refrigerators is well worth the price of a generator. We have an inverter for a car as well, but with that many major appliances, it’s not a great solution.
I’m considering buying a second backup generator since this one is eight or nine years old and has been used often over the last several years. We had two generators for years. Now we’re down to just this one. I keep it maintained, but everything has a limit, and the time to discover that it doesn’t work isn’t when you need it. I just changed the oil and sparkplug this morning.
We ran two freezers, two refrigerators, lighting, small appliances, and a couple of fans. I have two window air conditioner units, but the mild weather didn’t force me to dig them out. We even did a couple of loads of laundry with it. Luckily, we didn’t have the freeze dryer running when the power went out.
I’ll see you next week.
