After Hurricane Irene

Share this post

Hope everyone made it through the hurricane safe and sound! It got pretty windy here, but luckily we didn’t have any damage. We had a good scare around 9 pm when a tornado warning was issued for our county!! As soon as the notice came on the TV, we booked it into the basement with the baby and the dog and sat on some collapsible tailgating chairs to wait it out. Thankfully, there was only one tornado touchdown the entire night in our region in Lewes, DE and no one was injured (from the tornado anyway). We did have some minor water intrusion in a couple places that we’re going to have to deal with now.

When the driving rain started, Lisa and I did a walk thru of the entire house checking all the windows and doors to look for water penetration. We found the front door was letting water into the house through the door knob!! The door knob!? Really!? Not sure what to do about that. Maybe silicone caulk around it? I don’t know how much time and effort I want to invest into this because we’re going to replace all the hardware soon anyway. If anyone has any suggestions on quick fixes, let me know.

Another thing I was really concerned about was all the landscaping we just did. I was worried most of the mulch might run down my driveway and all over the sidewalk, but we did alright here as well.

Overall, we weathered the storm pretty well! How about you? Any surprises that need fixing?

Armageddon and my new Surge Protector

Share this post

Well, Armageddon Week continues here on the east coast.  In addition to grabbing the standard Glenn Beck/Zombie Apocalypse approved fallout shelter supplies like water, batteries and toilet paper, we thought it may be a smart idea to install a whole house surge protector in case our electricity were to surge on and off as it’s done in the past.  Power surges have been known to take out computers and TVs.  But, maybe we don’t need to; maybe the power won’t go out during the hurricane.  After all, it’s only 80 mph winds and our power has only gone out three times in the last year during 10-15 mph “gusts.”  What’s the worst that could happen???  So we decided nahhhh, skip it.

Then yesterday Lisa got a phone call from the power company.  Our electric company took it upon themselves to assures all area residents that our power will definitely go out.  Well thanks for the optimism.

So this morning, I went out and bought a whole house surge protector and the necessary 15 Amp 2-pole breaker from the big orange store.  I’d rather buy one of these, but it’s not in my budget.  So for under $70 I’m protected from rogue voltage spikes.  In addition to the hurricane, a surge protector offers complete home protection even during normal power conditions.  We think it’s worth it.

Here’s a picture of the unit installed and powered up:

I’m not showing you how to hook it up.  There are a few good youtube videos available that already do that pretty well.  Here’s a good one.

We’ll be posting Hurricane aftermath photos on Monday if we have power and if there’s anything worth blogging about.  Hope everyone is safe and sound!