Upon moving to Woodinville, we had both heard stories about the power going out for LONG periods of time. Normally when the power goes out, it is caused by a tree and since there are lots of big trees around, it usually takes some time to restore the power. We had been lucky thus far because we hadn't had to endure really any long outage...until yesterday.
Electricity went off around 11:15am. We had left the house around 10:45am to go get a late breakfast or early lunch and when we arrived to downtown Woodinville, it was DARK. All of the power was out. We told ourselves that we were pretty lucky that ours was still on, so we headed home. On our way home though, we came to the conclusion that our power was out now too. And sure enough, when we got home, it was. We thought it would be no big deal based on past experience.
With the electricity out, we didn't know when it would come back on and we were worried about the sump pump – because of course it was raining and with no electricity, you know what that means – water in the crawlspace. After a few hours of playing board games…Kristina was in heaven - she loves board games -- Jared decided that he should get the generator out. We bought a new generator over a year ago, but we haven’t gotten it installed into the electrical panel yet – you know how that goes, everything else seems to take precedence. Jared put oil and gas in it, and it started right up. Then he put up the canopy we bought for it (out on the deck), wheeled the generator up there and at least got the sump pump going. The generator is fairly powerful, so the only problem with running it was noise. We also plugged in our frigs for a while to make sure they stayed cool.
Thank goodness for the GAS fireplace and GAS hot water heater. We went to bed around 10pm last night, and then at 4:15am (we hadn't set the clocks back yet) all of the electricity came back on and the septic pump alarm and sump pump alarms were going off – telling us that they needed to pump. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice that the electricity came back on, but alarms going off all over the place was not a good way to wake up. So, we attended to all of that and went back to sleep for another 4 hours or so. Clocks have been set back and we now seem to be getting back to normal. Only bad thing is that we have everything piled into today to get done (cleaning, yardwork, errands, etc...).
By the way, power was out to more than 125K people – hardest hit was northern King County. The winds were crazy – more than 60mph at times – they even shut the 520 bridge between Seattle and the Eastside due to high winds and high waves for TWO HOURS. All of Woody was without power, Duvall, Redmond, Bothell, some of Kirkland…it was fairly widespread. This morning when we got up, the news said that more than 13K people still had no power. Yuk!
With the electricity out, we didn't know when it would come back on and we were worried about the sump pump – because of course it was raining and with no electricity, you know what that means – water in the crawlspace. After a few hours of playing board games…Kristina was in heaven - she loves board games -- Jared decided that he should get the generator out. We bought a new generator over a year ago, but we haven’t gotten it installed into the electrical panel yet – you know how that goes, everything else seems to take precedence. Jared put oil and gas in it, and it started right up. Then he put up the canopy we bought for it (out on the deck), wheeled the generator up there and at least got the sump pump going. The generator is fairly powerful, so the only problem with running it was noise. We also plugged in our frigs for a while to make sure they stayed cool.
Thank goodness for the GAS fireplace and GAS hot water heater. We went to bed around 10pm last night, and then at 4:15am (we hadn't set the clocks back yet) all of the electricity came back on and the septic pump alarm and sump pump alarms were going off – telling us that they needed to pump. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice that the electricity came back on, but alarms going off all over the place was not a good way to wake up. So, we attended to all of that and went back to sleep for another 4 hours or so. Clocks have been set back and we now seem to be getting back to normal. Only bad thing is that we have everything piled into today to get done (cleaning, yardwork, errands, etc...).
By the way, power was out to more than 125K people – hardest hit was northern King County. The winds were crazy – more than 60mph at times – they even shut the 520 bridge between Seattle and the Eastside due to high winds and high waves for TWO HOURS. All of Woody was without power, Duvall, Redmond, Bothell, some of Kirkland…it was fairly widespread. This morning when we got up, the news said that more than 13K people still had no power. Yuk!
