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Token survivalist...

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bogie

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Jan 2, 2003
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St. Louis, in the Don't Show Me state
Heh, heh...

Ice storm. Power went out this weekend in a pretty big way around here...

I _have_ to have my coffee.

Five minutes later, the coffee grinder's buzzin'.

And the Krup's is warming up.

And the lights are on in the living room.

Generators are good. And taking care of my next door neighbors is priceless, because having friends who will call the cops for you if someone's breaking in... well... Can't beat that.

One can never have enough extension cords.
 
Nice

Is your genny hooked into the mains through an isolation switch (can't remember the "official" name for that darned thing), where either grid power is applied or genny power is applied, but never both?

How much of your house will it support?

We get a little ice and wind up here now and then, and have had the power out for as much as a day. Never had a longer outage . . . yet.

What's the hit to get a rig like that up?
 
Well, this is just a little one (note to self - take big generator out of garage BEFORE the next ice storm...), and I just ran a 20 amp cord into the kitchen/living room area... We can do bigger ones, with automatic start, automatic switch, the whole bit (girlfriend's daddy owns a good-sized electrician outfit). The more bells and whistles, the more money. If you must have backup power, and you're in a rural area, definitely go for diesel. If you're in the city, they make 'em to run on natural gas - which means that you don't have to store fuel onsite. Of course, in event of major "oh bleep" situations, you've got a problem, but most of the time the gas mains keep going...

Basically you're supposed to take your house completely offline before plugging a generator into your house's grid... Some folks think they can just plug in an RV line, but it ain't that easy to do it safely.
 
I always think that when the generator's on and the power's off, at least one rifle should be loaded.

The thudding of a generator can be heard a distance away, and can attract predators who want one of their own, and would rather take someone else's.
 
Even a small one is useful. A friend has gas and it doesn't quit when the power does but a furnace is useless if it has no power for the blower.

I'd love to have a diesel one that could run a whole house with a bit of reserve and enough fuel for a month.
 
Manedwolf. There used to be a survival board on Fidonet an age ago and one of the folk there had made a 'muffler' out of an entire shack. Up to isolating the generator on a shock system. It may be a bit extreme but it was interesting.
 
Ice storm. Power went out this weekend in a pretty big way around here...

I _have_ to have my coffee.

Five minutes later, the coffee grinder's buzzin'.

And the Krup's is warming up.

And the lights are on in the living room.

Generators are good. And taking care of my next door neighbors is priceless, because having friends who will call the cops for you if someone's breaking in... well... Can't beat that.

One can never have enough extension cords.
Click to expand...

Now that has a zen-type poetic quality to it. :) Glad you're doing okay.
 
Ain't nothin like having power when it's out ! Last house I had we had a standby generator bolted to a concrete pad and piped directly into the gas main in the street with a standby tank if the main was shut down.

Out where I live now it's just a portable and in the winter we pre-stage it up on the second floor deck, inconvient but hard to grab & run. We're using extension cords when we need it but I want this hardwired into a transfer panel by spring.
 
genr-linc

lil gadget that fits under meter base (like a collar) generator plugs into it it automatically isolated generator from line and vice versa
 
Does it need to be said here that you should NEVER run a generator in a living area or an attached garage? You wouldn't think that people need this warning but everytime there is a wide spread electrical outage there are people reported dying from carbon monoxide.
 
Automatic Transfer Switch

"lil gadget" is most likely an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS). I can't imagine any utility approving anything less for a generator installation. It isolates the utility lines from your generator so your generator doesn't kill any of the utility's employees who are trying to restore service.

That's a little detail a lot of folks don't think about when they fire off the portable generator and plug it into a house outlet during a power outlet. If you don't have an ATS, I strongly urge you to get one installed. Just imagine the legal problems if someone is injured or killed because your generator is feeding power back into a "dead" utility line.

We are in a rural area and have a 15KW auto-start generator that supplies power to the house through an ATS. The generator runs on LPG, (we have a 1,000 gallon LPG tank). House circuits on the generator include: refrigerator & freezer; furnace, water heater & kitchen range controls; various outlets (coffee pot!) and lights.
 
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The weather really isn't bad at all here in Austin, but everyone's freaking out.

I go to the HEB grocery by the University: plenty of eggs, plenty of bread, almost completely out of booze. Fortunately, the beer is disappearing by price-range, so there was plenty of good microbrew left. If nothing else, the late-comers will be forced to improve their palates at $9.99 to the imported sixpack.

Also bought a huge jug of cheap sweet red wine, took it over to the neighbors and heated it all up in a saucepan. Nothing like hot red wine on a blustery evening...


-MV
 
From a neighbor who's spent way too much time playing with diesel fueled objects - if you have a noisy generator build yourself a styrofoam "igloo" to set over the generator with openings 180* apart and positioned to provide good ventilation (If you go with baffles, etc. you you may need aux. fans to get enough air in). Or buy a modern controlled diesel that is inherently much more quiet.
 
I realize that it isn't a real generator or very hardcore survivalist, But I've got one of these & I've used it from time to time:
rodi_1931_14083256


It lives in my truck, but it's useful around the house too.
 
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