1 hour after it went out I went for a walk on the hill to check on the dams, roads and developments. All dams are performing beautifully. The contested road seem worse than ever and we have 2 new spring developments (1 spring, 2 troughs) The lessee need these to comply with his government money program. | |
The phone wasn't charging. The inverter was reading "protect" instead of "power". I checked all the connections. Checked the water level in the batteries and found 1 of the 4 was dry, filled it. Still says "protect". I disconnected the one that had gone dry. I had thought that that battery had been disconnected for a long time. It wasn't. Still says "protect". The batteries still said they were fully charged. Then I noticed that the inverters Ground cable was missing, gone, not fallen off, gone. So I hooked up a new ground cable. Still said "protect" and would not power anything.
At this point I remembered the 12volt dc (cigarette lighter) power system installed on the bus during it's maiden voyage to Burning Man. I found and attached the accessory to that power outlet and plugged in the car charger inverter. It didn't work. Checked the wiring to the power outlet. Nothing obviously wrong.
The electric had been out for over 7 hours at this point darkness was coming and I was without communication to the outside world. I ATV'd the mile to the neighbors. They'd been told it would be back on at 2, then 4:30... it was 5:30.
I decided I'd better use the rest of my daylight to hook up the propane gas camp stove on the bus so I could cook some food and if it was still out in the morning I could start cooking everything that would be going bad in the fridge and freezer. The propane tank to stove connecter would not attach properly to the stove. Each time I turned on the gas, it spewed out through the connection. I'd had this problem a few times before but after a couple times of reconnecting I had been able to get the connectors tight and safe. Not today. It was starting to get too dark to see the connecters even with the solar shed light (which did work) so I pulled out the flashlight that I had found earlier while looking for ground wire for the inverter. It had worked when I found it but that must been the last of the battery life. It wasn't working now. I quickly raided my stash of batteries; there were exactly the 4 AAA's that I needed in the bag. I popped them in. They didn't work. After about a half hour of connecting and reconnecting the hose to the stove; I gave up.
Having totally failed as a prepper with a electric outage, I sat in the powerless, foodless bug out bus and contemplated what there was in the closet that I could open with a can opener and eat as is... As I started back into the dark house with a candle, the lights came on.