Power's out

If you smell gas or propane, see a downed line, or have water near electrical equipment, leave the area and call 911 or the utility first. The checks below need no tools and no training; anything past them — gas, the panel beyond a breaker, a pressure tank, a septic lid — is a job for a licensed trade. This is general information for this area, not advice for your house, and following it is at your own risk (terms).

An outage on an estate lot is not the same event as an outage downtown. When the power goes here, the well pump stops — so the taps go with it — the sump pump stops, and the septic's effluent pump stops. This page is the sequence: report it, protect the house, manage water, and don't do the one thing that kills line workers. Who answers tonight ↓

Report it and find out how long

Most of Manotick is Hydro Ottawa: the 24/7 outage line is 613-738-0188, you can text OUT to 797688, and the live map is at outages.hydroottawa.com. Some rural lines around the village are Hydro One — 1-800-434-1235 — and your bill says which one you are; worth knowing before the night you need it. A downed line anywhere: stay at least 10 metres back — the length of a school bus — and call 911. The restoration estimate on the map is what decides whether this is a candles evening or a generator decision.

Water: you have what's in the pressure tank

No power means no well pump. The pressure tank holds a modest reserve — enough for careful hand-washing and a couple of toilet-tank refills, not for showers. If a storm is forecast and you're home, filling a bathtub beforehand is the oldest rural trick there is: that's toilet-flushing water (pour a bucket into the bowl and it flushes without power). Go easy on drains too, because if your septic has a pump chamber, that pump is also down — heavy water use during a long outage fills the chamber and greets you with the alarm when power returns.

The sump, the freezer, and the furnace

If your basement depends on a sump pump, a spring outage during melt is the highest-stakes version of this event — it's why battery-backup sump systems exist, and a long outage without one means checking the pit hourly and bailing if you must. Food keeps roughly 4 hours in an unopened fridge, 48 hours in a full freezer, 24 in a half-full one — keep the doors shut and it's usually fine. Furnaces of every type need electricity to run, so a winter outage is also a no-heat event: pipe protection starts at about the six-hour mark in deep cold.

Generators: the right way and the lethal way

A portable generator powers the essentials only through a transfer switch or interlock, or by plugging appliances in directly. Backfeeding a panel through a dryer outlet energises the line outside your house and can kill the crew working to restore you — it is illegal for that reason, not a technicality. Run any portable outdoors, far from windows; carbon monoxide ends more outage stories than the cold does. If the 2018 tornado and the 2022 derecho taught this area anything, it's that multi-day outages happen here — the standby generator page has the sizing math for a well-pump home and the honest installed costs, and the time to read it is a calm Tuesday, not hour ten of a blackout.

Common questions