Its a weird set up here. We were without power for nearly 2 days and our neighbours had power. Some of the street lights were on some were off. Me and the neighbours must be on different circuits or something?
Zoe
The reason that the neighbours were on supply as well as the street lights is due to the phasing, if you have underground cables the chances are its a 3 phs cable that runs up the street in which every 3rd house (theoretically in reallity could be clumps of houses) is connected to the same phse, so when you go off there is a good likleyhood that your imediate neighbours wont, with regards to the streetlights 50% of them run off of a seperate core not connected to the 3phs main running down the road, the reason for this is as suggesed "tapping into the street light" if there is a fault that will take some ime to repair then the electric co are able to run a legth of cable from the street lamp or your neighbours house into your meter, which bypasses the the faulty cable so you have elec, then u just have to deal with mr sparky and his jackhammer pounding away for a few hrs 3ft from your front door or window, but normally they will wait till daylight to do that. Most gas boiler especially combi boilers also have some form of electrically driven pump in them to pump the hot water round the house, with regards tot he 50v phone line if u want to tinker with that you can but 50v would barly run a light bulb, would never power a strip light. 99% of the time you can detect a low voltage prob in a house because the kitchen strip light wont work, they require a tonn of juice to get going !!!! and are the 1st things to stop working when the volts go low.
My tip would be although a big gas heter will keep you warm too A mini Gas Camping stobe £15 & a couple of reffils are great, you have heat !! you can cook food & you can boil water !! while everyone else is cold you will have a nice Cup of T , and you can keep your fishies warm !!!!! boil up some water, Pour it into an empty coke bottle put the lid back on and place that in the tank, (portable water heater, ie hot water bottle) this way you can keep the water temp correct and adjust by mixing warm and cold water in the bottle as and when needed, and u get to cook some food too !!!! and although doesnt put off as much warmth at a gas heater will give off some heat and have the benefits a gas heater dosnt !! it wont make u T or coffee of cook you some food
. Im guessing yor in the Scottish Hydro area too zoe, Good news is the Electric Network repairs are all well under way and expect to have the electric networks back to normaly by mid day today, so long as the wind doesnt start to pck right up again, but when i wils looking at the satalite images and forcasts that isnt expected.
