Plumbers in Cedar Creek, Texas

What actually stops when the power does

It is worth listing, because people expect the taps to fail and are surprised by the rest of it.

The pump stops immediately. What you have left is whatever is in the pressure tank, which is far less than the tank's size suggests: often only a few gallons of usable draw. That is one or two toilet flushes, not a day's water.

An aerobic septic system stops too. No compressor, no pump, no chlorinator. The tank keeps receiving what the house sends, which is why water discipline during an outage protects the system as well as the supply.

Anything with a controller forgets itself. Softeners, filters and irrigation timers come back with default settings or in the middle of a cycle, and a softener stuck mid regeneration can send salty water into the house.

Gas appliances mostly stop as well. A modern heater with an electronic control will not fire without power, so hot water is not a separate supply you can fall back on.

Running the pump on a generator

This is the usual answer out here and it works well, provided the pump is sized into the plan rather than plugged in and hoped for.

Starting current is the number that matters. A submersible pump draws several times its running load for the first second. A generator chosen against the running figure will stall or trip every time the pump calls, which people read as a faulty generator.

A pump is not an extension cord appliance. It is hard wired. Running it from a portable generator safely means a transfer switch or an interlock, fitted by an electrician, so the house is isolated from the line. Back feeding through a socket endangers the linemen working on your outage.

Decide the priority list in advance. Pump, refrigerator, a few lights, the septic compressor. Write it on the generator. In the dark, at midnight, nobody wants to be working out load sharing.

Exercise it, with the pump running. A generator that starts on the pad in October and has never pulled the pump is an untested assumption. Run the real load once a year.

Fuel goes off. Stabilised petrol, or propane which does not. A full can of two year old fuel is the commonest reason a generator will not start on the night it is needed.

Storage, and what to do while it is off

Not everyone wants a generator, and a storage tank is the quieter answer. It also helps with a weak well the rest of the year.

A storage tank plus a pressure pump decouples you from the well. The tank fills slowly at whatever rate the well gives, and the house draws from the tank. During an outage it is the pressure pump you need to power, which is a much smaller load than the submersible.

Keep drinking water separately anyway. A few gallons per person per day, rotated. It is the cheapest insurance on this page.

Fill the baths when a storm is forecast. Not for drinking. For flushing toilets, which is what people actually run out of, and it costs nothing to do the evening before.

Ease off the septic while the power is out. No laundry, no long showers. An aerobic system with its pumps stopped does not want a normal day's load arriving.

How a call plays out

If the power is back and the water is not, tell us whether the pump makes any noise at all when a tap opens. That one answer separates a tripped breaker or a pressure switch from a pump that has been damaged.

Cedar Creek, Bastrop, Red Rock and the rest of Bastrop County are on our route. We size backup against starting load rather than the plate figure, we fit storage where it suits the property better than a generator, and we will check the well and the tank before an outage rather than after one.