We lost power (all electric home) Monday morning at 2:30 and it came back on yesterday (Thursday) at around noon.
Overnight temps dropped to as low as 5 degrees one night, ten another and 12 another, and stayed below freezing in the daytime.
I had around 50 oak splits in the shed plus around 20 bags of lump and briquette charcoals along with half a dozen bags of oak and other hardwood chunks and 6 bags of pellets.
We burned too much wood the first night, not thinking how isolated we were about to become as there were NO businesses open in South Austin, none.
No gasoline, no food, fast or grocery, no firewood, no nothing plus iced over roads with no traffic to wear the ice down to make it more passable.
The wife was terrified of carbon monoxide from the charcoal being burned in the fireplace but as the wood supply shrank I was able to start burning some along with cooking pellets.
Ended up burning toilet paper and paper towels and cardboard boxes along with charcoal and pellets to try to keep the house warm enough to prevent burst pipes attached to the water heater in the attic. (we also ran the faucets several times an hour).
The pipes did not burst but we know of 4 houses that flooded from burst pipes and those were our close neighbors, don't know about the rest of the street yet.
Yesterday we cleared out three freezers containing our ruined Covid frozen meat (and leftovers) stash.
All in all pretty scary, even with multiple layers of clothes on, it was too dang cold.
Overnight temps dropped to as low as 5 degrees one night, ten another and 12 another, and stayed below freezing in the daytime.
I had around 50 oak splits in the shed plus around 20 bags of lump and briquette charcoals along with half a dozen bags of oak and other hardwood chunks and 6 bags of pellets.
We burned too much wood the first night, not thinking how isolated we were about to become as there were NO businesses open in South Austin, none.
No gasoline, no food, fast or grocery, no firewood, no nothing plus iced over roads with no traffic to wear the ice down to make it more passable.
The wife was terrified of carbon monoxide from the charcoal being burned in the fireplace but as the wood supply shrank I was able to start burning some along with cooking pellets.
Ended up burning toilet paper and paper towels and cardboard boxes along with charcoal and pellets to try to keep the house warm enough to prevent burst pipes attached to the water heater in the attic. (we also ran the faucets several times an hour).
The pipes did not burst but we know of 4 houses that flooded from burst pipes and those were our close neighbors, don't know about the rest of the street yet.
Yesterday we cleared out three freezers containing our ruined Covid frozen meat (and leftovers) stash.
All in all pretty scary, even with multiple layers of clothes on, it was too dang cold.