melev

Last night some storms blew through Fort Worth, and it rained. We had some hail, but nothing exciting. Around 4 a.m., the power went out. All my UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) chirped and beeped and bugged me, but I figured it would come on again soon. I tried to sleep through it, but then I heard the 215g slurping as it doesn't have anti-siphon holes, and the frag tank drained down about a third as well.

Rolling out of bed, I closed the ball valves to the pumps and flipped off the switches to both Darts as well as to the skimmer since the sump was so full -- if the power resumed, the skimmer would surely overflow from the increased water depth. Using some tubing and a smaller bucket, I siphoned off some water and refilled both tanks to where they were full, checked the Vortech pumps which were still spinning on battery back up, and went back to bed.

As if. I couldn't sleep not knowing when the power might resume. I had the ceiling fan switched on, so looking up would quickly tell me if I had electricity again. It checked my iphone since the alarm clock was dead, and it was 6 am. I called the power company and the recording said power would be restored by noon. I got up and headed into the garage to hook up the generator. That way circulation was assured for the entire system. Once that was done, I ran a cord to the living room to run the Tv for any news, and stayed up until 10 a.m. Tired, I tried to get a little sleep, and awoke at 12:30 p.m. to see the ceiling fan still stationary. Ugh.

I called the power company, and the recording said I'd have power by 7 p.m. I called Frank to ask if he could possibly pick up and bring me more gasoline for the generator, since mine were empty. He found a few spare minutes a few hours later and brought mine filled up, so I could keep the generator topped off.

Calling the power company again for another status update, the voice said power will be on by 2 a.m.

My tank sitter tells me he knows a guy that works for the power restoration crew, and that guy said I won't have power until tomorrow night. Seriously?

For the time being, I have the tank running without the lights on, the fridge plugged in to keep the food from spoiling / melting, and ran a cord to my TV and computer. The house is all electric, so I don't have any way to run the A/C, but the house is current 75F and the tank is 79.3F. We had a mild day fortunately, unlike all the 90+F days we've lived through for the past couple of weeks. I'm fighting an headache, which is probably related to the current state of affairs.