Episode #7 Power Lost At Our Country Cottage

  Nice day to visit Our Country Cottage and perhaps clear the driveway. I was looking forward to riding the tractor in the sun esp after new fallen snow. Everything just looks so good. I noticed as I passed the solar panels that they were three quarters covered with snow, but I figured the sun would take care of it for me. As I pulled up I opened the garage with the remote and all was good to go. My first indication that something was different was when I opened the door and found about a ½ inch of frost on the hardware (knob etc) and the edge of the door. I then noticed that the thermometer was reading -10 in the mudroom. I have never seen it that low. I rushed in to see what the power system remote had to say. Batteries were at 30% and red lights were flashing all over the place. I noticed that the living room was also -10 degrees C. A horrible thought crossed my mind as I rushed to the downstairs bathroom only to find 2 quarter inch cracks in the toilet tank and ice in the bowel. It had frozen solid. The upstairs toilet had one big crack and a narrow crack….. I went into the closet to get my long johns… it was cold.. the light didn’t work and I checked in the bathroom and the lights didn’t work there either and I couldn’t find my long johns.. Sometime around here I built a fire….. I can’t really remember. I was in some form of altered state of mind, controlled panic etc. Power…. I need power. I put on as many layers as possible including fleece etc and headed outside. It was in the-20s but sunny. The generator showed an error that had shut it down and kicked it out of auto. I reset it and hit the run button. It cranked very slowly and stopped. Boost it with my vehicle but wait clear the snow off of the panels.. I can get power from there for sure. So off I went with my roof rake and scrapped all the snow from the panels. OK done. Now to see what that did for the power system . OK getting more charging and the power was back on in the cottage.. but the boiler was on trying to heat the place up and taking all the power and then some.. Turn the boiler off. I spent the next 15 to 20 minutes trying to find my booster cables and only after tearing the back of my vehicle apart to remember they were on the workbench in the garage. Opened the hood to see where the battery was so I could position it right and went to the generator. I would have to remove a panel and it was very cold so I gave the run button another try and it cranked over quickly and fired up. I guess with the power back on in the cottage it was able to heat up the block heater and carb pre-heater and battery warmer. Yes it has all those things powered by the same thing it is supposed to back up. I know, I know… The generator is now running and I now have time to think what are the consequences of the cottage freezing up and what would happen when it thaws out. I called my plumber. He suggested that I turn the valve off after the pressure tank so that any residual pressure would not dump water out of any breaks. I always turn the well pump off for that reason and this time I also flipped the breaker to make sure. He remembered the type of toilets we had and told me that the tanks can be replaced separately. The PEX piping is normally very good in freezing conditions and should be OK. Also the sink traps should be OK. His next concern was the shower tap sets. The casting can crack but lately the cartridges give up first. The utility room is below ground and did not get down to freezing temperatures. And in fact my temp logging device showed it got down to +2 C. Also the battery room got down to +5 C. Not knowing the state of things I told him I probably won’t do anything till the warmer weather. Yes I was thinking of taking Our Country Cottage off line, sort of speak, till spring. At this time I was also texting with my generator tech and trying to follow his suggestions as well. When your cottage is way in the sticks service is not just round the corner. In most cases it takes a commitment of a complete day or more and can be very costly. The next thought in my head was that there are these to toilet tank sized ice cubes on the back of the toilets that will melt at some point, putting a fair amount of water on the floor. There was no easy way to contain them so I destroyed the downstairs toilet tank with the blunt end on a pipe wrench and put as much of it and the ice in the shower to melt as I could. The driveway still needed to be cleared so I decided to do that and calm down a bit. It takes about two hours to do a fair job but the sun was shining and I was dressed for the part. There was just enough of a breeze to make sure that I would get covered with snow from the snow thrower. It took my mind off of things and let me have some clarity. When I finished I put down some strategic towels and went back to the city. I can’t remember if the generator was running or not. A couple of notes When I went to light the fire the butane BBQ lighter didn’t want to work cause is was so cold. So I had to nurse some heat into it to get it to work. The wood was also cold and a little harder to light. I also found out that frozen pens don’t like to work either so trying to take notes was challenging. Do you think I could find a pencil? Going over the data logs I found that the system failed on the 6th and I didn’t get there till the 14th. There was a major cold snap at that time but the interior never got below -10 C even though outside temps were -25 to – 30 ies. I have an alert system that is supposed to email if the power goes out. It had worked fine for me in the past and I thought it had let me down this time. But I am not so sure. One of the first things I did was to build another unit as a backup. If one fails the other will work or at least there is a better chance. So within a couple of days I had those two systems up and running. Long story short just a couple of days ago the new one reported power failure but the old one didn’t, at least that is what I thought. Later, I did find the old ones report, in the junk mail. I don’t know why. It is entirely possible that there was an alert but because it was in the junk mail I missed it. As of today the generator has now failed completely and I have been going up daily to build a fire and try to figure stuff out. Anyhow, that is enough for this time. Next podcast I will tell you what happened on day two and what the current status of Our Country Cottage is. For pictures and more info, you can visit our website at “ourcountrycottageanarrative.com” If you have any comments, questions or if you would like to be added to the “Friends of OCCaN” mailing list, you can email me at [e-mail]. Members on the mailing list will get website and podcast updates as soon as I do :). The Our Country Cottage a Narrative podcast is on iTunes , Stitcher and  Google Play so you can subscribe there and get the podcast downloaded automatically when they get released. Till next time have a good one. I am still working on it.