Power Cuts and Motorhome Owners

Jim

Jim

Ringleader
Joined
Jul 19, 2007
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Location
Sutton on Sea, UK
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1
MH
Adria Panel Van.
Exp
Since 1988
I'm reading about the absolute horror people are feeling about maybe having 3 hours a day without leccy. It's just newspaper hysteria. We will cope. I actually remember the power cuts of 70's as being great fun and a good family time. It will affect some more than others of course, but I'm absolutely sure Brits will rally round with vulnerable neighbours just like they did in those early days of covid, because despite all the moans about our country, we prove time and time again we are the best at that.

As for us lot, what an easy decant into the motorhome on the drive it will be, heat, light, and power that no one can switch off.
 
Landy Andy said:
Fear is an easy way to control.
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Yeah you only need to look to any religion to realise that 🙄

As said we will just get into the Moho if it’s cold or need to warm some food up or shower.

This is the problem with combo boilers, no electric no work 🙄
 
Yes, we remember the 70's power cuts, bit of a nuisance but we all coped and very well as I recall. We had candles and big battery lanterns,paraffin heaters .None of the rechargeable bright lights you can get now. Not many portable gas appliances that are available as there are now .As said we all have a power bank on our drives.. It might even be fun for some folks. (y)

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Make folk scared of potential cuts and when the cuts don't happen they will just try to scare us with some other piece of rubbish scaremongering littered with hyperbole.
The press needs sorted out. Fact v fiction is becoming blurry.

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Jim said:
.........As for us lot, what an easy decant into the motorhome on the drive it will be, heat, light, and power that no one can switch off.
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Nothing new for us, we often have a few hours in the evenings in the van on the drive just because we can. Alcohol is usually involved. :giggle:
 
Emmit said:
I'll be first.
Why?
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Because practically everything is controlled via electric. Few open fires, or any heat source that doesn’t require power. Loads of stuff controlled via WiFi. Gas appliances now require electrical supply as well. Most houses and people will grind to a halt with no power. They aren’t used to thinking outside the box and are just used to pressing a switch, and it works. When it doesn’t they are stuffed. It’s a different generation now, and the ones that are used to are old.
I’ve been called out to houses as NOTHING WORKS. I get to their house and point out the street and neighbours are also in darkness. “It’s a power cut” nothing I can do. I’ve been in a house with 4-5 foot of water inside, lady of the house asks me “when can I get the WiFi back on”

All well and good these older people quoting the past, but that’s the past.
 
There are people on breakfast TV boasting about the fact they are (just 2 examples)....
Using a hurricane lamp with a candle in it to give light in their kitchen and moaning the price of candles has increased.
Using AA battery driven lamps around the house as lighting and moaning the price of batteries has increased.

I just say I can see no better or cheaper way to light your house properly than using mains electricity (in mains I include your own solar or wind).
I did say properly - comparing apples with apples

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Jim said:
As for us lot, what an easy decant into the motorhome on the drive it will be, heat, light, and power that no one can switch off.
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We were saying the very same thing when scaremongering article on the news popped up last night.

No gas in our village but out of the ten houses down our lane, there are two motorhomes, a PVC and a caravan, so between us, we will be able to boil a kettle or heat food for the other neighbours.
 
Emmit said:
I'll be first.
Why?
Click to expand...
Back in the 70's....

your boiler had a pilot light, which would light the boiler, no electricity need.
Today it needs electric spark, no electricity, no hot water

You house now relies on central heating to keep warm, no eclectic pump, no heating.
Back in the 70's most homes still had at least one solid fuel open fire or stove

You probably now have more lights in a single room than your entire house had back in the 70's

Back in the 70's the TV stopped without electricity, but you could still cook a meal, make toast, boil a kettle, listen to the radio, make a phone call.
Today without the electricity you can not do any of these things.

And the big one is the computers, the wifi routers, the local mobile phone mast.
Without electricity, they will all stop working

Working in the office by candle light is not going to happen this time, as there is very little that can be done after the laptop battery goes flat.

I'll not start to go into the issues with transport, but there are a lot more traffic lights than there were in the 70' and many cars and busses now run on electricity, so whilst they may not be stopping in the street, they will be hours behind in their charging, so will not be leaving when they should.......

That is just some of the more obvious ones
Hospitals, police, companies, shops etc all rely on electricity a lot more than they did back in the 70's,
 
Brains said:
Back in the 70's....

your boiler had a pilot light, which would light the boiler, no electricity need.
Today it needs electric spark, no electricity, no hot water

You house now relies on central heating to keep warm, no eclectic pump, no heating.
Back in the 70's most homes still had at least one solid fuel open fire or stove

You probably now have more lights in a single room than your entire house had back in the 70's

Back in the 70's the TV stopped without electricity, but you could still cook a meal, make toast, boil a kettle, listen to the radio, make a phone call.
Today without the electricity you can not do any of these things.

And the big one is the computers, the wifi routers, the local mobile phone mast.
Without electricity, they will all stop working

Working in the office by candle light is not going to happen this time, as there is very little that can be done after the laptop battery goes flat.

I'll not start to go into the issues with transport, but there are a lot more traffic lights than there were in the 70' and many cars and busses now run on electricity, so whilst they may not be stopping in the street, they will be hours behind in their charging, so will not be leaving when they should.......

That is just some of the more obvious ones
Hospitals, police, companies, shops etc all rely on electricity a lot more than they did back in the 70's,
Click to expand...

Oh! so it's going to be carnage then, in those three hours I can't cook a meal or watch telly, might need. a candle and blanket. Oh how will we cope. I'm panicking now.
 
Fortunately we have a real-flame gas fire so can keep warm and can still cook without electric with our gas cooker which would come in handy if the power was off for a long time as we'd have to start cooking up and scoffing the freezer contents ... might mean putting on a bit of weight though! :giggle:

The biggest problem would be phones as we don't have a landline so whilst we could charge them up in the camper, if this was the middle of winter there would be a limit on how much we could do that before the camper batteries went flat, mind you if the mobile masts don't have power it's moot anyway!

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Jim said:
Oh! so it's going to be carnage then, in those three hours I can't cook a meal or watch telly, might need. a candle and blanket. Oh how will we cope. I'm panicking now.
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You have the advantage of working from home.
Imagine you were working in a large office 20 miles from home and rely on public transport.

Power cut, all staff sent home as nothing they can do.
traffic lights are out, so roads are stationary, no trains or trams.
Now what do you do ? Start walking home ?

All I'm saying is that regular rolling blackouts will have a considerably larger effect today than they did back in the 70's.

Like you I remember the blackouts of the 70's and other than you could not watch your favourite TV program, life went on pretty much as normal. That will not be the case today.

For those in the cities, I think it's time to invest in a bicycle!
 
I don't recall any serious traffic jams or accidents recorded when traffic lights were out in the 70's.I think people were probably more cautious and understanding of the problems. Sometimes country wide issues like power cuts bring the good out in most people.

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Just a point to note it you want to run a combi boiler off a generator, on ours earlier this year I had to connect one of the outputs to the earth pin. The boiler thought it wasn't earthed before and fault coded.
Worcester Bosch boiler. 👍
 
Brains said:
You have the advantage of working from home.
Imagine you were working in a large office 20 miles from home and rely on public transport.

Power cut, all staff sent home as nothing they can do.
traffic lights are out, so roads are stationary, no trains or trams.
Now what do you do ? Start walking home ?

All I'm saying is that regular rolling blackouts will have a considerably larger effect today than they did back in the 70's.

Like you I remember the blackouts of the 70's and other than you could not watch your favourite TV program, life went on pretty much as normal. That will not be the case today.

For those in the cities, I think it's time to invest in a bicycle!
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We had open coal fires back in the day
 
3 hours...wow! (sarcastic wow)

any major consumers will have backup, or wont have blackouts,
any decent streets will look after any vulnerable neighbours (for 3 hours lol)
any decent motorhomer will have enough solar and batteries to see out the 3 hour cold war ::bigsmile: , I may even turn it into a trip out
 
Minxy said:
Fortunately we have a real-flame gas fire so can keep warm and can still cook without electric with our gas cooker which would come in handy if the power was off for a long time as we'd have to start cooking up and scoffing the freezer contents ... might mean putting on a bit of weight though! :giggle:

The biggest problem would be phones as we don't have a landline so whilst we could charge them up in the camper, if this was the middle of winter there would be a limit on how much we could do that before the camper batteries went flat, mind you if the mobile masts don't have power it's moot anyway!
Click to expand...

The mobile masts have back up batteries which last for a minimum of 2 days.

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