Readiness

chart of falling temperatures during a power outage

How Fast Does a House Get Cold When the Power Goes Out?

If you lose power in cold weather, you might double your stay-at-home time window by retreating to your basement. If you think an outage is likely, pre-heating can buy you a lot more time, too. See how I broke down our data from a recent outage.

Schematic layout of the Jackery and connected devices across our house.

Lab Notes: Taming the Tangle: Custom Cords for the Outage to Come

A recent power outage exposed a weak link in our emergency setup — not enough usable extension cords. I designed and built a custom set for powering our home from our Jackery. Here’s how I tailored them to our layout.

Side-by-side images: initial power outage information (left) and the outage map for our area (right).

Lab Notes: Lessons from a 24-Hour Power Outage

When the power went out this time, we were ready. Sort of…