I’m in Howard County - south of Baltimore. Last year, Irene knocked power out here for five days. With a 2-month old that was hell. I said never again. Installed 15KW propane generator.
Yesterday - storm, big boom outside, apparently transformer explosion, just like during Irene. No power whole neighborhood. Except me here - most of the house is powered and the generator is purring (well, roaring) outside.
Bliss. Now my brother is coming over with his family to escape the heat 
Tell us more about buying/owning a backup generator. Why propane instead of diesel? What kind of routine maintenance is required? How often do you have to run the generator for maintenance purposes?
Q: why propane & not a street line with natural gas?
I’m only asking because 1) Baltimore doesn’t get quakes so the lines should never rupture and 2) during power outages, propane tanks are how people cook rapidly defrosting food. ( ie- long lines, agitated people )
I know that most utilities require a licensed electrician to install gas generators as well as a cut switch before they are OK’d for use. The reasoning is that if a homeowner loses power, the process is that the homeowner would yank the cut switch to take the house off of the grid,
and then the homeowner would start their generator. My understanding is that its done this way so the homeowner won’t accidentally fry the tech on the pole trying to fix the transformer outside (their reasonable expectation would be that the pole has been “powered down”).
Once the utility has power up and running, the homeowner would power down their generator and then safely cut back onto the local power grid.
And a month later say, “Honey? How did we use double the amount of gas we used in June this July?”:smack:
You can get the deluxe model with auto-cutover feature. The best is hospital standard, which has it up & running w/in 10 seconds. It costs more, but man, is it nice.
Had this at the ambulance garage where I used to volley. Yeah, the computer would reboot (well, until we got an UPS) & the microwave would shut off, but we could still get dispatch printouts & open the garage doors with relatively little interruption.
LOL, yes, it’s natural gas, I was mistaken. I have the gas line coming to the house, and it is just so convenient to have a continuous supply of fuel instead of having to go get it (for diesel) or have someone come and fill up buried tanks (propane).
The generator I have is Generac. It’s just a big box, about 1.5 the size of the big central AC unit, and is sitting right outside the house close to the two AC units. It turns itself on every week for 10 minutes for maintenance, and when power goes out, it automatically switches on in about a minute. Same with the power coming back on - it waits for about a minute, then switches, automatically, to central power and turns itself off.
BGE (the electricity/gas company) did have to come out and install a wider natural gas pipe so it could handle the generator. They did it for free - I guess they like the idea of me using/paying for more gas.
The generator is not a full-house one, it can cover about 16 (I think) fuse switches, so before it was installed I had to go through the house and decide what half of it I wanted to have powered. I think I chose wisely - although I miss the upstairs AC zone, but the generator was not powerful enough to support both AC units.
Why Generac? When I was researching this before buying, I found that for home use, Generac is really the only game in town. The few competitors are either double the price (and the price is steep enough) or are rebranded Generacs anyway.
The cost to run it for 24 hours is, I think (I calculated it a year ago) about $20-$30. I also have a maintenance contract with the guys that installed it for me, they come out twice a year, change oil, filters, and whatever else - costs about $400/year.
It is an expensive toy and (from what a neighbor of mine who installed the same model I did at the same time and is selling his house now told me) doesn’t really add to the value of the house. But you know what - when it is 100 outside and I am in my air-conditioned house, it is worth every penny.
My only problem with it - apparently the power is not sine waves. So my office UPS is complaining once in a while and beeping, and cut out once. But that’s about it.
By the way, power is still out and there is no estimated repair time when you call the electric company line.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I am sure that ALL generator power is pure sine wave. That’s the nature of the generation process. The only way you can get away from this is to power your house using batteries with an inverter that provides a square wave form that approximates a sine wave.
I have this type (square wave) at a vacation cabin, and the only thing that doesn’t work properly are several battery chargers for small appliances (drill, etc.). I crutch this by running the auxiliary generator while charging those devices. Never any problem in twenty five years.
BTW, I have my regular house power backed up with a 3,300 watt gasoline generator that I put in after the Great Inauguration Day storm of 1993. Never have any problems with this, either, and when the power goes out I am a HERO to my wife.
BBTW, I have found that it is quite easy to be a HERO wifewise. After a few years of marriage, they have lowered their expectation so much that when you do pull something off they are very greatly impressed.
You could be right. Then I have no idea why my UPS is complaining…
I have a similar, 8 year old, Generac unit. Mine runs on propane as I live in the country and there are no gas lines.
Mines an air cooled 3600RPM unit. Fairly noisy compared to an 180RPM water cooled unit, but significantly cheaper to purchase.
I had to have the starter replaced last year and the fellow tuned it up at the same time.
A good investment I’d say.
I installed a 15kw in preparation for Y2K. I’d been wanting one for a while, but that’s how I talked my wife into it!
The sky didn’t fall new years eve, but we had an ice storm a month later, and bingo - my kids are the only ones for miles watching movies and playing Nintendo for about a week. That and having heat made it all worthwhile.
We’ve had several winter and summer storm outages lasting from a day to 10 days here in Atlanta since then, and I can’t imagine why any homeowner wouldn’t drop the cost of a riding lawnmower to keep the family safe. Florida? It’s a no-brainer.
Same for the entire Eastern seaboard.
It was 106 today. Imagine if power consumption started causing some brownouts or worse in your area this week. We have a pool, but you can only stay out so long!
If you’re on this board, you’re smart enough to A) get a generator, and B) install a transfer switch. That’s the doo-hicky that keeps you from frying the nice power workers down the road when you are running your rig.
If you’re a handy guy - or gal - who is good with tools and knows some electrical rules, you can put this in yourself. As mentioned above, there may be some companies or areas that require a pro, but if you can install a bathroom fan or re-wire your basement, a pre-wired switch is a piece of cake.
Good on Terr for keeping the baby comfy.
Kudos to both You and Ducati for bringing up new furnace/boilers dirty little secret: You need electricity to run/control them. Sure, silly point to make when its triple digits outside temperature wise. Less so when its Jan or Feb like what happened to Ducati
(and to me last October with the freak snow storm when leaves were still on the trees). Granted, I can’t afford one, so I make sure I always have a full ring of firewood & 2-3 cartons of Duraflame logs for the fireplace. Its not much, but it’ll keep some heat inside a rapidly cooling house.
If I could, I’d get one. If you can justify the expense, I’d recommend the reader get one. Its not about email & internet or cable TV. Its about having a warm lit shelter where you can prepare food, shower, and wash your clothes when you need to.
very jealous of Both of you
We lost power for four days five years ago. Lost everything in the refrigerator. We were able to borrow a small generator twice a day to keep the freezer going. Purchased a 7.5 kwh generator. It will run all the 110 circuits and one 220. We can run the well, stove top or the water heater. Living out in the country it’s very nice to be able to cook dinner instead of heating soup on the wood stove.
No Ducati, it is not a good idea for anyone who happens to be good with a wrench or can hang a ceiling fan to be installing an emergency generator and automatic transfer switch. This is serious business. Hire an electrical contractor.
I quite agree with this. I bought one when installing the generator mentioned in an above post, figuring that as I can at least read instructions installing this would be no problem. Well, I took it out of the box, opened it, and said “My God there’s a thousand tiny little wires in there!”. Immediately called an electrician who put it in for a minimal charge ($150 IIRC).
Even my son-in-law, who can rig up anything, took that same route after looking at what he was getting into.
The danger of a DIY job here is that you can not only burn your house down, but you can electrocute an innocent lineman who is down the street trying to repair the problem.
I’m happy for you and your generator. I rent and am not installing one here. Power was restored at home after about 30 hours. It’s still out at my business.
Here’s my new thought about generators. Since we do seem prone to prolonged outages in this area it makes sense to have one, particularly with children young enough not yet equipped to “suck it up”. But, you should have to invite your generatorless neighbors in for 30 minutes of conditioned air for every 10 hours you run it.
This notion started last night, about 10 hours before my lights came back on. Three was a generator running at the house next door. It sounded like a jet engine idling IN my bedroom. At least it did until about 11:00pm,when it stopped, apparently before the neighbors intended it to. Then there was a (you’ll pardon me) heated argument about who should have done what to keep it going. Without the usual buffer of white noise that also sounded as if it was going on in my bedroom.
If you do get a generator, do purchase a “quiet” one. Honda makes some dandies, as do Yamaha and I’m sure some others. My generators (at home and at the cabin) are both of this type, and if the windows are closed you can’t even hear them running. Windows open gives a sort of low hum, not at all obtrusive.
Not loud enough to annoy the neighbors, but loud enough to say “See I’ve got a backcup generator and you don’t! NeenerNeenerNeener.”.
My neighbors all picked up and left (I don’t blame them - on my 2nd floor, where the AC is not running, it’s 92 degrees). There is no one to invite.
46 hours so far.
Come to think of it, I thought I heard screaming in the distance on installation day.
Clearly there’s a level of experience and competence required to install a transfer switch, but I didn’t want everyone to think it’s an automatic electrician call.
My Reliance TS came with an installation DVD that, to a handy and experienced mechanic and handyman like me, made it as easy as pie.
That said, if anyone who sees such an instruction video and still has some self-doubt - or knows full well it’s out of their league - Stop and call a pro! Electricity does like to bite the uneducated and inexperienced, and at $150, it’s well worth the safety and peace of mind.
There are about 80,000 people in my area that would have loved to hear this advice last Thursday. The storm was Friday at 3pm and they aren’t expecting to have power fully restored until Wednesday at midnight.
It might just be the frequency. It’s going to be close to 60 hz of course, but it won’t be as well regulated as grid power, especially with changing loads. A computer won’t actually mind the change for its purposes, but I’ve found that some UPSes will kick in for even a small deviation from the norm.
We used to lose power in my area (rural mid Michigan) a lot. If you go 5 houses either way from our place, you can probably find 7-8 houses with generators. When we came home after a weekend out-n-about and found we had no power, and had to pitch a freezer full of food, we bit the bullet and got one, too. It’s a gas-powered portable, 5500 watts (I think), putting out 110 and 220 volts. It powers everything in the house, but not all at once. I can run the furnace, lights, sump pump, well pump, etc. If I control what gets used when, I can run the microwave, washer, and other electronical doodads. I don’t run the AC off the generator - I think it sucks down too much power.
Now that the local utility FINALLY trimmed a bunch of branches away from the power lines, we don’t lose power nearly as much. But the generator still lives in the garage, standing by. I start it every 3-4 months, just to be sure it’s still alive. The gas tank has a healthy squirt of fuel stabilizer in it, and I drain it and use it in the lawn mowers once a year, and replace with fresh fuel. So far, so good.