I'm not gassy....

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Pullman, WA is about 30 miles north, northwest of here. About 4 miles north of Pullman, last Wednesday, a farmer with a plow managed to hit a major natural gas supply line punching a large hole in it while trying make a ditch for a drainage pipe he was installing. Consequently, a large number of the communities south for 120 miles and east or west of US-95 & US-195 lost natural gas. In my home, we have no cooking range, central heat or hot water from our hot water heater. They haven't released the farmer's name I am sure for safety reasons. The utility company reported 37,000 customers without natural gas. Some restaurants have managed to stay open with reduced/modified menus. Schools have been closed, businesses, some open, some closed. One heating/AC company opened a local office last month, shipped in and loaned out over 3,000 small heaters to locals. The utility company has over 500 workers some from 5 other states in the area who first shutoff every home/office/building's gas supply and now are purging and relighting each customer's natural gas powered products.

We received a phone call last night informing us that today or tomorrow would be our restoration day.

When we remodeled our kitchen, we installed a gas range with 2 full ovens and added an electric wall oven. That wall oven has heated pans of water for us, cooked dinners and has actually helped heat the upstairs of our home. We have been blessed with temperatures that didn't' go much below 40º F at night and got into the mid-50's during the day. Saturday, our oldest son, a recently retired sheriff's deputy happened to walk into a local ranch supply store as they received a pallet of electric heaters. He purchased 2 and brought them to us. He told his Mom, take them, kissed her on the forehead and left. I guess he didn't think the old folks could handle it. With just one heater on our main floor has remained at around 70º F. We shut it off at night as we sleep better when it's cool. It's what we do with the central heating/AC using our smart thermostat.

As soon as we get our normal hot water back, I plan on taking a hot shower, fighting a battle with the soap and wash cloth, purposely losing the battle and yet, winning the war!

[Jim Koepke]

Wow!

We live in a place where there is no "street gas." If we want gas we have to rent a tank and have a truck come out to deliver.

Of course if our electric goes out so does everything else, since we also get water from a well.

In the fifteen years of living here the power is usually back in a couple of hours. Most recently it went out at about 2:45 pm. I told Candy if it was still out at 5:00 we could go to dinner. I laid down to take a nap. The power came back on a little after 4:00.

Depending on when the power goes out, we may go into town and watch a movie.

jtk

[Bill Howatt]

Wow! ...
Of course if our electric goes out so does everything else, since we also get water from a well. ...

The well water issue is why I have a cheapie generator. However, we are fortunate to live in an area where the power is very reliable so the generator has very little run-time and I don't see the case for getting a permanent generator installation. Seems like there is a lot of variation in electricity reliability depending on where one lives. Won't run our furnace with the "dirty" generator power but have a natural gas fire place insert that will keep living area tolerable if necessary.

[Edward Weber]

Wow!

We live in a place where there is no "street gas." If we want gas we have to rent a tank and have a truck come out to deliver.

Of course if our electric goes out so does everything else, since we also get water from a well.

In the fifteen years of living here the power is usually back in a couple of hours. Most recently it went out at about 2:45 pm. I told Candy if it was still out at 5:00 we could go to dinner. I laid down to take a nap. The power came back on a little after 4:00.

Depending on when the power goes out, we may go into town and watch a movie.

jtk
I have the same situation, the loss of electric doesn't bother me as much as the loss of water

[Jim Becker]

I'm glad that your NG service will get restored "real soon now", Ken. Not having access to "essential services" in our homes is not a fun thing, especially when it's much broader than just our homes and substitutes are not available.

At our old property, we never had interruption of our NG supply, but we did have some long power outages from a few major hurricanes that came up the east coast which was the equivalent...we had gas, but to use it, we needed power, too. Without power, there was no heat, no water heating...actually, no water because of the well pump...and no septic which had to pump up the hill to the subterranean equivalent of a sand mound. We finally got a whole house generator and were sorry we didn't do it ten years earlier. When we moved to this property a little over two and a half years ago...a property with no natural gas available anyway...our very first project was installation of a whole house generator. It's propane fueled, of course, but it means we have all of our normal needs met other than power to my shop. No electric still means no water because we are on a well despite having public sewer, so the investment was worth it to us. If power from the street goes down, it's back in about 15 seconds off the generator.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

We lost our natural gas service about 1:00 p.m. last Wednesday. A gas service man from Northern California just bled our system and we restored the gas heat to all of our appliances and to my standalone shop.

[Jim Koepke]

The well water issue is why I have a cheapie generator.


I have the same situation, the loss of electric doesn't bother me as much as the loss of water

We do keep a few gallons of water in the refrigerator.

With our worst power outage, a car took out a pole, our power was out for less than five hours. We went out to dinner and a movie. The car taking out a pole had a worse effect on our land line and internet. It messed up the fiber optic feeder to our area. Copper cable can survive being pulled and kinked. Fiber optic doesn't work if it has been kinked.

jtk

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Fiber optic doesn't work if it has been kinked.

jtk

Nope! Trying to reterminate a fiber optic is a science, skill, art and a whole lot of luck!

[Jason Roehl]

When we had our fiber service installed a couple years ago, I was talking to the tech about the fiber itself. I knew that coaxial cable has bend radius limitations, so I asked if there were such on fiber. There are, but they are surprisingly small—he said the fiber into our home could be wrapped around a pencil without any ill effects. While copper coax can physically withstand kinks, it will result in signal degradation, as its signal capacity is dependent on the shielding maintaining a set distance from the copper core. Thirty-some years ago, a cable company car stopped by our house and told us we were leaking signal. A quick look at the cable in the house, and he found a couple places in the basement where the cable was stapled too tightly to the joists, which caused it to actually transmit the signal over the air. He pulled the staples and all was well.

[mike stenson]

Normal bend radius is about 20x the diameter of the jacket for fibre (for most of this class of fibre, that would make bend radius coming into your house 20mm). There's no way I'd bend one around a pencil, nor would I allow a technician to.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Pullman, WA is about 30 miles north, northwest of here. About 4 miles north of Pullman, last Wednesday, a farmer with a plow managed to hit a major natural gas supply line punching a large hole They haven't released the farmer's name

I hope things get back to normal soon!
I put a pick through the gas line to our house in 1988. That pipe was only 10 PSI. It was a terrible experience. The farmer is lucky to be alive. That pipe could have had over 1000 PSI. Panhandle Eastern runs through our area. There have been several disasters in the years we have lived here. They were all terrifying.

[Bill Howatt]

Normal bend radius is about 20x the diameter of the jacket for fibre (for most of this class of fibre, that would make bend radius coming into your house 20mm). There's no way I'd bend one around a pencil, nor would I allow a technician to.

Found this interesting and triggered me to look up some more info on fibre-optic cable even though I don't have fibre internet service.
BTW, for comparison, the bend radius for a CAT 5 or 6 twisted pair regular ethernet cable is about 1" - about 4X the diameter.

[Jim Becker]

Regarding fiber bend radius...the specific type of fiber matters relative to bend radius and there are some types used in residential installs are are tiny and nearly invisible with very tight bend radiuses. But it's a best practice not to push the limits because, well...Murphy. ;)

[mike stenson]

As speeds increase, fault tolerances diminish and any internal diffractions just end up going down the re-drive path. Performance goes to pot, and becomes very difficult to determine where the problem lies. I've spent months trying to nail these types of performance issues down. Always painful.

[Curt Harms]

Regarding fiber bend radius...the specific type of fiber matters relative to bend radius and there are some types used in residential installs are are tiny and nearly invisible with very tight bend radiuses. But it's a best practice not to push the limits because, well...Murphy. ;)

I was watching a video about fiber and local networking. A guy was using fiber to his device as a demonstration. He kinked the fiber, started a video and varied the radius of the bend. The speed and quality of the video varied with the radius of the bend. It did take folding the fiber nearly back on itself to totally stop the video playback. The fiber was quite thin.

[Lee DeRaud]

Nope! Trying to reterminate a fiber optic is a science, skill, art and a whole lot of luck!
And (unless things have changed since I retired) some fairly pricey specialist tools.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

And (unless things have changed since I retired) some fairly pricey specialist tools.

There is that too!

[Derek Meyer]

I live 10 miles east of Pullman, in Moscow. We lost our gas as well on Wednesday. Avista just restored it yesterday around 10:30 AM. They came in and re-lit the pilot on our water heater. The rest of our appliances don't have standing pilots so they just worked after the gas was restored.

The Avista technicians said that there was an explosion when the farmer hit the main gas line. They did say that the farmer who hit the line survived and was okay. I asked if the farmer would liable for any of the costs incurred by Avista due to this outage, but they didn't give me an answer. I can only imagine how much this cost them.

[Jason Roehl]

And (unless things have changed since I retired) some fairly pricey specialist tools.

The tech told me that’s all changed now, too. I think it takes a special cutter, but there’s no need to shape and polish the end anymore—just stick it in the termination.

[Bill Dufour]

If he called 811 before plowing he is not liable if it was not marked. I bet he was deep ripping to hit a high pressure main. California vineyards rip up to four feet deep.
Bill D.

[Ronald Blue]

If he called 811 before plowing he is not liable if it was not marked. I bet he was deep ripping to hit a high pressure main. California vineyards rip up to four feet deep.
Bill D.

According to the website for Avista when I looked it up they stated it was caused by an excavator. No mention of a farmer with a plow. This article I found today supports that cause.

https://www.capitalpress.com/state/washington/largest-natural-gas-outage-impacts-thousands-on-the-palouse/article_0ab50b48-7f3c-11ee-8bd9-dbb5ddc6a27d.html

[Mark Wedel]

Though still applies - if 811 was called first, and things not properly marked, it is the utilities fault and not the excavators.
A neighbor used to work for a commercial electric company and sometimes had to deal with that - one of their jobs, they broke a water main, resulting in damage to a nearby house. They had properly called to get everything marked, but the water company was 4' off on their markings, so all the damage was the water companies responsibility.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

When I built my woodworking shop, I had a completed empty shell built. I painted it and over the next 3 years, using cash, I did the electrical, the insulation and the finish carpentry. I had purchased a couple small electrical space heaters to keep it warm enough to work in there. The cost of heating with electrical heaters was enormous. For Christmas one year, my wife bought and paid for a 75,000 BTU natural gas furnace to be installed. The utility company T'd into the gas line where it enters our home and ran it to the side of the shop. The utility company also installed a wire in the trench and made it accessible at either end of the new gas line so one could us a "Beeper" to locate it physically. A few years later when I hired a company replace 45 years old galvanized domestic water line with copper, I informed the contractor about the gas line and showed him the "beeper" wire. He didn't use it. When one of his workers pierced the flexible gas line with a shovel digging an access hole, they had to contract with the utility company to repair the damage. It wasn't cheap. He lost money on installing my copper water line. He accepted responsibility for the damaged line and absorbed the cost.e