Jer Steph

Jer Steph wrote:I don't have anything to add here. You've gotten great responses. I'm south of Houston and we lost power for about 18 hours and had our main water pipe into the house freeze and burst. We had just bought our house 2 weeks before, the freeze. So we overlooked the main water line into the house when preparing for the freeze because we didnt know the house well enough yet. We were quite fortunate though compared to our neighbors. The line burst outside of the house and we had some random PVC pipe lying around from the previous owners. We had a 3500 Predator generator and electric heaters to keep us warm and propane camping stoves to boil water and cook once we fixed the main water line. The previous owners had also left a ton of firewood. We had a firepit that we didnt need to use. So gave the firewood to any neighbors who had fireplaces. We have a gas furnace, but it was useless without electricity.  How dumb!

In the future, I'd prefer to be 3 fault tolerant or more next time. Definitely going to incorporate some of the suggestions mentioned here. Thanks all!

Forgot to add that we used the same generator to run our fridge after we lost power two weeks ago during Hurricane Nicholas. That generator has been one of the best purchase decisions we've ever made! Perhaps choosing to live in Texas was the worst decision though!

I don't have anything to add here. You've gotten great responses. I'm south of Houston and we lost power for about 18 hours and had our main water pipe into the house freeze and burst. We had just bought our house 2 weeks before, the freeze. So we overlooked the main water line into the house when preparing for the freeze because we didnt know the house well enough yet. We were quite fortunate though compared to our neighbors. The line burst outside of the house and we had some random PVC pipe lying around from the previous owners. We had a 3500 Predator generator and electric heaters to keep us warm and propane camping stoves to boil water and cook once we fixed the main water line. The previous owners had also left a ton of firewood. We had a firepit that we didnt need to use. So gave the firewood to any neighbors who had fireplaces. We have a gas furnace, but it was useless without electricity.  How dumb!

In the future, I'd prefer to be 3 fault tolerant or more next time. Definitely going to incorporate some of the suggestions mentioned here. Thanks all!

Loved reading this, George! In fact, I joined the forum just to say this. It's so awesome how much you are giving to your community! Thanks for sharing!