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I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for paper phonebooks! Also, a lesson in electricity
Scene: a woman sits curled in a corner of the couch, a lone candle casting flickering light around the room. In the background, the sound of rabid woodchucks attemping to eat through the outside of the house can be heard...
~ ~ ~ wayback noises ~ ~ ~
It all started the previous night, when I got home from a night out with the girls. As my husband and I were standing around the kitchen, talking, when the lights dimmed. We both kinda shrugged it off, but it happened again. And then the lights went out. Well, some of them did.
Electrical outages are a part of life, and I knew a lot of people were without power after the two big storms we had. I probably would have shrugged it off as the power company doing repairs (if they were going to have to cut power, 2:30 in the morning would seem a good time to do it, as most people wouldn't even notice) if it wasn't for the fact that part of our house still had power. Well, you say all knowing-like, it was obviously a tripped breaker.
Yes, yes, we thought of that. But none of the circuits were tripped. {cue spooky music}. Then the power came back on. Sort of. It was dim, kind of a half-power.
Nervous, we went to bed, though it was a fitful night. When I got up the next... I'll be honest, it was afternoon, I tried to use the microwave, and again, it was running on partial power. It just didn't have enough juice. And while the clock on the stove was on, none of the burners would turn on.
We decided, despite it being a Sunday, to call an electrician. Yes, we'd pay through the nose, but it was better than a short burning the house down. {{{Knock on wood}}} So I called the people who'd done our basement, despite lingering concerns that might be the problem (the basement was part of what wasn't working).
He said he'd be out at 4. At 2, we lost what lingering power we had to the A/C, the 'fridge, the living room, the pool table room, the washer and dryer, the lights in the kitchen (though not the one set of outlets along the north side), the outdoor lights and power to most of the basement (which hosed us for cable and internet, though he did get the cable working upstairs)... that's all we noticed, though if you turned on the garage lights it would flip a breaker, interestingly enough.
At 5 I called him and left a message. At 6 I called him and left a message. At 7 I called him and told him he had 30 minutes to call me back and/or show up, or I was calling someone else. At 7:30 I called several numbers out of the phone book, running into a lot of answering machines and no longer in service numbers. I finally got ahold of an electrician who listened to my story (same one I'd told the first gy) and said "Sounds like a problem with the power coming in to the house. You should call KCPL first, but if that's not it, call me back".
So, cranky (did I mention it was 90-some degrees with 9,000% humidity?) And disheartened, I called KCPL, who told me it did sound like that could be the problem, and they'd send someone out... though they were still working the storms, so it might be tomorrow, but they'd try to get out there as soon as possible.
There was some skepticism on our part about this - after all, we had buried power lines, how could the storm have knocked something loose?
We ran an extention cord to the fish tank, borrowed some coolers (interestingly enough, when I went to pick up the coolers, my friend was on the phone with another friend, who said this exact think happened to them, that the buried power lines had eroded) and bought some ice to save our food, and prepared for a sticky, miserable night.
At 9:30 the doorbell rang.
At just after 10:00, we had our power back.
Turns out the electrician was right. One of the lines coming from the box to our house was bad. They did a temporary (above-ground) fix, and should be out in the next few weeks to replace the buried line.
On the up side, we did take the time to clean the 'fridge and freezer before putting everything back in. And we got it fixed for free on a Sunday night. You really can't beat that.
~ ~ ~ wayback noises ~ ~ ~
It all started the previous night, when I got home from a night out with the girls. As my husband and I were standing around the kitchen, talking, when the lights dimmed. We both kinda shrugged it off, but it happened again. And then the lights went out. Well, some of them did.
Electrical outages are a part of life, and I knew a lot of people were without power after the two big storms we had. I probably would have shrugged it off as the power company doing repairs (if they were going to have to cut power, 2:30 in the morning would seem a good time to do it, as most people wouldn't even notice) if it wasn't for the fact that part of our house still had power. Well, you say all knowing-like, it was obviously a tripped breaker.
Yes, yes, we thought of that. But none of the circuits were tripped. {cue spooky music}. Then the power came back on. Sort of. It was dim, kind of a half-power.
Nervous, we went to bed, though it was a fitful night. When I got up the next... I'll be honest, it was afternoon, I tried to use the microwave, and again, it was running on partial power. It just didn't have enough juice. And while the clock on the stove was on, none of the burners would turn on.
We decided, despite it being a Sunday, to call an electrician. Yes, we'd pay through the nose, but it was better than a short burning the house down. {{{Knock on wood}}} So I called the people who'd done our basement, despite lingering concerns that might be the problem (the basement was part of what wasn't working).
He said he'd be out at 4. At 2, we lost what lingering power we had to the A/C, the 'fridge, the living room, the pool table room, the washer and dryer, the lights in the kitchen (though not the one set of outlets along the north side), the outdoor lights and power to most of the basement (which hosed us for cable and internet, though he did get the cable working upstairs)... that's all we noticed, though if you turned on the garage lights it would flip a breaker, interestingly enough.
At 5 I called him and left a message. At 6 I called him and left a message. At 7 I called him and told him he had 30 minutes to call me back and/or show up, or I was calling someone else. At 7:30 I called several numbers out of the phone book, running into a lot of answering machines and no longer in service numbers. I finally got ahold of an electrician who listened to my story (same one I'd told the first gy) and said "Sounds like a problem with the power coming in to the house. You should call KCPL first, but if that's not it, call me back".
So, cranky (did I mention it was 90-some degrees with 9,000% humidity?) And disheartened, I called KCPL, who told me it did sound like that could be the problem, and they'd send someone out... though they were still working the storms, so it might be tomorrow, but they'd try to get out there as soon as possible.
There was some skepticism on our part about this - after all, we had buried power lines, how could the storm have knocked something loose?
We ran an extention cord to the fish tank, borrowed some coolers (interestingly enough, when I went to pick up the coolers, my friend was on the phone with another friend, who said this exact think happened to them, that the buried power lines had eroded) and bought some ice to save our food, and prepared for a sticky, miserable night.
At 9:30 the doorbell rang.
At just after 10:00, we had our power back.
Turns out the electrician was right. One of the lines coming from the box to our house was bad. They did a temporary (above-ground) fix, and should be out in the next few weeks to replace the buried line.
On the up side, we did take the time to clean the 'fridge and freezer before putting everything back in. And we got it fixed for free on a Sunday night. You really can't beat that.
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