Much of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations is without power as the result of the Snowzilla/Snowmaggedon/Blizzapocalypse of 2013. Including my house.
Pray for our water pipes.
Update 2-10-2013 9 a.m. — They’re still dripping. One of the few times a drip is a good thing.
and 8 p.m. — lights back on.
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Praying for your water pipes, professor!
I hope you all can dig out and recover quickly. Just don’t count on FEMA to help.(Though, I don’t expect you will rely on them anyways!)
Sorry to hear. Hope everything works out, and you get power soon. Stay warm.
May some global warmening fall on your pipes!
Pray and get a generator. I’ll meet you on 495/95 somewhere and lend you my old 3KW generator with a dryer plug. It can run your boiler and fridge. But you’d have to feel safe about wiring it, running your breaker panel, etc. PM me if you’re game.
not sure that would help, sounds to me like city water supply has lost pup pressures.
my old coleman 4k/5k surge really showed its age yesterday so I ordered new replacement yesterday.
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200419025_200419025
not sure that would help, sounds to me like city water supply has lost pump pressures.
Don’t worry Doc, Big Government to the rescue. Oh wait!
Speaking about Big Govt… I wonder how those victims of Hurricane Sandy are making out in this disaster? Does the Federal and State governments plan on making the area’s hit by Hurricane Sandy a National Park or do they plan on helping those citizens rebuild their shattered homes?
I just hope you’ve got something nice to burn in those water pipes.
Leave a trickle of water flowing from all your faucets and the pipes won’t freeze.
Yes. That works for pipes located in exterior, uninsulated walls and outside of temperature controlled zones, including the garage. It has been effective to prevent freezing when the temperature dropped to -5F.
Oh, yeah. That’s Rural Survival Rule #3407. 3407(a) covers permanent structures and 3407(b) covers mobile homes. I have personally tested it down to -30. Heat Tape is your friend, also. Don’t overlayer the tape upon itself. That would be bad! 🙂
There was one time when it didn’t work for us. Back on Christmas, 1969, we left the water running in the tub and then spent the day at my mother’s. When we returned later that evening, we discovered the drain pipe had frozen causing the tub to overflow, flooding our home.
And keep open the cabinet doors where pipes inside are…Good Luck Professor & Prayers go out to all New Englanders effected by this blizzard.
Learned the trickled water and cabinet doors trick from my mother who was from Illinois and had seen her share of wicked winter storms.
Exactly – what you’ve described is SOP for anyone who’s lived through Midwestern winters 😉
The last group is 80.8% – 101.0%. Is that determined by applying the correction factor as is applied to the Democrat vote? Or is that done by the budget experts predicting future revenues?
I was trying to figure out that “101%” myself. That kind of stuff is like fingernails on the blackboard to a math major ~
You have my prayers. As I live in California, I would tease you — but between the earthquakes, wildfires, and taxes, the joke is on me. Stay safe and warm!
according to the infographic RI has areas where 101% of the people are without power… that explains a few things…
Are we praying for Global Warming, or what?
Just askin’
(if it’s ‘for the children’, I’m game.)
If you water pipe freezes, us can always use just a plain old bong. 😆
As crazy as it sounds, the worst city for frozen pipes is probably Houston. When we get unseasonably cold temperatures, such as in 82, 84 and 92, the attics get cold enough to freeze the water pipes up there, and it is not only frozen pipes but everything below in your house you must worry about.
Pray for our water pipes.
Done Deal!
Professor, after 21 hours without power much of South County is back online, thank God!
We endured listening to callers on WPRO AM much of the time because that’s all the radio we could get…No wonder our country is tanking if the citizens on the phone are anything to go by. Jeez…a complete embarrassment.
We are definitely praying for everyone’s pipes here, including your own: single digits and a lot of people living rough tonight.
The word from the radio hosts was that National Grid was working like mad to get Aquidneck Island up and running ASAP, because South County and the East Bay were hardest hit. The company’s official stand at 6 pm was that some of us across the state could be waiting until middle of the week for full service.
Good luck, Professor, and God bless the people out in this weather for the past two days trying to dig us out and get us running again.
Massachusetts must be another planet. I read a complaint about High Schools state swim meet cancelled. Twitter recruited several not so smart Olympians to sign the petition.
That the kids had trained for this & for those not good enough to swim in summer league – this could be the end of their career ( such as it was).
It is all about them & not this pipes stuff.
Next gen not looking so good.
I keep all sorts of power and heat sources available. Two generators, several electric heaters and 3 kerosene heaters. My husband used to think I was crazy and then two years ago we had a natural gas outage that lasted nearly a week with overnight temperatures dropping to -20’s. We got by with a combination of electric and kerosene heaters. We stayed nice and warm, no frozen pipes and a small bump in the electric bill.
Sandog – could you explain to me the natural gas . Where are you approx & how is it set up. ?
I just very rarely hear about this in the states – whereas it is very common elsewhere .
I admit I do not understand the stuff about heating oil that I read about. Thanks in advance.
I’m in northern New Mexico. The Natural Gas for this area comes into the state from Texas (even though we’re in the top five of natural gas producing states). Rolling blackouts in Texas shut down the compressor stations and only a limited amount of natural gas made it into the state. In order to keep the entire system from crashing, they cut off service just north of Santa Fe. From a logistical standpoint, it was the easiest path since that line only serves about 40,000 customers. Unfortunately, they cut off gas to mountain areas that have the coldest temperatures in the state in the midst of record breaking cold weather.
Thanks. That sounds familiar.
You may be happy to know that I have included NM in my projected New Confederacy Nation under Prez Ted Cruz.
I will by giving you all natural gas of course.
Sorry to hear about this Professor. 🙁
Been there, done that …many times.
Worst time in recent memory was the great Massachusetts Ice Storm of December, 2008.
Huddled for days wrapped in blankets with no power, no phone, no heat and worst of all, no cable, lol.
Had to resort to a battery powered radio to find out what was going on.
After moving to the Phoenix area in early 2011, we got a generator. Lord willing it will never have to be used.
Hope your power is restored with all due expedience.
I remember the ice storm well. Had four days in the dark in central Mass, but we were lucky. We got four more days off the grid in 2011. It’s a joy to live in this state that loves trees more than electricity. My wife says “Earth Hour? I’ve done mine, and yours.”
I just got a bigger generator and was half hoping that the power would go out. Not this time. Can’t have everything.
Been there, done that, not fun. And in my case it was summer, so four days without power didn’t mean we’d freeze to death in the dark.
Hope it comes back on soon, Prof.
what I always hated the short time I lived in a place with municipal water.
out here I have own well/septic so fire up a gen and good to go.
was 515 am and 5 deg or so (with a -20 wind chill) when I lost power here yesterday. by 530 I was running gen and was on it for about 6-7 hours.
Hope the pipes and everything else are okay!
If it’s any consolation, it felt a tad bit uncomfortably warm as I jogged on the beach yesterday.
Ha! I’ll bet your conscience tingled like Hussein’s when he’s watching football!
National Grid’s outage map has more detail than the Providence Journal’s.
Good luck.
What a bunch of whiners… This storm paled in comparison to the Blizzard of ’78.
With that said, being without a generator is just plain nutz!
I always sat in comfort during numerous blackouts but the political situation along with the lack of economic opportunity finally made me vote with my feet in 1990.
Now I watch the chaos safely from Austin, TX…