How I handle an unexpected power outage during a workday in the tiny house.

[Music] the power's out and I thought I should probably make a video oh my hair's a mess because Sophie was rubbing up against me that little bugger anyways um the power is out it's Tuesday and the power went out at about 1:30 and it is 4:35 uh apparently they're working on it but we had a windstorm on Vancouver Island and that means that as usually happens a branch comes down across the lines now normally I'm prepared for storms but I wasn't prepared for this one I don't know why I didn't know that there was going to be a wind storm I I heard it was going to be windy it really never occurred to me the nice thing is I mean I did get bumped off halfway through right in the middle of a zoom meeting with clients but the good thing is that I have battery Banks as you know what happens when the power goes out on Vancouver Island and you're in the middle of a meeting you grab your blue Eddie and you plug in your modem and all your other stuff and you get to finishing of your meetings and so I was able to crawl up in into the Loft and grab my modem and then grab my AC 50b bluetti 700 wat uh Power Station and plug everything in because I have a hub for my um laptop monitor printer things like that and to connect to the oh this is good lighting to connect to the um the local area network my to connect work so took me a couple minutes to get that sorted and I was able to jump back on normally if I know that there's going to be a storm I'll be ready for it I'll have my everything plugged into my power bank and then have my power bank plugged into the wall socket so that cuz it has sort of passed through charging you can be using it and charging it at the same time these blue Eddies I'm sure other battery Banks is as well so I was able to I would be able to have zero interruptions because if the power goes on there's just a fraction of a fraction of a second of sort of lag but it doesn't actually bump you off you don't even notice so that's normally what I would do but I wasn't prepared for this one but it just emphasizes The Importance of Being prepared another thing that I was really glad that I was prepared for was having water in the house uh I keep several of these up in the Loft I don't know if you can see this very well but then I have this little it's basically a punch container that you put punch in for picnics but it's got a little water spouts and I just set it up here so that I can wash my dishes brush my teeth that sort of thing because there's no water when the power goes out here at the park because the p the well pump doesn't have any electricity either and that means that there's no power to that and I don't know why my landlord doesn't have a generator but he doesn't so I always keep water and if I know a storm is coming then I'll actually fill up a couple of buckets in the tub but like for winter and such so there's that but otherwise it's been fine the nice thing about my stove is it's propane and while the igniter takes electricity I can light it with uh uh one of those little long lighters and because the gas will the propane will still flow through I just need to manually light it so I can still cook something I could boil water um to make coffee to cook or anything like that and then I have my Bodega and this one isn't plugged in just yet I have my my big blue Eddie my ac180 ready to go if I need to I suspect the power is going to be back on within the next couple hours and I haven't open the fridge and even if I do it'll be fine I'm certainly not going to open the freezer Sophie what you've been fed you're fine what is your problem she's just she's just whatever I have some left over baked potatoes and some onions and some tomatoes so I'll probably just fry that in a frying pan but there's something to be said for being prepared I always keep and I have shown this in other videos it's a mess in here this is the storage space it's uh just up my steps and I always keep this bag here because I can grab it and in here is where I keep these lights they take like four Watts or really anywhere from zero to four watts to run really it's amazing and I bought I've bought several of these off of Amazon I use them in the van but I also keep a couple in the house because when the power goes out I like to put one above my desk I like to put one in the kitchen above the sink and just having these lights hanging there gives you the sense of normality and I think that's the key is to try and give yourself a bit of a sense of normality when something you know like that happens I also in there keep several of these little puck lights and they are magnetic so they can hang on the fridge what else is in here oh I have my crank radio and my compass I don't know why I need a compass but I I thought it would be a good thing to have a part compass in there there's always multiple uh lighters because you never know when you're going to need those and then of course I have batteries and a flashlight and such but and I also in here keep my charging cables for the battery banks that I keep inside the house so that I have um so that I have everything in one place the goal is to have everything in one place so it's easy to find and I'm not searching again right today it's light out when the power went out so I'm not worried about Darkness but if it was Winter and the power went out then of course I would need to have lights pretty quick and I always keep a flashlight by my door so this is the first thing I would reach but but of course you have a flashlight on your phone but you want to be able to find everything that you need and you want to be able to find it fairly quickly so that you're not uh sort of fumbling around in the dark which could be unsafe right especially if you live alone and one of the things I always keep in the living room here as well is This Little Light which is battery operator I love this thing got it from Canadian Tire and it is say westtech I don't know but it's just the best little thing and so if I'm sitting here the power's off and I'm sitting here and I'm just reading I'll just put this right there and I'll have enough light to read by which is good and it always stays in the living room and I have a little one of those Puck lights right by my bed it's always there so in case I need it in the middle of the night it's always there I think it's important and I want all of us to be prepared because you know more and more things are unpredictable we don't know what's going to happen so many things that do happen are out of our control and I don't want you and I don't want me I don't want any of us to feel like we are totally out of control we can't control what happens in the bigger picture but we can do small things that get us ready to handle these moments so that we don't feel so out of control have some power in your house always a good idea have some water in your house you just don't know you might be on a municipal water system and think well that's not going to happen to me because unlike here with the well pump I'm still going to have water well just a month couple months ago a month or so ago Calgary the city that I'm used to live in in Alberta had a a main water M burst because it was so old and there was a good portion of that City that didn't have water for a while and then when they got temporary water running uh sort of diverted everything everything was on restrictions and it was just a mess if you have water in your house you you don't have to worry about that I'm not saying keep huge containers of it if you live in the city you probably don't need to do that but you should have a few gallons of water tucked away you should have a case of bottled water if that's what you prefer or those big jugs like I showed you there's 4 ler jugs if you have a heads up then you can fill buckets and containers but when you don't have a heads up is when you're really going to be stuck and so why not prepare for something like that so you have a little something some source of of power so you can charge up your phone keep that going have uh and have some lights either battery operated or rechargeable that are charged up and ready to go and have that handy and then just make sure you have some food that you don't have to heat up canned goods because when things are put are canned they're already cooked so while it might not be fun to eat uh a can of cold soup or beans or something like that at least you can eat it and have some way to cook now my stove like I said I can cook on it in a situation like this if I couldn't then I would grab my butane stove my camping stove from the van and I would bring it in here set it up in front of the window crack the window a bit and cook on that and I have done a video about getting ready for storm in the winter where I showed like heating sources and things like that but it's summertime I'm not worried about heat I'm not all that worried about light other than you know just so I can read but for me as somebody who works from home it's really important for me to be able to have those systems in place so yeah I'm just going to sit here and read my book and uh this is a book that I've read before I actually lent it to a friend in Calgary and never got it back but it's a book that I want to talk to you guys about um but I'm just sort of rereading it to refresh my mind on some of the things but this book actually made a huge difference for me we'll talk about that in another video but yeah so other than that that's how my day is going hope you guys are having a good day I hope things are going well let know if any of those things that I talked about are things that you have that are ready to go in case you need them uh what sort of preps do you just routinely keep handy so that when one or more systems go down in your house for even you know for a short period of time you can just continue to live your life without a big disruption obviously this something like this is a bigger deal in the winter when um it's dark and cold is a factor um but for summertime when it's nice out it's windy but it's not cold outside it's not a big deal so you know I can always if it gets chilly I can always climb into bed and snuggle with this one it's at the moments what unexpected things happen that you wish I wish that I had followed through on some of the things I thought about doing made plans sort of had had backup systems in place and over the last few years particularly since moving to Vancouver Island I've been putting those things in place because more outages happen here and I am more remote and so it's always good to have those things in place um and ready to go so anyways guys I hope you guys are doing well I hope you are staying safe remember in a world where you can be anything be kind including to yourself I love you and I'll see you next time power's back on 6 and 1/2 hours later so that was about standard for power outages where I am on the island so another good reason to be prepared