Don’t Break A Fuse! What To Do When The Power Goes Out
It always happens at the worst possible time! You’re in the middle of preparing dinner, right after the most stressful day ever, and all of your home appliances appear to stop working! Not just this, but in fact, the entire home appears to have lost power! But stop, take a breath, and don’t panic, because here is what you need to do if you experience a sudden power cut when you’ve never prepared for it in the slightest.
Check And Triple Check!
When the power goes out, you need to do a quick check around the house just to see if power has gone out everywhere, or if it’s just isolated to a couple of rooms. If this is the case, you can easily locate the circuit breaker, and switch everything back on. At this point, check with your neighbors to see if their power has gone too, in which case it’s likely that the entire street has gone out, and depending on your electricity supplier, you may get a text message telling you what’s happened. Make sure you turn all appliances off at the wall, but leave one light switch on, so when the power comes back you will know. If you leave all the lights switches on, and the electricity comes back suddenly, you could run the risk of short-circuiting the routers because there’s so much electricity passing through it all at once.
If You’re In The Middle Of Something…
Like cooking, if you’ve got a gas stove, you can continue to prepare your meal if necessary. But do not have candles by a gas stove; only use a torch or a solar lamp. And if you’ve got concerns for the freezer and the fridge, food lasts a lot longer than you think! You’ve got a window of 2 hours to put the food into alternative cold storage, such as coolers with ice. But if the temperature rises by 5 degrees within that 2-hour time period, you’ll have to get rid of the food. Sometimes, the fridge could struggle to regain power after the electricity has gone off, and if you have any concerns about this, it’s worth speaking to a fridge repair specialist to see if it has had its day.
Sit Tight
There’s no telling how long you will be without power, so don’t be tempted to use your phone as a torch, instead, you need to be sparing with your battery usage. If you have children, you may want to reassure them just in case they easily get scared. You can light a few candles and sit around together, and take this advantage to talk instead of using devices. It’s a very annoying circumstance when the power goes out, and if you’ve had a stressful day, this is the very last thing you need. But it’s all about making sure that you know exactly what to do. Power cuts are common, but some people feel ill-equipped to deal with it. And if you’re not electrically minded, this doesn’t mean that you will struggle during a power cut, it’s a lot of common sense.
