Planned shutoffs are a fact of autumn in this part of California, and we take a run of calls in the days after every one. Almost none of the damage happens while the power is off. It happens in the second it comes back.
Before
- Turn refrigeration to its coldest setting the day before. The colder everything inside it is beforehand, the longer you have.
- Stand jugs of water in whatever freezer space is empty. Packed full, a freezer stays safe roughly two days. Half empty, you have less than one.
- Unplug anything with a control board that you can live without. Ovens, microwaves and dishwashers can all sit disconnected, and what comes back down the line is what damages them.
- Leave refrigeration plugged in unless the outage will be long. Modern units handle restoration better than most appliances, and the cost of a warm refrigerator is immediate.
Once it comes back
- Wait five minutes before deciding refrigeration has failed. Many units have a built-in compressor delay to avoid restarting against pressure, and cycling the power impatiently defeats a protection you want.
- Judge by a thermometer, not by the display. Something can sound perfectly normal and still be sitting ten degrees warm.
- Drain a stalled washer or dishwasher before restarting, or you get an error that looks like a dead pump.
- Empty the ice bin. A harvest that stalled halfway makes a solid mass and the machine will fight it.
- A blank oven panel after restoration means the control took the surge, and that is a repair rather than a reset.
- Check the wine cellar first, not last. A cellar that never restarted after a Tuesday shutoff gets discovered on Saturday, and by then the room has been at ambient for four days.
Food, plainly
Four hours in an unopened refrigerator. Forty-eight in a full unopened freezer. Past that, throw it out. We have watched people lose far more to a hopeful decision about food than to any appliance.
Worth doing once
Whole-house surge protection at the panel costs less than one control board out of a built-in oven and protects everything at once. For a wine cellar, a temperature alarm that texts you is worth more than any warranty, because the problem you never hear about is the expensive one.
If something did not come back, call 844-670-0348 and tell us when the outage was.
