Power outages at Guest House

[Bruce Woodruff]

Looking for advice from hosts on this. One of our listings is rural (next to our ranch house) and we have experienced a few    power outages recently due to lightning storms. Ranging from 1 hr to overnight in one case. Guests have been staying with us in these cases and the reactions have been varied. A younger AIRBnB couple was clearly irked, and even though I took them a flashlight and offered water or food, they were clearly unhappy even though it affected only a couple hrs of their 3 night stay. Another older woman and older couple were quite different...they could have cared less, kinda thought it was fun....We're the same - just sit on the porch, drink beer and watch the sky light up...

I don't offer partial refunds without being asked and it didn't come up, so no bad reviews or anything, I just want to take good care of guests. I have a generator but didn't want to run extension cords all over just for a short outage. I am looking into wiring in a transfer switch and generator for the guest house so that would take care of this in the future...just curious if others have had this come up?

[Bill Cereske]

At Tahoe, power failures can be an issue.  I replaced 3 hard wired smoke detectors with 10 year battery smoke / CO detectors.  I installed 3 power failure light fixtures where the old smokes had been.  They look and work great. (The building inspector highly approved of this). I have 6 battery powered lanterns in a marked kitchen cabinet, which I test every time I go there.  I have a Mag light on a bracket in the kitchen, next to the fire extinguishers.  Outside, most of the security lights are solar powered LED lights, which don't care if the power is on or off.   One thing I DON'T have are candles, which are a fire hazard.  If I find some left by guests, I dispose of them.  Same with candle holders - none are on property.  I have a gas BBQ and a gas cooktop.  I also have a backup power supply for the modem, mainly to keep the telephone line working, so the fire alarm can always send an alarm during a power failure.