Prudent; Prepper or prudent prepper?

Alasgun

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Here in the Greatland it’s not uncommon to have power outages, most lasting less than 24 hrs, but depending on the time of year that can be 23 too many hours! During freezing weather the Rabbit’s heat, water pump and lights need constant power; any longer and i’d need to get the generator going.
From mid April till the first of June powers real important to keep the Toyo alive out in the greenhouse and anytime from Mid January till early May when there are starts upstairs heat and light are crucial as well.
I can (and have) moved the Honda 2000 around from one section to the other to keep things afloat but that’s a worry some, nerve wracking endeavor that i prefer to avoid so after almost 30 years, i fixed the problem.
The fix is a 20KW Generac standby generator with auto switching. These systems are pretty affordable and at the 20KW (200 amp) level everything is covered; no load shedding! I can even run the Engine lathe, Milling machine or Welder if i want to.

These days I'm not as trusting of the various entities that control or maintain the public utilities and understanding that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound or cure” i now have a greater peace of mind!

So the next time we have a little “bobble” and the Wife says “what was that” i can tell her we just went on Generator and the power will be back on quicker than the time it took to write this last sentence!
 
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Ridgerunner

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Down here we also have power outages. Hurricanes can knock the power off for weeks, thunderstorms for a day or so, and even a traffic accident can take out a power pole, those usually not for long. So a lot of people have small generators mainly to keep the fridge and freezer going but you can hear the whole house generators starting up too. One problem with generators is that they take fuel. A gas generator can be really challenging to find and keep fuel for. Gasoline doesn't store real well long term either. In the city people generally don't have big diesel or propane tanks. Down here we have a good natural gas distribution system and that natural gas distribution system is almost never knocked out.

I had a gasoline generator and found out how impractical it is for anything other than a really short outage. When we move to the new house we'll get a natural gas generator. It's already set up for it, all we have to do is buy a generator and get it installed. The previous owners took their generator with them but left the set-up.
 

flowerbug

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Prudence, prudent prepper planted peppers promptly post-haste panicking perchance peeking porky predators. sorry, i had to get that out of my system. :)

it is interesting the setups available now in case of power outages. i hope that works out well for you. i'd certainly not want to lose a full greenhouse or other plants if i had all those going. my brother has a basement that will flood if the power goes out so they have a sump-pump that will switch on and and off using water pressure as a backup for the regular sump-pump that works from electricity.
 

ducks4you

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We are lucky. When we moved here in1999/2000 (didn't actually start Sleeping here until January,) one of the previous owners had installed a generator in the corner of the basement that ran on fuel oil, which also ran the boiler. We discovered that we could hook into natural gas and paid to have a conversion. It's a manual, BUT, when the power goes out we can start our generator and switch to natural gas and run it as long as we need. It won't power Everything, but it keeps all of the lights on. It was top of the line in the 1960's, and had hardly been used.
 

Dirtmechanic

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@Alasgun what is the thd on that system? I bought a 13kw because here it is the AC not heat that is needed. We run a propane furnace and the tank can support the duel fuel generator for a week. I found out later that to correct offset power waves for electronics that a rectifier and inverter are needed and was curious at what level those devices start showing up in a whole house power supply system?
 

Alasgun

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@Dirtmechanic, im not exactly sure what your looking for so i attached the spec sheet showing features of several models.
initially i looked into a diesel set and several dealers steered me toward natural gas. After weighing the pro’s and con’s; natural gas got the nod. Of course, being on natural gas helped in that decision; no storage tanks to deal with Etc.

 
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