How to Minimize Storm Damage to Your Home and Electronics when Power Fails

Here in the Northeast springtime typically brings us freakishly variable whether. The weather can change three or four times in one day which is partly due to the large source of atmospheric moisture called Lake Erie.

What we see right now in the beginning of April is often mixed rain, snow, sleet, and occasional warm and sunny days. For example recently we had a period of three days in the fifty degree range, and then last night we received six inches of snow that is still melting off of my cars and driveway.

You could tell that I had not given up on seeing more wintry weather at all because my plow is still my jeep, but I had hoped to be done with snow and plowing driveways, at least for this year. The unexpected surprise with a lot of storms that come our way in the spring can be the fierceness with which these storms arrive, with strong winds which tend to disrupt the electrical power supply into our homes.

This can be untimely and seriously inconvenient, especially if you are doing important projects such as writing content for "Yahoo! AC" This is very frustrating when your computer goes down or your Internet is knocked off line, since you may have a deadline that is hard to meet when you have to go to the library and submit your articles on a public computer.

Having a standby generator as a backup is a great idea but at $3.50 for a gallon of gas, it is often more cost effective to just wait for the power company to get things back together. Once you have determined that the power is definitely off or it is flickering frequently it is important that you disable sensitive electronic devices especially flat screen televisions, computers, and electronics that have digital displays like DVD players, as these can be damaged by power flickering on and off more easily than when the just power goes off.

Other things that that can be destroyed include major appliances such as refrigerators and freezers as the compressor is sensitive to over and under voltages, plus the flickering on and off can damage the compressor and this is an expensive failure. What I find is the easiest trick is to unplug each device or turn off the breaker to the specific circuit with sensitive equipment on it.

There have been times when our power flickered for more than an hour and as a result of one such event a motor on my furnace was destroyed. I did not realize it was turning on and off as the thermostat was calling for heat at the time. A relatively inexpensive method of protection is called a UPS or "uninterruptible power supply".

These can be installed on your most sensitive equipment like your computer, but do not forget to include your modem and router equipment basically anything that is on your network including printers. So when you size a UPS system you must make sure it is large enough in terms of total wattage output to support all of your sensitive equipment.

Also you must consider where to locate this device, ideally it will be placed centrally such that you can connect all that you need without running wires all over the house like I have done in the past. Even if you choose to not spend money on a UPS it is wise to disconnect and unplug or throw the breaker off for any device that is fragile.

Now the network of information available for locating power outages used to be done by calling all your friends or taking a ride down the road looking for lights that are on in various houses. If it is an area wide outage then it may not be easy for you to know that the power has come back on if you turn off your breakers, so instead of turning off the main breaker I try to leave one circuit on with just a lamp plugged into it that I know works so when power does come back I can tell.

This way I know when to turn off the generator in switch back all my circuits to normal operation. The power company here in northeast Ohio does offer of service where you can call in and report the outage and at the time of making that report you can request a few things,number one being they will call you to verify that the power has returned and they will also scheduled a wakeup call for you in the morning to make sure you do not miss work due to the clocks being reset.

On that note clocks that take a battery for backup need to be checked at least as frequently as you check your smoke detectors every six months is what we do here this way the alarm clock does not need completely reprogrammed every time the power fails. The other reason to do with this way is that according to local electricity supplier, during power failures there is typically a higher incidence of house fires having a working smoke detector in this event can help save you. This is usually from people burning candles and other combustible heating sources, and occasionally from the portable generators we use in an emergency.

It is almost comical to find yourself living without power and seeing how many things you take for granted in a given day. Many years ago we had an outage that lasted seven days and we lost food in freezers and refrigerators before we got a generator. The creative plans we came up with to do things like showering or doing laundry were really quite amazing.

To this day I remember the incredible feeling of taking a hot shower after living rough for a few days until we could get a new generator. So now many northeastern people watch the weather incessantly and many have become amateur meteorologists as a result. It has come to the point where one of the most frequent greetings we hear is "how about this weather".

To recap if your power flickers it could damage equipment so you should unplug and or turn off breakers to that equipment quickly. Having power go off is a great inconvenience in our modern world where we rely so heavily on electricity in our day to day operations. Protecting your electrical equipment when the power company is having troubles is likely your own responsibility and if you take it seriously you can minimize the risk of having any damaged equipment due to a power failure.

Thank you for reading my articles here on Yahoo! Associated Content.

Sources:
Owning and repairing homes for over thirty years
www.alleghenypower.com/CSC/Services/PowerOutages.asp