On Sat, 28 Dec 2013 00:07:03 +0000, wrote:



I'll kick off,
1. keep a conventional wired phone available that plugs into the BT
socket.
You won't then need to call a radio phone in when your power is
restored and moan you couldn't contact anyone for 3 days because
your walk round the house ones become useless
2. A lot of people have a power source parked on their drive,
learn how to tap it to run the telly,radio laptop etc.
Sine wave inverters aren't that costly and while continuous use
might not be recommended an hour or so to check on things should
be possible. You might even run an oil or gas fired boiler if you
can power the electric controls at intervals and keep warm.

G.Harman

Well, we have kept a conventional phone which is used every time we
have a power cut to advise NEDL of same (3 times in last 6 weeks)
We do have candles aplenty.
We do have a two ring/grill camping stove and gas bottle to supply it.
We do have the ability to have open fires in two rooms and have some
fuel in store.
We also, generally, have a fully charged spare car battery - which is
one of two used for powering an electric fence and I'd really like to
be able to run the oil boiler and router and laptop sporadically
during power outages. I'm very interested in your point 2 concerning
an inverter.

The boiler specifies a 5A supply but I guess this is only at startup.
General running , I'd expect to be about 300W plus 100W for the
circulating pump. Router and laptop would be very minor. So, total
would be around 500W. Battery is 50-60Ah so, I'm guessing would run
things for , at best, a couple of hours. As we'd have to presume any
power outage could be a few days, it looks only practical for
recharging a mobile phone and running laptop/router and radio. These
things alone would be very useful.

Could I trouble you to point me to the sort of thing that might be
able to do this?
Thanks
Please reply to group - email address is not monitored
Ian