I have your attention, at least for 7 seconds. What does a happy wife have to do with drainage? Well this drainage company is an authorized Cummins Dealer for Emergency Backup Power for your home, and if this storm that hit the southern part of Vancouver Island 4 days later, your wife would not have been that happy. Imagine Christmas Day without power? Well after 2020, the year of Covid, CERB and other issues that have driven small businesses out of business, worrying about a power outage at a house is probably the last thing we think about, and to have a little celebration left in us, the power goes out. Hope the 7 seconds has been extended.

BC Hydro Power Outages

The feature image for this blog is the power outage map from BC Hydro for December 21, 2020. 300,000 without power, some without power after 12 hrs and still a few out. BC Hydro does a fantastic job getting power back up and running. Their crews are outstanding. However, these take time and effort and manpower. This storm was small compared to last year. My home had 33 inches of snow fall in 36 hours!! It was brutal, but we have an emergency generator that has my main circuits running all the time. My most important circuits run my fridge and freezer (don’t really need it in the cold weather I guess), instant gas hot water system, some lights, my furnace, and my circuits that run the gas fireplace. I also make sure the wifi circuit is working or there would be lots of people here looking for something to do and bothering me. Freezers can last along time if you don’t open them, but if you are out of power for more than 12 hrs, it may cause issues with the quality of your food.  The generator sizes range from 6kW to 22kW for an average install, and few do larger systems. I would recommend at least a 13kW for the basics.  A 6kW is mainly used for pump systems and maybe 1 or 2 circuits.  For the cost of trenching for gas and electrical, its rare that we install a 6kW.

In the overall scheme of things, installing one of these systems, especially if you run drainage pumps or sanitary pumps, is critical for your home to stay safe from damage. Having a flooded finished basement can run in excess of $100K in repairs, and after 1 flood, your insurance rates go way up, or they can stop covering you for flood damage.

Do your wife a favour this holiday and instead of buying her a new Islander Reel and ocean fishing rod, along with a new depth sounder, maybe think of the time you read this and the look on her face when the generator kicks in, or the look on her face when the power goes out and the neighbours generator kicks in, the one we just installed. Your choice. Happy wife, happy life.