Temporarily Out Of Service

Ever happen to you?

Last week we got the notice. “On Tuesday your utility service will be temporarily out of service.”

Clean it up!

We live in a community with a fragile infrastructure. We’ve had electricity outages, burst water mains and even four natural gas leaks over the past few years. (Actually, three of the gas leaks were because of construction, so they weren’t because of the infrastructure. But hey, an outage is an outage, no matter how caused.)

Anyway, this time it was our water service, “Off starting at 8 a.m., until the leak can be found and repaired.”

You realize what happens when there’s no water, right?

No shower or bath, of course. (Easy to do without.)

No flushing the toilet. (Less easy.  It takes GALLONS of water to flush a toilet.)

No rinsing of dirty dishes. (A nuisance only.)

No rinsing hands after picking something up off the floor, or pulling a weed, or wiping up spilled coffee. (Yuck.)

No rinsing the counter after wiping up the spilled coffee. (Sticky!)

You get the picture!

Of course, we were warned, so we were prepared.

It wasn’t even an emergency. Here’s what we did:

• Made sure we had plenty of clean drinking water.
• Filled up the plastic trash cans and set them beside the toilet to allow for flushing.
• Filled up some large pots and pans and set them on the kitchen counter for cooking and rinsing.  (ended up labeling them as “drinkable” or “rinse only”)
• Filled the dishpan with warm water (heated on the stove) and dish soap and put the dirty dishes to soak for the afternoon.
• Opened a couple of packages of handi-wipes and placed them strategically.

I was amazed at the number of times I started to turn on the tap and then had to remember – no water!  But this was a planned event, for a limited time only, so no real problems for us. What would it be like if this went on for a whole 24 hours, or several days?

What sort of water outages have you experienced?

What did you do to plan? What was it like if unplanned? Share your stories in the comment box. We want to hear about it!