Well, that was fast! It is already September!! Our kids have gone back to school and the fall flowers are beginning to bloom. The temps, while still warm are beginning to get just a tad cooler each day. If you have lived in the Pacific Northwest for any amount of time you know what this means… its time to start layering your clothes.
Okay, we kid, sort of. We embrace the season of clothes layering in the Pacific Northwest. This is made all too clear by our annual abandonment of all fashion sense as we sport flannels over our hoodies and socks underneath our sandals.
But as well as we adapt, fashion be damned, we all know what it really means once we feel the need to slip on wool socks underneath our Birkenstocks… yep, you guessed it! Wind storm season on the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas is right around the corner. It often comes faster than we realize and puts a hard stop to our summer activities, good fashion choices, and in many cases, our power.
Scenes such as the fallen tree in the photo above are all too common on the Peninsula during the Fall & Winter months. Living in “The Evergreen State” definitely has its perks, but the light ocean breeze that keeps us “just cool enough” in the Summer, turns to windstorms pushing over hundred-year-old trees almost overnight. How does that old philosophical question go?
“If a tree falls in the PNW and doesn’t hit a power line, did it even fall?”
Yes, I am fairly certain that is how I read it in my philosophy book.
As a lifelong resident of Kitsap County, I have learned that in the Pacific Northwest the severity of our weather is nothing if not unpredictable. I often joke that our weather must come from mother nature’s younger and much more unruly sister. Will we have a heatwave during the summer? Maybe. Snow during the winter? It’s possible. But what is consistent is that nobody knows just how bad it will be, or not be, until it happens…or doesn’t.
Our weather will go from 66 degrees on a winter morning, tricking you into leaving your jacket at home, to a bone-chilling 32-degree wind with winter storm warnings being issued by the time you leave the office. The one thing that we can always rely on is every hardware store on the Peninsula selling out of air conditioners, space heaters, and generators due to last-minute weather changes that we aren’t prepared for.
“Sure, a power outage is an inconvenience, but do I really need a generator?”
We get this question a lot and the simplest answer is, it depends. A home generator isn’t necessary for everyone. We all have different needs, different environments, and different electrical providers. All of which play a role in the need to own a standby home generator.
Every investment we make as homeowners has to make sense for our individual needs. There was a point in my life where even I would have considered a generator to be a frivolous purchase, but hear me out! At that time I owned a home that was on city water and tied to the same electric grid as all of the major retailers in town. This meant that if my power went out, it was always the first to be restored. We also did not have a well at that home, so our water supply was not affected. These outages were always short and lasted maybe a half-hour.
Now that we have moved into a more rural area of the county (shout out to my people in Hansville, WA) we experience far more outages than we did before. In Hansville, we are typically pretty low on the list to get the power turned back on in an outage. We have no stoplights, no gas stations, and no large grocery stores.
In Hansville, when the lights go out we depend on our sweet little country-style convenience store/restaurant/bar/ice cream shop/gift shop, cleverly named The Hansgrill (I highly recommend trying Ken’s dinner specials) for all of our grocery needs. They have their own generator and service a much smaller population than somewhere like a corporate grocery like Albertson’s, Safeway, or Wal-Mart. So the priority for our tiny little town is a bit off the radar when the surrounding towns have 5x the population and include multiple grocery stores that bring necessities to a far larger population than we are capable of in Hansville.
Having experienced power loss more times in the last 2 years than we did in the past 5 years combined, I can say that I am 100% thrilled with our decision to have a generator installed in our home. What once seemed to be frivolous to me, is now a necessity.
A generator can be necessary for your health!
A child who relies on a respirator, a spouse who relies on a C-Pap, an aging parent who relies on a number of other medical devices for their quality of life and in some cases, their survival. These situations are incredibly delicate, but having these tough conversations is necessary in order to ensure that our loved ones will be safe in the event of an outage.
Not only do generators make life simpler during a power outage, for some they are essential and can act as a life-saving device. No more worries about your medical devices needing power or running out of battery life.
An often overlooked but essential piece to the puzzle of our overall health is hydration. Many of us throughout the Northwest get our water from private wells. We rely on power in order to have running water. Without power, well pumps will cease to work. This leaves many of us unable to do the daily tasks that we take for granted, such as cooking, washing dishes, showering, or even simply keeping ourselves and our animals hydrated.
How much would a day or a week without patronage affect your business?
Without power, a business is left unable to operate. Everything from cash registers to refrigerators stop running. Security systems can go down and/or run out of backup battery life during outages, leaving homes and businesses vulnerable to theft and vandalism.
Every minute that a business is without power, money is lost. Many businesses lose their entire stock of perishable goods during an outage. This, in addition to the revenue stream being stopped while overhead costs remain or even increase due to loss, creates a financial impact that can take months or longer to recover from. Restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, and food banks are especially susceptible to loss due to spoiled perishables.
Did You Know? Many businesses can recoup the cost of their generator in just a single day!
Winter is Coming….
….and here at Double D Electrical, we have already started receiving calls from customers who are experiencing power surges in Jefferson County, WA.
Due to this year’s summer power outages during the heatwave, we are booking out on generator installations at a much faster pace than in years past. To get your estimate to have a generator installed at your home or business, give us a call today (360)385-1130 Don’t wait, or it might be too late!