05·RB

Runbooks & Troubleshooting

Scenario-driven, plain-language: symptom → check → fix → when to call a pro (and who).

956 N Noble Loop · Showing Edition · Rev A · Aug 2026

Something is wrong and you want it fixed. Every page in this part is a short decision path you can follow while standing in the dark holding a phone — no prior knowledge of this house required.

Before anything else

Fire, a gas smell, a downed power line, or anyone hurt — call 911 first and get out. Everything on this page can wait; none of it is worth a life. Come back when you are safe.

Triage — start here if you do not know which runbook you need

Find the thing that is wrong. The middle column is what to do in the next sixty seconds; the right column is the full runbook.

What is happening	Do this now	Runbook
The power is out in the neighborhood	Probably nothing — the Powerwalls should already be carrying the house. Open the Tesla app to confirm, and ease off the big loads.	Power outage
The whole house is dark	Different problem: the backup did not carry, or the main is off. Check the Tesla app, then the main panel.	Power outage
One room or a few outlets are dead	Look for a tripped breaker in the panel and a tripped GFCI button on a nearby outlet.	Breaker trips
Water is coming out of something	Turn off the nearest shutoff — under the sink, behind the toilet, or the main on the garage’s south wall. Stop the water first, diagnose second.	Water leak
No internet	Look at the fiber box (ONT) and the gateway lights before touching anything else.	Internet down
The house is cold	Start at the Ecobee: is the screen on, is it in Heat, is the target above the room temperature?	No heat
The garage door goes down then reverses	Clear whatever is in front of the two safety sensors near the floor and wipe their lenses.	Garage door
Solar production looks wrong	Compare it to the same week last year, not to last month. Season explains most of it.	Solar looks low
You smell gas	Leave the house. Do not touch a switch, a phone, or the gas valve on your way out. Call from outside.	911, then NW Natural 1-800-882-3377
You are leaving town	Nothing is wrong — this is the pre-flight checklist so nothing goes wrong while you are gone.	Going on vacation

The three shutoffs

Every owner of this house should be able to find these three in the dark, and it is worth walking to each of them once on a calm afternoon. They are the most consequential facts in this manual.

Shutoff	Where it is	What it does
Main water	The garage’s south wall, immediately beside the main vehicle door, about 5½–6 feet up. A brass lever-handle ball valve on an insulated riser — a quarter turn, so the lever sits across the pipe. Photographed below.	Stops all water to the house. This is the one for a burst pipe or any leak you cannot isolate at the fixture.
Main electrical	Inside the garage on the north wall, about two feet from the man door — indoors and dry. The rest of the service equipment (Powerwalls, inverters, meters, solar disconnect) is directly through that wall on the outside. photo + breaker schedule	Kills power to the house. Note that this house has Powerwalls: killing the main does not necessarily leave everything dead — see the power outage runbook.
Gas	meter and valve location to confirm; photo to add	Shuts off gas to the range, the furnace, the fireplace and the tankless water heater. If you smell gas, leave first and call from outside — do not go hunting for the valve.

A brass lever-handled ball valve set into black foam pipe insulation on a garage wall, immediately beside the overhead vehicle door track and hardware. — The main water shutoff: a brass quarter-turn lever ball valve on an insulated riser on the garage’s south wall, next to the main vehicle door, about 5½–6 ft up. Also shown on the Plumbing page.

The numbers worth having in your phone

These are the four calls that actually get made from this address. The full contact and provider tables — police non-emergency, poison control, 811, the sewer district, the hauler — are in Part 6 — Reference.

Who	Number	When
Emergency	911	Fire, gas smell you can smell outdoors, downed line, injury, sparking. Always first.
Clark Public Utilities — PowerLine	360-992-8000	Report a power outage. Do it even if your lights are on: the Powerwalls hide the outage from you, not from the neighborhood.
NW Natural — 24-hour gas emergency	800-882-3377	Any smell of gas. Leave the house first, then call from outside (or call 911).
City of Ridgefield — after-hours water	360-887-6002	A water emergency on the city’s side — the meter, the street, no water at all.

Also worth knowing

Sewer service here is Clark Regional Wastewater District, not the City — their main line is 360-750-5876 and their after-hours emergency line is 360-993-8800. Call them before a plumber for a backup: if the blockage is in their main, the plumber cannot help you.

How to use a runbook

Each runbook is written the same way, on purpose, so that once you have used one you know how to use all of them:

The opening line tells you what is probably happening — and, usually, that it is less serious than it feels. Read it before you touch anything.
“First, check” is a numbered list in order. The order is deliberate: cheapest and most likely first, most expensive and least likely last. Do them in order and stop when the problem goes away. Roughly four out of five household faults are solved before step three.
The tables are the branch points. Once you know which version of the problem you have, find your symptom in the left column and read across.
The red box is the stop sign. Every runbook ends with “stop and call a pro when…”, and it names who — the utility, an electrician, a plumber, or the vendor. Knowing which of those to call is most of the battle.
The last section links to the system pages. The runbook gets you through the incident; the system page explains the equipment.

Two rules that hold in every runbook

Rule one: reboots are safe, factory resets are not. Power-cycling a device is a legitimate first move; resetting it to factory defaults erases configuration this house depends on and is never a troubleshooting step. Rule two: take a photo before you change anything — a breaker position, a cable, a valve handle. It turns “what did it look like before?” into a two-second answer.

The runbooks

Eight of them, listed below. Each one stands alone — you never need to have read the others. Seven cover something going wrong; the eighth, Going on vacation, is the only one you use when nothing is wrong at all.

In this part

05·RB-POWER Power outage What the Powerwalls already did for you — and the few things you should still do. 05·RB-INT Internet down Fiber box → gateway → switches → access points, in that order. 05·RB-WATER Water leak Stop the water first, diagnose second. Which shutoff, and who to call. 05·RB-BRE A breaker tripped Reset it properly, find the GFCI, and know when a repeat trip means stop. 05·RB-HEAT No heat Start at the Ecobee, then power, then filter, then the pro. 05·RB-GAR Garage door won’t close Safety sensors first. Then the things that are not the sensors. 05·RB-SOLAR Solar production looks low Season or fault? How to tell, using the Tesla app. 05·RB-VAC Going on vacation What to set, what to shut off, what to leave running — by trip length.