Reflections - Trickle Threat

Candlelight and Paper Plates

 

 

April first, the weather at Wells Wood turned nasty. Sitting at the secretary desk in the bedroom, I joined a ZOOM meeting for my Pennwriters group. Doris read her essay about driving home the previous Saturday with toppled trees in yards and wind whipping debris across Meadville roads.

While she read, the wind at Wells Wood howled through treetops. Trees bent in agonized angles. The sky blackened. Rain pelted the window beside my desk. Lights blinked. The on-screen images of writers faded.

“Spence, are you connected to the internet?”

“Yeah,” he called from the great room. “Oh, no. It’s off.” He came and leaned over my shoulder. “Leave the meeting and join again.”

I did. It worked—for a minute. Lights and internet went out and stayed out.

Spence patted my back. “Let’s plug in the solar panels.”

He had to be kidding. “The sky is black.” I pointed out the front window. “We won’t get any power.”

“It’s blue in the south.”

Looking over my shoulder through the side bedroom window, I spotted patches of blue between the racing black clouds. Maybe I could rejoin the meeting by solar power. I hustled outside and threw the switch disconnecting the panels from the grid. Electricity could flow into the house, but our panels would no longer send power out. We didn’t want to electrocute any workers repairing the system.

Armed with lights—his phone and my three-inch purse flashlight—we eased down the spiral stairs, being careful not to trip on Ande. Perched on a step halfway down, the cat watched Spence unsnarl two extra long utility extension cords while I held the flashlights aloft.

Reading directions for switching to in-house power, we connected the cords—the first to the freezer which stayed silent, not a good sign. The second Spence looped up the spiral stairs to a power strip. He repeated his unsnarling trick with the modem. “So many wires!” Last, he plugged the plant light, which took very little electricity, into the power strip. The light stayed dark. Clouds had covered the patch of blue.

Getting back to the meeting didn't matter. We could use the wood stove for cooking and heat. Solar panels could eventually run the freezer and refrigerator, charge our phones and laptops, as well as power the internet when it came back in service. But we couldn’t pump any more water into the house from the well without the utility company’s electricity. We would have to conserve water if power didn’t return by dinnertime.

It didn’t.

After a wood stove cooked dinner, Spence moseyed to the sofa for a nap. Our son Charlie shuffled down the hall and plopped onto his bed. I stacked the dishes to harmonious snores. I could postpone washing them until we got power back—surely by morning. In the meantime, the reserves in our tanks needed to be used for cooking, hand washing, teeth brushing, and drinking. Lighting eight-inch red candles, I propped my elbows on the kitchen table and read Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng.

Power didn’t return Sunday morning. I decided to put dishes off again.

Spence had other ideas. “You have to wash the dishes. If you don’t, I will.”

In past blackouts, our water supply for essentials lasted twenty-four hours. We had a twenty-gallon incoming well tank and an eighty-two-gallon pressurized water tank for filtered water. Once we drained those, water trickled, air spit, then nothing came out of the tap. Maybe the fifty-gallon hot water tank we added with the geothermal system would make a difference.

“I’ll wash the dishes.” 

He tucked his chin and looked down his nose. “I don’t mind.”

“No, I’ll do it. I’d rather you haul the cistern water for the toilets.” With the valves shut off so water couldn’t flow from the house supply into the toilets, we needed cistern water to flush. Spence enjoyed riding his Mahindra tractor. He could haul the heavy buckets.

While the tractor motor grumbled outside, I grabbed the cast iron dutch oven for washing and a large stainless steel stock pot for rinsing. Filling each half full, I admired the flow coming from the sink tap. We had enough water to last at least until Monday morning. The power would probably be restored by then. Nevertheless, I stopped myself from reaching for the tap to rinse—most of the time—and set the paper plates on the table.

Mid afternoon, I wished for a magical resolution to the electric and internet outages. “Spence, will you drive to cell phone range and tell PennPower and Windstream we still aren't connected?”

“They know. The outage is widespread.”

“Last time you called, we got service right away.” Why did he have to be a realist?

“That was a coincidence.” Nevertheless, he reached for his keys, pet his buddy Rills, and left. In the distance the old Colorado pickup, which he’d parked under the spruce trees, rumbled away. (The electric garage door didn’t work, of course, and the hand release cord had broken trapping his new Maverick in the garage.) He returned with a dismal report: “PennPower’s robot said, ‘There is a widespread outage. We’re working as fast as we can.’ Windstream said, ‘There is a widespread outage. Thanks for being patient.’”

Usually they state the number of hours or at least the day to expect service.

After yet another wood stove cooked dinner, I washed dishes by the two-pan method, and Spence checked water pressure in the basement. “It’s down to twenty psi.” Twenty pounds per square inch?  Way too low.

 

Pine Trees Casting Shadows on Solar Panels

We faced a trickle threat.

Not fair.

Two weeks earlier we had solved the problem of the long winter of dribbling showers and trickling faucets. I’d scrubbed the ceramic candle filters in snowmelt water and replaced the muddy sediment filter in our water system. I relaxed in the hot, luxurious, full-spray showers that our geothermal furnace provided once again. Now, we didn’t take showers. And Tuesday afternoon, I would need to strip from the waist up for an echocardiogram. I needed a shower. Sponge baths aren’t efficient at cleaning stinky armpits.

I flipped the hot water tap on and off quickly to dampen my toothbrush. Squeezing a dab of toothpaste, I scrubbed my teeth, spit forcefully, and turned the tap to rinse. The water flowed in a steady stream at room temperature. The extra geothermal tank had given us extra days of water, but how many? Falling asleep Sunday night, I chanted, “You will wake to electric lights.”

Instead, the wood stove clanking in the dark woke me. Voices drifted in from the great room. I switched on my reading lamp—no electricity. My phone read 5:00 a.m. Spence must be making Charlie breakfast before he drove to work. I went back to sleep.

Hours later, the internet, which Spence had plugged into the solar panel fed power strip, popped on. Spence and I spent a quiet morning, side by side on the sofa, tapping keys on our laptops. “It's a date,” he said, always the romantic.

The day wore on. We filled the enameled-steel, gallon kettle with tap water—still flowing full stream—boiled it on the wood stove, and filtered the water for drinking. 

Spence drove to the Meadville library for a ZOOM meeting that evening. Before the solar panels stopped producing energy, I checked the power outage status of First Energy, PennPower’s parent company, online. It listed 3, 273 customers still without power in Mercer County. Drat.

At 5:15, the plant table light flickered. The refrigerator motor ground on and off, on and off and . . . and the sun moved behind the old pine stand. The trees’ shadows on the solar panels cut power off. I warmed leftover chicken burgers and peas on the wood stove then did dishes using the hot water tap to draw from the geothermal tank. Water still flowed smoothly. Our conservation methods worked. We could probably manage a blackout twice as long. I couldn’t wait much longer for a shower though. Grrrr. “You’ve got twelve hours to get your wires together,” I shouted to PennPower.

Ande cocked his head. Normally I don’t raise my voice over kitchen chores.

“It’s okay, Ande. I’ll just use lots of soap on my washcloth when I clean up for the medical appointment.”

Seeming reassured, he lay on his side with legs extended forward and back.

More reassuring, the great room track lights gleamed in luminous splendor at precisely 6:56. I hooted, scooped Ande’s elongated furry form into my arms, and danced around the kitchen table.

He squirmed and leapt. Licking each shoulder in sequence, he pranced to the cat fountain, which bubbled and gurgled again.

Our fifty-three and a half hour trickle threat had ended. The new geothermal hot water tank had strengthened our independence from the electric power company. And before Tuesday’s appointment, I would bask in a full-stream shower.

Geothermal Hot Water Tank