I’m sure glad we added the Lithium Platinum Pro option!

[Steve Morris]

48 hours after severe weather passed through northern Ohio, we, like 2-300,000 other residents, are without power. @firstenergyhome is busting their behind, but last posted number was 3200 downed lines to repair. 

So we’re making do with a hodgepodge of alternatives. We trashed what didn’t fit in the Oliver fridge or the truck fridge. We moved all frozen food to the chest freezer in the garage, which is being powered by the Oliver’s lithium batteries. The truck fridge is powered by swapping two Bluetti solar generators charged with the 200W panel or the Oliver. And the Honda generators charging the Oliver, so it can power everything else! 🤪 I just returned from filling four propane bottles to ensure days of power. 

At least we have air conditioning a stove, and a hot shower in the Oliver. It could be worse, at 90 degrees or sub-freezing and facing broken pipes. 
 

 

 

Edited August 8 by Steve Morris

[John Dorrer]

1 hour ago, Steve Morris said:

48 hours after severe weather passed through northern Ohio, we, like 2-300,000 other residents, are without power. @firstenergyhome is busting their behind, but last posted number was 3200 downed lines to repair. 

So we’re making do with a hodgepodge of alternatives. We trashed what didn’t fit in the Oliver fridge or the truck fridge. We moved all frozen food to the chest freezer in the garage, which is being powered by the Oliver’s lithium batteries. The truck fridge is powered by swapping two Bluetti solar generators charged with the 200W panel or the Oliver. And the Honda generators charging the Oliver, so it can power everything else! 🤪 I just returned from filling four propane bottles to ensure days of power. 

At least we have air conditioning a stove, and a hot shower in the Oliver. It could be worse, at 90 degrees or sub-freezing and facing broken pipes. 
 

 

 

Bummer, but glad you have the Oliver for a base.

[mossemi]

Great job making do in a tough situation.

Mossey

[Steve Morris]

Our power came on about two hours after posting this. Spectrum is still working on telephone/TV/Internet, but we have our cellular router in the Oliver, so good on two out of three. And we only get junk on our landline, anyway.

[Dave and Kimberly]

I'm glad your power came back on Steve!     I've seen other posts where our Ollies can also double up as a comfortable back up housing in a pinch!   

[Ollie-Haus]

Glad to know you and Deb were able to adapt quickly to the situation and maintain some “normalcy”. Thanks for sharing your experience. 
This type situation is actually a real part of our decision to buy the Legacy Elite 2 with platinum lithium package. And it’s why I like to “driveway camp” regularly. During disaster events I want it to be second nature to use the Oliver to provide basic comfort and shelter while public systems are down. Having the tools/connections to use the Oliver to support other necessities at your home is difficult to throw together in the middle of a crisis. Setting up redundancy is very helpful. 

[Steve Morris]

1 hour ago, Ollie-Haus said:

Having the tools/connections to use the Oliver to support other necessities at your home is difficult to throw together in the middle of a crisis.

Absolutely! We got by the first 36 hours on just the trailer's batteries alone. We'd also used the AC a couple of times, just to cool off and dry out. Not particularly hot at 80°, but 90% humidity was killer! The first night, I ordered a generator grounding plug and generator to RV 30A adaptor so that I could use the Honda generator. I'd never considered connecting it to the trailer before, so had no need for these. I'm glad I knew from prior posts on this forum that I needed a grounding plug, else I'd have been frustrated as to why it wouldn't charge. Amazon overnight shipping had them here at 7AM.

Of course I only had the propane that was in the trailer (with one tank at 15%), and a little bit in a third tank that I've used all spring and summer for my fire pit. So after using up the latter, I swapped to the full Oliver tank, while I went to fill four more. (We had an empty from our son-in-law, who switched his grill to natural gas, and Deb had picked up two new ones at Costco earlier this summer to replace the out of date and nearly out of date tanks I already had.) About two hours after I returned from filling the tanks, the power came back on. 

At the height of the outage from four confirmed tornados, 627,000 Ohio customers were without power, with hundreds of poles needing replaced. First Energy was working double shifts with outside help from surrounding areas. But the estimate for complete restoration of power was August 14, so I wanted to make sure I was prepared. I just looked at their web site, and there are still 192,000 customers with no power 70 hours after the storm.

If this had been January, we'd be in Florida, and our house would have broken pipes. While there is a lot of damage in the area, it could have been much, much worse!

Edited August 9 by Steve Morris

[Steph and Dud B]

Glad you're safe and powered again. We used our RV as a lifeboat for over a week after Hurricane Irene. Nice to have that option.