On 6/4/2016 11:42 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 06/03/2016 12:53 PM, Don Y wrote:

Our utilities are below grade so seldom affected. Our last outage was
a distribution transformer for the neighborhood catching fire. Before
that, IIRC, a fire in a cable vault.

I watched construction in a new neighborhood a few years ago. They put all
utilities underground.

I think, overall, it is cheaper. Higher up-front costs but lower
maintenance costs.

That'd be nice here, but this area is older.

It's a mmixed bag, here. Some parts of town are crisscrossed (literally)
with hanging cables (at various heights and traveling in different directions).
Other areas are more "pristine".

In 20+ years, I think we've lost power 3 or 4 times. (lost natural gas
supply
once -- THAT was interesting!)

I lost natural gas once, because of a defective regulator that had to be
replaced. They had to purge the line at my water heater. I was there and was
surprised at how loud a noise the gas made when it came through.

We had a city-wide outage a few winters back. Too much demand for the
supply. I.e., you had gas -- but not enough flow to keep appliances
from shutting themselves down (safety). They eventually cut the
gas supply to certain parts of town so the rest of the town could have
gas at a usable pressure.

The last time I used a flashlight was to see how much gas was in a little
generator (a Honda EU2000i). At the time it was very sunny outside, but I
needed light INSIDE the tank.