The Sound of Music

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Fleetmon

Joined
Jan 26, 2012
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Location
Hawkinsville Ga
to me, it is the sound of a generator humming away in the middle of the night.

As a lot of York Pa and surrounding counties experienced yesterday, the ice storm caused a lot of us to lose power. Met-Ed says it may be several days before power is restored to a lot of customers. We live in a very rural part of York County so we probably won't see the light of lamps for a few days.

Our 7k generator provides all of the power we need....water pump, furnace, H/water heater, alarm system, full kitchen, three baths and master bedroom, and assorted lighting on all levels.

I keep around 100 gallons of gasoline in stock so we're good for a while.
 
It's a really interesting (kinda cool and exciting) knowing that your electrical needs are all from yourself and not the grid!
 
My wife and I will be buying a new house this year and one of my goals in the next few years is to install a house generator to run off the buried propane tank.
 
Originally Posted By: redhat
It's a really interesting (kinda cool and exciting) knowing that your electrical needs are all from yourself and not the grid!


And expensive!
 
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: redhat
It's a really interesting (kinda cool and exciting) knowing that your electrical needs are all from yourself and not the grid!


And expensive!


Depends on the fuel. Sometimes I think it would be cheaper to run a whole-house generator on natural gas than pay city electric rates. :-/

Yeah, depending on the natural gas supply isn't entirely "off the grid," but its darn close, given that natural gas pumping stations are almost exclusively powered by gigantic engines burning the fuel being pumped. Its pretty self-sustaining in a power outage.
 
I wish we had bought a propane generator instead of gasoline but hindsight is 20/20....the next one will be propane. We don't have access to NG since we live so far off of the main road so our choices are propane (we have a 500 gallon tank) or gasoline.

Yep, noise can be an issue but I walked up my driveway about 100' this morning and I could barely hear it so our closest neighbors at around 100 yards surely can't. Besides, I offered our freezer space, showers, and etc to them this morning.

This was a pretty bad storm and there are trees down everywhere. Yesterday morning on the way to work, we saw many transformer flashes. I'm sure the big box stores are doing a brisk generator business today. It is rather comforting to wake up in the middle of a major power outage with heat, coffee ready and a hot shower.
 
yes, it can be expensive but it beats shivering in the dark watching your food perish and wondering which friend you should bother next for a shower.

NG would be ideal for a generator and much cheaper.....I can't get it and the nearest NG to me is around 5 miles.
 
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: redhat
It's a really interesting (kinda cool and exciting) knowing that your electrical needs are all from yourself and not the grid!


And expensive!


Depends on the fuel. Sometimes I think it would be cheaper to run a whole-house generator on natural gas than pay city electric rates. :-/

Yeah, depending on the natural gas supply isn't entirely "off the grid," but its darn close, given that natural gas pumping stations are almost exclusively powered by gigantic engines burning the fuel being pumped. Its pretty self-sustaining in a power outage.



My inlaws pay about 56c/kWh. At those prices maybe. At the 10-15c/kWh we pay in the states, I doubt you could make it work when figuring capital expenditures, maintenance, other lifecycle costs, fuel costs, etc.
 
Originally Posted By: Fleetmon
yes, it can be expensive but it beats shivering in the dark watching your food perish and wondering which friend you should bother next for a shower.


Agreed. With a whole house genset power outages really become non-issues. We paid about $6,000 (I think) for ours when we built the house in 1995, and while it's something that doesn't have a true financial payback, the level of convenience it affords is well worth the cost. No worries about pipes freezing in frigid temperatures, no dragging around extension cords trying to alternate the freezer, refrigerator, space heaters and other appliances, etc.

Not to mention that it pays to be prepared rather than sitting around wondering when the electricity will come back on.
 
You almost have me convinced to buy one even though I have had fewer than five temporary power outages in 17 years. In my neighborhood the lines are all underground. But with Texas growing faster than the sad tax base/infrastructure can pace I should think about it. It will be more of an issue here related to rolling blackouts in the summer when A/C usage peaks.

Texas is a lowest common denominator state and it shows.
 
We went through Hurricane Ike in Houston and had a much smaller generator and learned a lot from that experience. We learned to build an emergency kit, we learned to keep gasoline on hand, and most importantly, we learned how to keep love bugs out of the house! Seriously, we learned a lot from a little more than a week without power. Truly most importantly, we learned that she couldn't start our generator (8hp B&S recoil start) and ended up purchasing a larger, electric start generator.

Adding a subpanel to your house for a generator is, IMO, a worthwhile expense. Like Pop_Rivit said, the convenience is well worth it. We don't have a whole house gen but our connection is outside and I had our gen hooked up and running in under 15 minutes. As said, we have well pump, furnace, hot water, alarm, bedroom, three bathrooms, full kitchen and assorted lighting on all levels.....all with the flick of one breaker inside at our subpanel.

I will NEVER be without generator power again!
 
I have three tractors, two snow blowers that I use to maintain ten acres and 16000+ sq ft of blacktop so it gets used pretty quickly.

I rotate it into my gasoline vehicles if I feel it's been sitting around too long. Right now I have fourteen five-gallon gasoline containers and I keep all of the OPE full. Our Farmall holds ten gallons, the Ingersoll and Troy-bilt five gallons each, one gen five gallons and the other two gallons, s/blowers one gallon each, and I can easily get ten gallons or so out of our Jeep.

We got caught during Ike with little gasoline and none to be had anywhere near us so I guess you could say we learned our lesson and once we moved here, we continued our stockpile. Everything gets a dose of StaBil. I have never had an issue with bad gas so my "system" must be working for me.
 
Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: JHZR2

My inlaws pay about 56c/kWh.


Where at?


USVI
 
25 gallons of gas later and our power is restored.

She deserved an oil change today so I put a fresh charge of Rotella T6 in her and changed the oil in the Jeep too (Rotella T6 also) while I was at it.

BTW, The gallon jugs of Rotella I bought at AA were $28 and have a coupon for a $5 rebate on each bottle....works for me!
 
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