Power out - need assistance

[asylumdown]

Hey folks, anyone awake in Calgary at the moment? The power just went out in my neighbourhood (St. Andrews Heights in the NW) and enmax thinks it will be several hours to get it back up. My power outage plan has been to use my car as a power source as I have a 3-pronged adapter for the cigarette lighter, but in a case of the worst timing in history, the only extension cord I have that's long enough is at my dad's and he's not answering his phone. I need a 3 - pronged 50-100 foot extension cord and am willing to drive anywhere to get it

[asylumdown]

Ok I found two that I could string together. Here's hoping 1 vortech and the pump for my bio pellet reactor is enough to keep everything alive all night.

[SanguinesDream]

Everything safe? That is my greatest fear.

[kien]

I'm awake now! Let me know if you need any help. I have a generator!

[michika]

Let me know if you still need anything.

[Myka]

Yikes. Did it work out ok?

[asylumdown]

Thanks guys! It all worked out ok, other than me being a completely ruined mess today for lack of sleep. My car wasn't able to run the return pump, which would have been optimal, but it was able to run an MP40, MP60, and the pump for the biopellet reactor no problem. I had to manually lift my garage door in the pitch black and do everything with a flashlight (my house is DARK with no power), and I scavenged an extension cord that was part of my ATO system in the basement and daisy chained it with another extension cord and a power bar with a really long cord to get it to reach.

Power was only out for about 3 hours, which in the grand scheme of things probably wouldn't have hurt the tank at all, but when I talked to Enmax they said that at that time of night it would take 2 hours for them to even get a crew to our area, and then depending on what had caused the fault, could take an indeterminate amount of time to fix. He said they usually get it back up within two hours of getting to the site, but when the faults are caused by several days of hot weather and involve underground lines it can take 6 hours or more for them to bypass them. I didn't feel like waiting for three hours and be faced with an emergency recovery situation at 3am if the power didn't come back on until today.

I think I'm still gonna consider a generator though, after 2 hours of running three pumps the adapter in the car was freaking hot and starting to smell like burning plastic. Not sure it would have lasted much longer, and I don't like the idea of needing to run my car in the garage during a power outage.

On another note, having zero flow in my tank for the 40ish minutes it took me to get everything hooked up and running was enough to create the creepiest and grossest bristleworm bonanza on my sand. I'm starting to wonder if it's actually a problem. They ALL came out. I took a video that I'm trying to figure out how to upload to photobucket, it's well and truly gross. My tank's biomass is easily 50% bristleworms.

[kien]

Glad it all worked out! Only 3 hours, lucky!! :-)

And ya, I was too paranoid to run my generator in my garage when my power went out. I left it on my deck out back and ran the cord through my kitchen window.

[asylumdown]

Glad it all worked out! Only 3 hours, lucky!! :-)

And ya, I was too paranoid to run my generator in my garage when my power went out. I left it on my deck out back and ran the cord through my kitchen window.

dude I still have nightmares thinking about what happened to you. The fact that I don't already have a proper generator after reading your story... ugh. I practically deserved that power outage for my own stupidity. I tried to sleep on the couch because my car has an electronic key and won't allow itself to be locked from the outside if the key isn't in it and the car is running, so I basically had my car running unlocked, perfectly accessible to anyone who walked by in the middle of the night. Hence the not getting any sleep until after the power was back on and I had put everything away and locked it all back up. Not something I really want to ever do again.

[MarkoD]

dude I still have nightmares thinking about what happened to you. The fact that I don't already have a proper generator after reading your story... ugh. I practically deserved that power outage for my own stupidity. I tried to sleep on the couch because my car has an electronic key and won't allow itself to be locked from the outside if the key isn't in it and the car is running, so I basically had my car running unlocked, perfectly accessible to anyone who walked by in the middle of the night. Hence the not getting any sleep until after the power was back on and I had put everything away and locked it all back up. Not something I really want to ever do again.

Glad it all worked out.

With your car running you can pull the actual physical key out and manually lock the doors of the car. In case you ever need to

[pinhead]

Our power was out for 12 hours on Thursday night with the thunder and lightning storm that hit the Lower Mainland.

I lost 90% of my livestock in a 5 day power outage in the big windstorm in winter of 2006. The 10% that survived (including fish) had no heaters and no circulation pumps so they can withstand some pretty poor conditions.

After that loss, I have upgraded in tank size twice. All I have invested in is a battery powered air pump. It is one I got at Petsmart that plugs into an outlet and turns on when the power goes out - it costs less than $15. In the 12 hours, the temperature in my 90 gallon only dropped by a few degrees. Oxygenating the water and keeping a little flow going was enough to breeze through the outage with no problems.

[mike31154]

I have two of the battery powered air pumps that sense power is off in my 77. An inexpensive, but effective way to get you through a shorter outage. It's a good idea to have a look at the internals of these battery powered pumps though, I remember reading about one frying up due to a short circuit. While it is powered by a couple of batteries, there is also 120 volts in there for the small sensing relay which switches the pump on when AC power is lost. Mine are ok, but the build quality/soldering under the cover where the relay is can vary. To be expected from an inexpensive item like this.

Another alternative is to simply have a deep cycle 12 volt battery on hand & an inverter. I have an old car battery outside with a small solar panel keeping it charged up. An inverter hooked up to this could keep minimum lighting & a few air pumps/powerheads going for quite a while. In fact, if you have VorTech powerheads, with a small DC adapter you could hook the 12 volt battery directly to the backup power pin on the controller. Heater is another matter, they draw a lot of juice. I'm a bit hesitant to run a car in a garage to be able to use that battery. Last time I experienced an outage of more than 5 hours, I removed the battery from my truck (it's a diesel & has 2). Of course you'd need to re install it & run the vehicle to charge it before it's down too far. Seems we're fortunate here in the interior of BC, very few outages that last any amount of time. In Vernon we're only a few hours away from Revelstoke & the huge dam/power generating station there.

[chef]

Wouldn't an ecotech battery backup do the trick for mp"s? That what I'm relying on.

[mike31154]

Wouldn't an ecotech battery backup do the trick for mp"s? That what I'm relying on.

If you have one, certainly and it's advantage is that like the battery operated backup air pumps, it will automatically take over during an outage, great if you're not around. It will be limited by the size of the battery inside though & you'll only be able to replace it with EcoTech parts, which is fine unless you need to wait for them to be shipped. A larger deep cycle or car battery is much easier to source and can potentially keep the powerheads going much longer. With a little more effort & a second battery, you could hook them up in series to get 24 volts & full power to the VorTech. Downside is you need to be around to do it & of course these batteries will be much larger, plus you'll need to take safety precautions if they're flooded batteries, which most of them are.

When the power goes, you do what you can with what you have.