Love my home standby generator
 

Windstorm like crazy here tonight. Power went out (computer protected by a UPS).. 15 seconds later.. I have lights, heat, internet, etc again after my generator kicked in. Loving it.

After several days with no power 2 winters ago, I won't ever do that again.

back up plans are always good :)

I am house shopping now, and I was having this discussion just last week.

I am either looking at a back up generator, or solar panels. We have some crazy storms here, and there have been times... summer and winter... going days without power. Not just where I live currently, but several different places over the past 10-15 years.

I live in an area that sees alot of wind. We always seem to be the last to get power back. Each time we'd have any outage more than a few hours, I'd swear I was going to get a generator installed that's piped into my natural gas line. The outage 2 winters ago did it for me. I have a small gas generator that I'd used before that, but it's such a hassle to get it set up, gassed, and then lines into the house. Then you can only run the fridge and a few lights.

With the standby generator it runs everything except the A/C (who uses that in the winter) and my pond out back. Everything else runs like the power never went off. It's a kick driving into the neighborhood with most houses dark and mine's all lit up and warm.

I expect nothing less from a smart lady like you to have your back up! :) hope all is well. you coming to LA for the show?

How much that set up put you back (i.e. cost)?

Not LA.. hoping for Vegas in January.

Looking forward to catching your tootsies there. :winkwink:

If you live in windy areas get a 1 Kw Windmill. I got mine for under $1k on Ebay.

Get some used truck batteries, and connect them to the windmill via an inverter and a charge control unit. Hook up some power-hungry appliances to it (heated floors) when you're ok on power, and have an emergency switch that would tie your grid to those batteries in case of power outage.

4-5 huge truck batteries is more than enough to last several days, and they also get charged constantly. And they'll pay off with the saved power on the floors or whatever you use constantly.

25K total installed, but there was a mess of gas piping and electrical to have done and the generator is a bit larger than if I were just running a few things. I went with a larger one (35KW) so it could run at a lower RPM and make less noise. It's essentially a 4.3L 6 cylinder engine running at 1800 rpm.

I have a much smaller one that PK (runs everything but the heat/ac - but we just bypassed that, a new owner could hook it up). I don't know the specifics but it was $7K completely installed. It kicks in at least once every 2 months and sometimes more so it certainly has paid for itself in frustration. Before I had it installed I went 30 hours w/o power and the previous owners went 6 days. :helpme

Mine isn't connected to an unlimited fuel supply - I have a 330 propane tank - so I try not to run "extra" things when the generator is on. I don't run the dishwasher, W/D, turn off as many lights as I'm comfortable with, don't cook unless necessary.....but it keeps my food cold and frozen and my lights, TV and computer on :) The general guesstimate is that it will run the necessities for 5+ days with a full tank.

http://www.onlinebeach.com/generator01.jpg

Theres a few guys in here just in awe that you ladies have a step up on us when it comes to survival...

Good stuff :thumbsup

I dont have that setup here but my mother does up in the mountains. Snow covering the ground 5 months out of the year...

Quite a few outages out there throughout the year

I have been looking around to have a gas one installed at my house.. NC can get hit pretty bad with weather.. My last place had a small one that just ran a few things in the house ..

Yeah we don't have many major storms in my area, but I have a backup generator just in case, we do get a lot of brownouts.

As soon as we buy a house here we are going to Solar. PLan to have a back up bank of about 10 batteries and the rest run on the day to day and the regular electric.

We would only need a small generator otherwise.