How many people go camping when the power goes out.

[Yota Bill]

since I bought my house, power has only gone out maybe 3 times, and never for more then a couple minutes. I'm not really concerned with it.

[jss06]

I have a weber natural gas grill on my patio. I have cooked entire meals on it.

[Woodbutcher]

Two years ago I did a complete gutting of our kitchen. Removed walls all new electric and plumbing , drywall etc. So I set up a kitchen on our screened in porch. For three months I cooked on a Weber grill and used my Coleman camp stove. Even did a few Dutch Oven meals with coals. It was really quite fun. But my neighbors must have thought something was wrong. But no one asked so I did not say why I was out there everyday.


So not power related but the same effect.

[stumphugger]

I lived in the third world of California for a few years. Power going off isn't a problem, except it was during a heat wave.

Now I live in a place where the powerlines are maintained better. Power outages usually happen during nasty weather in the winter. Not a problem.
I heat the house with wood, so there is heat and one can cook a little bit on top of the woodstove. For real cooking, it is the Coleman white gas stove out on the covered porch. I can make espresso with my camping espresso maker.

In CA, I would make latte's for the neighbors, while they hooked up my refrigerator to their generator to keep the fridge cool. I think our outage was about 3 days. We had water, if we were careful and there was a place where the water was heated by gas so we could shower. The power company tended to cut our power off in the Summer when it was hot. That was another story. The mosquitoes were bad so sleeping outside had to be done in a tent, which was not cool. We'd go down and soak in the river to cool off.

I think the longest it has been off here was 12 hours, since my return from exile. That was not a problem.

[Dan & Julie CO]

Have had to use the gas grill last year due to power failure
Maybe next time I'll try my coleman stuff thanks for the idea

[Dale M.]

If one lives in mountain country with snow and storms bringing trees down on power lines, camping out at home is not unusual task....

250 gallon propane tank
1 Propane gas kitchen range (plumbed to tank above).
2- 5 gallon propane tanks.
Half dozen #1 pound propane bottle.
Weber gas grill plumbed to large tank...
1- 2 burner propane camp stove.
1-1 burner "fuel" gas stove.
2 Propane lanterns.
1-fuel gas lantern.
1-can "fuel" gas & funnel....

NO I didn't buy these to specifically be prepared to "camp" at home.... Most were accumulated over the years for camping or through garage sales or salvaged from "somewhere" along the way.... 250 gallon tank came with house and its gas range and the Weber grill....

Dale

[BPFox]

No help here, I have a full house generator. On a side note, it is kind of fun to have the only house on the block that is lit up. We had a four day outage once and all the neighbors headed to hotels. It was kind of like living in a Twilight Zone show. Just a little creepy, just one lone house lit up in a sea of darkness. Well at least there wasn't anyone around to complain about the generator noise.

[doug hodder]

I'm with Dale....I live up in the woods....you better be prepared, firewood, extra fuel, some basic camping supplies, a sense of humor. I camp in the garage quite often....not because I have to, just because. I have a propane heater/stove in the house. No power....I've got a small gennie.

Most times if I'm out of power, I've got a lot of snow, so keeping eats cold is no problem. I can really light up the house with all the lanterns and cook for an army if I need to, as I have at least 36 working burners.

I go to the garage, build a fire in the wood stove, open the front for my campfire effect, plop in my shop chair....and take my pick of trailers to sleep in. I dig it! Doug

[jandmz]

A few years ago, when Hurricane Ike hit Ohio, the power was out at our house for nine days. At the time, we had a popup camper parked in the back yard. We popped it up and ran the refrigerator on propane. The cooking was done on our propane grill on the patio. We lit the family room with a Coleman propane lantern on the hearth, and used flashlights through the rest of the house.

Fortunately, it was September, and the weather was warm enough that we didn't need to heat the house. It is also fortunate that we have a gas water heater, so showers and dishes were not a problem.

It was an adventure, and a bit inconvenient, but thanks to our camping equipment, not the disaster that some of our neighbors thought it was.

[robertaw]

We've only been without power for an extended period once. It was in the early 90's during an ice storm like I've never seen before or since. We went for four or five days without power and five kids under 10.

I was afraid to use any camping appliances in the house for fear of killing us all. We did set up the tent in the living room, if that counts. Me and the kids all slept in there - hubby was being a party pooper - and played camping. I spent most of the time reading to the kids, including the entire "Little House" series. The older ones could read for themselves but it was more fun that way.

Thankfully we lived in the city at the time so were not on a well. It would have been a bad scene without water.

[NathanL]

No. Whole house generator.

Let's see in the past 20 years...

1992 - Hurricane Andrew - no power for 21 days.
1997 - Freak striaghtline wind storm - no power for 9 days.
2005 - Hurricane Katrina - no power for 14 days.

Just a fact of life down here. Other than those listed there's probably been 10+ times where I had no power for at least 1-3 days.

I have a 500 gallon tank of diesel here at the house for the truck, tractor and other equipment that I can feed the generator and I've never ran out. Luckily the nearest gas station is generator powered because they also run the water pump to fill the water tower adjacent to it as well so 99.99% of the time it has power to pump diesel as well if I get low during an outage. Extended outages past 3-5 days I just call and have it delivered.

I also work at home 75% of the time so no power = no work/money.

[High Desert]

I collect Coleman gas appliances. I live for power outages


I do live in an area that can have outages of a day or more, usually in the winter. We tend to enjoy the time whenever it happens, nice change of pace.

[Shadow Catcher]

We have in the past had up to three day outages and used the 60+ YO Preway stove and Coleman lantern But in mid winter it gets COLD so I bought a generator and did the right thing and installed a new main panel to switch to the generator. Since buying the generator we have not had any power outages
The reason in large part is that the local power company trimmed trees so that there were no branches over hanging power lines. This means there are now a bunch of miserable looking trees, but few power outages.