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Here in rural Kansas, we used to be the end of the line. Just had a single wire coming up the road and it stopped at our house. Our power would go off every other day but it was just briefly. Fast forward and we now have 3 lines on huge poles going past our house and our power rarely goes out. There was a period of time a few years ago when it would go out intermittently and it turned out our main breaker was going out. This eventually killed some of our appliances. We assumed it was a problem with the rural electric. Our longest outage in 2008 was 5 days due to an ice storm. Our water is very reliable although they seem to have a lot of leaks they can't find. They are always trying to isolate sections to find leaks.
Thanks for all the responses! Been too busy to spend time on the net.
I'll give everyone positives for replying, have to read all these tomorrow or as soon as I get a chance!
Rural-ish Hawaii Island. Power was out yesterday for about forty five minutes, haven't a clue why and the coconut wireless hasn't filled me in yet. Maybe I'll find out tomorrow since I'll be in town for awhile and maybe someone will tell me about it.
Usually when it goes out it's weather related, not sure why yesterday, though. Was a lovely day, no big winds, no hurricanes, no reason that I could tell.
We've not ever had an issues with the water, that's County water and the reservoir is uphill so even if the power goes off, I'd expect we'd have a day or two of water.
We live very rural ; closest neighbor is 1/2 mile down my mountain, dw is 1/2 mile up with power wires running with it. I have had a generator for 6 years (just in case) and haven’t put oil/gas in it yet, always afraid of a tree taking down my lines. We get the 5 second blip every now and again, but that’s it.
When be were looking at our house, it was in a drought, water was supplied by a spring, the cistern went dry, no water to the house, the sellers didn’t want to lose us so they sprung for a well to the tune of 6k dollars.
I live in a semi-rural area outside a small town in Western Pennsylvania. I have a rural electric coop. We lose power at least 10 times a year. The last time was last Saturday morning for about 90 minutes. One year we lost power at the beginning of the Super Bowl. It came back on with about a minute to left in the game. The longest outages have been about 3 and a half hours. It seems even a hint of a storm means I will be resetting clocks.
Rural Wyomingite here. I can't think of a time that the power has been down for more than 30 minutes since we moved here 2 1/2 years ago. Despite giant snow storms and heavy winds, our power stays on.
Our water has gone off for a few hours or so at a time, but that was planned because they were replacing the water pipes in our town.
Overall I think we had more power outages back when we lived in California.
Rural Wyomingite here. I can't think of a time that the power has been down for more than 30 minutes since we moved here 2 1/2 years ago. Despite giant snow storms and heavy winds, our power stays on.
Our water has gone off for a few hours or so at a time, but that was planned because they were replacing the water pipes in our town.
Overall I think we had more power outages back when we lived in California.
We had more power outages when we lived in a small city, and also when we lived near the end of the line in a sorta rural area. What we get here is pretty darned good.
I live in a rural area in the US. When there is a major windstorm or ice storm, the power will go out and stay out anywhere from 1-5 days, along with internet. Being rural, our power stays out longest; people in town rarely go without power for an entire day, usually just hours.
Other than storms, the power only goes out if someone runs into a power pole or something, and that only takes hours to repair, not days.
The only time we've lost water was when our own water line broke and took a few days to repair.
Does it go out once a year? once a month? What?
Has your water ever been unavailable? If so what was the cause? natural disaster or ?
I have a friend who lives in a rural area in Central America and his lights go out every month at least for a minute or two - maybe a couple times a year for an hour or more, and his water has been cut off several times in the last 2 years due to infrastructure problems.
I have no idea why but he says the electric co. will often turn his electricity on and off very quickly, like once every few seconds, up to 20 times in a row. Sounds crazy to me!
So I was talking to him and I said "Hmmm. I wonder if small towns in the USA or people who live outside bigger towns, in the country have this problem? I'll ask on the forum."
Just curious!
My guess is, here in the USA we don't have these kinds of problems to the degree he does. But I could be wrong!
If you could give the general area you live in (near what city or what state or both) that would be interesting to know as well.
I lived in California most of my life and my water never once was cut off, and my electricity went out maybe once per year or less. NEVER went on-off-on-off like my friend says his does!
In the mountains of Eastern CA, we get snow. Lots some years. The power can go out as little as once or twice a year or as much as 14 days (three days at a time) as was the case in the winter 2010. We are fine with it since we have a generator and wood heat. In the winter when the power goes out we might empty the fridge/freezer and put stuff outside on the back deck.
We never lose water, gravity is a good thing. Cell service has fuel cell backup, good for over a week
Am on a well so if power goes out, so does water. I think about putting in a hand pump but have not done that.
Usually we can go more than a year without any power outages. About a week ago, had the power go out on Sunday evening from 5 to about 8 pm. Most common outages are short, scheduled outages for maintenance, the REA sends us a postcard letting us know when these will be. They are typically less than an hour in duration.
In 27 years I have not experienced any power outages that went over a few hours. None went even 12 hours if memory serves.
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