Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Forget the 22 shells who has a generator?

I worked as a Electric Lineman for 38 years(retired now)I am here to tell ya our electric infrastructure is in real trouble.Real Chit will hit the power grid in the next 10 years,count on it ..Just before I retired we installed a 17kw whole house propane generator 500 gal.tank,glad we did.

I've got a couple of generators and a separate breaker box to hook it up to. Enough to run essentials but not enough for the a/c unit. The problem is getting and keeping enough fuel to run very long. I have little interest in a unit costing me several thousand that will only run me a month due to a lack of fuel.

It seems like EMP is more of a threat than ever, yet backup gensets and other power sources keep getting more complicated and reliant on computer driven mechanisms-the very stuff that is most vulnerable during such an event.

I'd love to be off the grid, but it seems like non-fueled systems such as solar and wind, don't produce much power and are expensive. I keep seeing kits all the time for $500 or some such. Then after a bunch of trouble and work, you get say, 300 watts. Wow.

I do have a generator, and a plan to can my frozen food if need be. I also have a wood burning fireplace, that I do not currently use, but can, and a chainsaw and trees. My problem is my back and thus my ability to cut and split firewood. I might end up trading my food for wood. miles

I've thought about the electric problem for years. Unless a person is literally a multi-millionaire, about the only solution is to do without or to have a very limited amount of electric to run just a few things. Unless then, you've got a complicated gravity fed system for your water needs, that goes with the electric. A pump is one of the high usage items too. Then you're faced with some sort of solar set up to heat your water and the attendant gravity type system if you want easy access. Then you've got the problem of keeping the pipes unfroze.

It looks to me like a world without electricity will be stinky and dirty.

I was working on my generator system this past summer. Identifying circuits and balancing the load for the generator. With the processors in furnaces and refrigerators I am somewhat concerned about how clean a generators power is....

We have a small unit, 4000. but its enough I can cycle the freezer, and well pump to keep some water and keep from loosing the freezer. in the fall-winter spring we keep around 50 gallons of gas, plus what ever is in the cars. We have an auxillary coal boiler and Kerosene heater so heat is no issue.

We went 11 days a a few years ago without power and it certainly had some degree of suck. Without power the gas stations couldn't pump gas and the cell sites went down pretty quick.

I feel pretty good about 10 or 20 days off grid, but long term I would have to get to the farm over in NYS.

I can't speak to how much it helps but my computer and TV's have battery backups installed, so the power goes through them. We have frequent loss of power all year long and it seems to help out. It also gives time to shut everything down when power is lost, if someone happens to be home. miles

NICE!

8000watt generator wired to my house.
2250watt generator as a spare
1800watt generator set up to run my pellet stove. had a 1 1/2 gallon fuel tank that would only last 14hrs so i replaced the tank with a 5 gallon plastic gas can so it will run for a while.

plenty of ammo to fight off the ones that have nothing.

Logger, what's the fuel usage/hour on that unit?

This one's always tempted me, since I have the tractor size to run it easily:

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_36914_36914


Then I ran across these (Cummins air-cooled), from 13KW to 20 KW:

http://www.powertohomes.com/air-power-generator


Price is pretty good, IMHO, for a Cummins..

whelennut - sir, you are correct. Without electricity food in the freezer would go bad
in just 2 - 3 days. And yes I do have a regular type generator. Been thinking about
buying another one. One of those new Honda inverter types.

I have a Winco Tri Fuel generator. It will run on gasoline, natural gas or propane. I run it on gasoline.

It will run the whole house except for the central air. I keep it in our shed and run a long cord to the house. I an exhaust fan built into the shed to remove the fumes.

When we lose power I make believe we're living in India.
I'll run the generator for a few hours at a time to conserve gasoline. Showers and breakfast. Late lunch and then leave it on longer at night.

Works out pretty good.

Dan

That's a concern for me, too. We have a gasoline generator that we bought about the same time as this house. I've never put gas or oil into it, I'm holding it in reserve for a lengthy outage and not letting it get gunked up for short outages in the meantime.

But now I read that the output from these generators may damage even basic appliances like my freezer - not to mention our new high-efficiency furnace that resembles a computer as much as it does any previous furnace I've had.

I think I should be rigging up some sort of battery/inverter backup system and only feed the generator into that. I wish I had better advice on the route to take.

I had two years with no power, they would not run the lines from 2miles away...it finely got to me....now where I'm at (9 miles from the next guy on the line)the power fails .... a week at apop twice a year,plus many days,do to trees and snow and wind ...so I get to stay in practice !

i live off the grid have a 1000 gal cistern gravity fed for water, 10 k propane generator and wind and solar.

Propane stored in a 1000 tank. Takes about 2 gallons of gas on my gas generator to fill my 1000 gal water tank. I can go about two months on a 1000 gallons of water. I do laundry in town. Longer if needed

I can get by on wind and solar only without generator about 8 months out of year. But no microwave, hair dryer, vacuum once a week, smallish tv, satellite internet

schit does constantly break down need repairs. Better be handy

I think that most people will be screwed when they need to go into town to fill the gas tank for the generator or chain saw
and find out they can't get any.
If you do get what you need somebody could follow you home from the gas station.

Lee:

It is about 1 gallon per hour at our typical loading. It would be double that if we turned on the breakers to the hot water heaters and a bit more if we turned on our booster water pump (we have 7000 gallons of underground water storage on the hill above the house. It gravity feeds to the house at 37 psi and then we have a 3 hp pump that can boost it to 70 psi) Usually when we lose power we wait about 30 minutes and then turn on the generator. Our generator is built in Eugene OR by Wrico and is based on a Kubota 3 cylinder turbocharged diesel engine. In a power outage we mostly want light and the ability to keep our freezers and refrigerators running.

Good man! I'm surprise more folks don't get into backup solar, as solar has gotten really cheap the last 5 years.

Some of them sub-stations are running on WWII technology, and most people would be blown away to know that or see it. Just think of ALL the old telephone wiring in an old house.

4Kw Onan in the toyhauler, 25 gallons of gas. Swimming pool with 26,000 gallons of water. Mild winters in Socal help too.