Second time this year. Not a bad investment.

Ice/snow storm. Power company says 24 hours, but I'm guessing it's their default time frame until they sort out the cause.

Happiness in an ice storm is a warm generator exhaust.

Good luck.
Keep us updated.

The power company blanketed our area the last few months with fiber internet.

Them cutting all trees 25ft either side of those existing line ROWs really made a difference with our recent ice storm last 2 nights.

Power didnt even blink.


I’ve been contemplating about a 15kw propane genset just to run the basics.

The county came by a few days ago and the chainsawed a few big branches that were hanging over my service line. I'd been worried about, they did a good job and didn't wreck the tree. Chipped it all into the opposite ditch.

My only generator is Honda 2000 and that just ain't gonna cut it.

We were out of power for about 6 hours last night, pine trees and ice fog do not mix well. About the time I got the kerosene heater out and ready juice came back up...

I called the power company once over concern of a big, out of control, choke cherry tree and rouge trees growing around the transformer on my power pole. They came out and barely cut around the transformer but they did cut the crap out of a row of cottonwoods 100 yards from the house and left a giant mess for me when I got home from work.

No chipping for me.

They still make indoor kerosene heaters??

Sure do... Lowe's, Homedepot, Ace Hardware, Walmart, Amazon all still sell them and I imagine other stores still do as well.

They do and dang good thing too for backwoods redneck Tennesseans.

They do and dang good thing too for backwoods redneck Tennesseans.

Neighbor used a 2000 watt portable generator to power his gas central furnace, couple of lamps, and intermittently a refrigerator, TV and computer, during a 11 day power outage caused by 2009 ice storm.

How many watts to run heat pump, well, lights, washer dryer, etc??

I know less than nothing about electricity and don't really want to ?

Mike

How big (Kw/Watts) of a standby generator would be needed to run everything in the house, about 2100 SF? Natural gas is available on site and the AC is 240V, everything else is 120V. The longest we have been without power was 7 or 8 days (2009 ice storm) . . . but would like not to have to do that again. I am assuming (I know, not good to do) installation would be approx 1/2 of total project cost?

It only takes me about 30 minutes to grab an auxiliary heater and bring it inside for power outages. 6 fugking hours?

They probably say not for indoor use but oh well. it beats freezing

The heat pump
Check your data plate on the unit, see what amp breakers serve it.

Did you spec out the unit yourself, what heat banks are in it (kw). How many tons is the unit.


Like myself, neither of my heat pumps have kw aux heat banks, my units main purpose in winter is just their blowers. I have a hydronic OWB and water to air exchangers inside my trunk lines to work in conjunction with outdoor wood boiler.

If I lost power, I would only need enough watt output to power the blowers in my heat pump and the transfer pump/ firebox fan on my OWB to heat my home.




If youre looking to have a professional install for whole house generator, the contractor will come out and work out all of your needs and wants.

Dryers can be hogs.

In an emergency I wont be drying clothes. Or even cooking Totino’s pizza rolls in the oven.

I only care about my freezers and getting a hot shower and a few lights.

Everyone has their needs.

Thanks Slumlord

I'm the same way. Could live with simple food and gas grill but have a 220 well and can survive with gas heaters on the wall. Thinking it only adds value to the place so might be a good investment to promote somewhat normal living even if power out.

Home Depot shows everything from $5-$15K for Generac and Coleman generators.

Mike

The top 6 kerosene heaters listed here at Lowe's website state as approved for indoor/outdoor. We've had three like these (2 round ones and one flat front) over the years and all were used indoors with no problems whatsoever. Only drawback was a slight kerosene smell.

https://www.lowes.com/pl/Kerosene-h...space-heaters-Heating-cooling/4294765333

year or so ago I had an electrician wire a X/fer switch in my main panel

My Yamaha 2800I (70#) will run what I need when the power stops

2 fridges---upright freezer.....selected lights & TV system

NG pot belly stove fan...110 Greer mini split system

Yamaha vs Honda ??

Get a 22KW or 24KW. You will be glad you did. It's the same with a tractor, better to have a little more power than you need instead of almost enough. Ours is a 22KW Generac and we have an all electric house (except heating) and ours doesn't strain even during full time A/C season. My neighbor one mile up the road has a 17 and strains the guts out of his.

Might as well be in Chinese...

https://www.cat.com/en_IN/products/...-power/diesel-generator-sets.html?page=2

Have to know Hertz to?

Back on the grid. 4 hours. Hardly worth bring out the generator, 'cept it's 23f out right now.

Ours is a dual fuel portable. 8500 watts. Plumbed into the house propane. Works fine.

I picked this up cheap with a 3 cylinder Kubota engine .

Unless you are using an Inverter type generator, be cautious with your flat screen TVs and computers or anything with a non-linear power supply. They are very sensitive to out of hertz voltages. I use a tractor powered 15KW generator with a Hertz meter plugged in and set throttle to 60.1 Hz to allow for a little sag.

Go to the generac web page. You can figure the equipment you want to run and what size generator you need.
I just had a 22 kw installed. Should meet my power needs. Hasbeen

A Winco tractor PTO crate generator takes care of my electricity needs in a power outage.

We've been there, stay warm!

Been looking to buy one of their 27k single phase PTO generators.

But they have been backordered ever since hurricane season...

The Windco bought at late at night April 75. A late season ice storm knocked out the power after we had many days in January after a big blizzard.

That is the size I have, one of my better investments.

That'd be a nice one!

Ours will run a lot, we don't start the 3 horse water pump until all the other motors are going.

I have 8500/13,500 B&S gas generator. I have a disconnect switch and can plug the generator into the house, and not have to worry about back feeding down the line. My house has gas logs in the den, and they heat up most of the area we use, so I don't have to worry about heat. I can keep 2 freezers, and 2 fridges, plus water heater, and TV and some lights on, with ease. We cook with gas, so that's no worry there. I have run it in hot weather, and can run the central A/C, along with fridges and freezers. Would buy a PTO generator if I found one cheap enough.

Generacs are on backorder most places, My Generac man says 25 to 30 weeks, Northern was saying 90 days. Been that way since the hurricanes and the California fires. If you have a Generac, be sure to check the oil every day. My 22 KW holds a little less than 2 qts. including the filter and easily uses a pint in 48 hours. I know of a few cases where they ended up with no oil on the stick or shut down due to low oil pressure. My neighbor up the road kept restarting his until it wouldn't restart. Cost a bunch to get it going again. Also watch the air intake, it can stop up with leaves and the engine doesn't cool too well.

I researched it. It's got a low THD and frequency is very stable under load.

That is very smart on your part. Most never worry about that till the picture on the flat screen starts getting wavy 4 or 5 weeks after the power outage.

My power is so unstable when it's working, I've got line conditioners on all my electronics, including washer and dryer, refrigerator, etc. Power surges all the time.

That looks ferocious. Careful not to melt any wiring!

Awesome

Some times you do what ya gotta do.
I had a 6000W Generator go down on me last year up on my property in Arizona.
I knew the Generator was getting old so I had already purchased another one just in case something happened with the old one,
I picked up an 8750W as a Back up.
well the second trip up to Arizona with the new Back Up Generator my 6000W took a dump on me.
My girl was with me on that trip and she started freaking out because we did not have a Back up to the Back up Generator.
The 8750W was practically Brand New.
So we made a trip down to Kingman and picked up a 2000W Inverter Generator to ease her mind.
I want to make another trip up to Arizona in a week or so and my girl says that the 2000W Generator is not enough as a Back Up Generator.
I have been looking for another bigger Generator for a while.
I found an 12000W Duel Fuel on Craig's List Brand New in the Box for $650
I picked it up yesterday set it up and it ran every thing I hooked up to it as it should have.
My Girl is very happy now.
So I now have
(1) 2000W Inverter
(1) 6000W (Broken down until I see if it can be fixed)
(1) 8750 Electric Start
(1) 12000 Duel Fuel Electric Start
And I never mentioned my
Vantage 400 450 Amp Perkins driven Welding Machine that puts out
11500W Continuous 1PH , & 19000W Continuous 3PH
And my girl is worried about the power going down.
It is always nice to be prepared

Girlfriend? Sounds like she needs to be cabled to a hi transmission power pole. Save you some money no?
I’m kidding of course.
I run the 7k eu Honda unit from a separate building. Remote start/stop and timer. It puts out pretty clean electricity. My solar system with sine wave inverter is cleaner. Being off grid both systems get used heavily in my bear camp.

Osky

I did not know the power was out till SWMBO woke up to go pee, had to get dressed and out to the storage unit to fill the heater and let the wick get ready to light. I should have been better prepared, at least I did get fresh kerosene a couple of weeks ago. I had it going in an hour from the time I was elbowed awake. It will live filled and ready in a much closer storage place till green up.

My father-in-law, and his brother had a caterpillar electric set. Three phase, big stationary diesel six cylinder Cat engine.
The exhaust stack went through the roof like a chimney pipe.
The wires were the size of hydronic hoses.

That would have powered a small city!

Longest we’ve been out here, over the last 10 years, is maybe 15 hours. I have the little Honda 3000 unit I figure I could rotate the freezers on. Hot water would be SOL I’m guessing.

Saw someone, I think here, mention they bought a diesel welder and it doubles as their house gen. Seems like it’d be a good way to go. One small enough to “easily” load in a truck bed or cart around the yard and enough juice for some lights, fridge/chest freezer, and a hot water heater.

Diesel welders are quite expensive.


We have been out for two weeks at times.

I am getting there with the off grid stuff.
I just need to get out to Arizona more and get established
Bit by bit I am getting there.
My Vantage Welder is not transportable at the present time and I do some (not a lot) of remote welding. I picked up the 8750W to run my Dynasty TIG/Stick welder for small jobs and it works real well.
When I do these remote projects everyone on the job starts attaching all of there crap onto my Generator and it draws to much and starts effecting my machine.
So I have been looking for an larger Generator for quite a while now and this 12K appeared with the right price.
I once had a 4000W Colman living in Utah and we had an 4 State power outage. Some bird flew into a transfer station in Idaho and knocked everyone out if I remember right.
We gathered up every extension cord we could find and my neighbors hooked up to that generator.
We had 5 Refrigerators and 2 fans running for 2 days off of that little thing.
For some reason my neighbors all liked me after that.
Many years later I blew the rings out of the engine.

I do what I have to do to keep my Girl Happy (it does not take much truth be told)
Anything I can do to nudge her closer to getting out of this screwed up state that we are in right now I will do.
She is 64 and I am 60 this year so packing up and moving takes a lot of thought and planing

It's nice when the line power comes back on!

Yeah, we generally lose power once every year or so. Every time we do, it's always out for about three days. The trees here still have a bunch of snow on the branches. It just started to rain, sleet, and snow. It's supposed to rain all day and it's only 29*. If it does, there's probably a good chance I'll lose power. The trees are already drooping from the heavy wet snow we had the other day. I fired up the generator a couple of weeks ago, so I should be good to go.

I've got a 6500 Honda. When I built the house 20 years ago, I had the electrician put in a switch box with a pig tail and wired certain circuits to it. I've got heat pumps for each floor, with an oil furnace as backup on the first floor and an oil hot water heater. I can't run the heat pumps (no AC in the Summer), but I can run the furnace, hot water heater, well pump, freezer and beer refrigerator, kitchen frig., an outlet on each floor, outlet and lights in the utility room (man cave) and storage room. I'll run extension cords around so that I have TV and internet. No heat on the second floor, so I'll set up a box fan at the bottom of the steps to blow warm air upstairs. It works out pretty good. I've always managed to keep the upstairs above 60*.

Yes it is
But
My property in Arizona is 7+ miles away from the grid
For some strange reason I do not think that in my life time it will make it to my property
So I as well as others have to be prepared to supply our selves with power if we want it.
Being self sufficient has its ups and down sides.
Even tho I am on the grid right now. I supply my own power from time to time.
The power Company will not supply me with 3PH
So I have to supply my own for some of the equipment I have.
It is real nice knowing that If I need a piece of equipment I do not need to worry about 1PH or 3PH power until it gets to the real big stuff.
My welder can handle an 7HP 3PH motor and probably a 10HP (maybe)
My Air Compressor has a 3HP 3PH motor and I have a 3PH Slip Role machine to role 14ga sheet metal.
When I move up to Arizona permanently I will be set up to make a small living with my equipment pending my Vantage 400 dues not break down for the 3 PH power.
If it does I am sure that I will figure something out to power my stuff.

For about $5000 more or less, you can get a whole house natural gas generator that automatically comes on when the power goes out, and shuts off when the power comes back on. You can also get it to run about once a week for about 30 minutes to keep the battery charged and keep the engine working properly. We had one at work.

If you don't think you need a genset look at what happened in Cedar Rapids Iowa last year. I took both of mine up to help and they ran weeks on end

What brand was that?

Generac and generPAK are two

I took mine out in the county to my In-laws last night because the electric company said they had no idea how much longer the power would be out.....I got it set up and about 3 hours later their electric came back on. I told them to just keep it because we have more of the same crappy weather coming in a few days.....it will save me a trip......I'm getting together with some family members and we're buying them their own generator.

Thanks for the heads up. Hasbeen

Back on the generator again. Ice every where. Local power company has their hands full.


https://portlandgeneral.com/outages/