We have a slightly smushed generator [tree got pissed off and dropped a limb onto it. Luckily we got power back last night so it wasn’t that big a deal going for 24 hours without power for the freezer.]
When we see a storm headed out way, we get 2 5 gallon jerry cans of gas for the generator, we don’t normally worry about needing to haul water for the poultry, we have a sizable hot tub on the deck we dip out of for the birds and outside critters. We normally have an 85 gallon overpack drum with flushing water at hand, and a 55 gallon drum that once held red wine for shipping so it is potable water. Our generator does not do 220 so we can not run the well pump on it, so we sort of don’t benefit from flushing toilets without manually transporting water around, but we also don’t lose the contents of our fridge and freezers, and have lighting. We normally just cook either on my woodstove, or outside on the grill as it has a side burner. mrAru tends to keep the propane for the grill topped up almost all the time. Other than when we had snowmageddon and the roads were not plowed for 4 days we rarely have issues getting gas for the generator. In a pinch, we do not need to run the genny all the time - just enough to keep the fridge and freezer chilled down. We are more than happy going medieval around the house.
I’m in the District of Columbia, and I don’t think any of my neighbors have them. We have buried power lines so we don’t lose power generally. We didn’t lose it during the derecho or Sandy. I know people in the suburbs and quite a few of them do have generators or are thinking of getting them installed after their experiences during teh derecho.
I’m in suburban Chicago, as well, and yeah, the summer of 2011 sucked. We lost power on six separate occasions: three of those were for at least 24 hours, and two were for over 2 days. I’m in an older neighborhood with lots of mature trees, and the trees are nearly always the reason for the outages – ComEd has really not done as much tree pruning along their lines as they should.
This past summer, we only lost power twice, though one of those was, again, for two days. We’ve lived here for 16 years, and it’s definitely gotten to be a bigger / more frequent problem in the past four or five.
I’d guess that at least one in three houses in my area has a generator, because everyone’s affected by outages so often…but I’d also guess that the majority of those purchases have been in the past couple of years. I even have one friend, a block away, who invested in a Generac full-house generator – it runs on natural gas, is hard-wired into his electrical system, and automatically turns on when the power is out for longer than 60 seconds. It ran him about $5000, but he considers it to be worth it.
Yeah, 2011 made me seriously consider it; we had 3-4 outages of a day or more and considered ourselves lucky compared to others. 2012? Nothing so far. I would have felt like an idiot, except that I know ComEd’s track record; they are just not into maintaining infrastructure.
My husband and I did invest in some small solar-powered charging options for small electronics, at least.
My home in Hawaii is off grid and powered by a mini hydro electric system in the stream that runs by the property. We get between 120 and 150 inches a rain a year so there is always water flowing in the stream. It beats solar because the stream runs 24/7/365.
Here’s a video on how it works if you happen to have a stream on or next to your property.
I did a lot of walking through Montgomery county suburbs after the derecho, and there were a surprising amount of generators. I think in some suburbs it’s become a bit of a status item, along time lines of industrial kitchen fixtures, SUVs and ride-on lawn mowers.
I have to take a little issue with that. Up here, none of us really wanted one. As I said previously, the first 10 years here, I think all my neighbors would have agreed with me- it would be a waste. Most of us have purchased ours during one of these events, not in anticipation.
As to gas: At least here, we always have an inkling that it might happen, so I make sure all the cars are full and I have about 20 gallons in cans. That’ll keep me going a good while. If I don’t use it, I just put the gas into the cars.
We’re in the woodsy area of CT and the house had a site generator when we bought it a couple of years ago. The neighbors all smirked at it - “Oh, the doctor had that put in years ago and I don’t think it’s run for 15 minutes.”
Welllll… come Hurricane Irene, we had power. None of our sportin’, quad-ridin’, flannel-wearin’ neighbors did. Come the October snowstorm, we had power… our neighbors sent the wives and kids to stay with mom in PA and showered down at the high school for eight days. Come Sandy… we had power, and a goodly number of our neighbors had added portable generators to their lineup of sporting toys. No one laughs at our Generac any more.
But to answer the question, damned few here had generators a year ago last summer. I’d guess around 80% of the houses in our area do now.
I’ve only been here a couple of years, but the moment the derecho hit, there were plenty of generators running, and no end of Facebook brag-posts about how many electric items people were charging. I’m sure it became a status thing because of real events, but it’s still an expensive item that is only useful a few days of the year that did not used to be a typical thing for a suburban home to own.
There is nothing wrong with luxury goods. You gotta spend your money on something, and generators, SUVs and industrial kitchen appliances are objectively useful. But I do think there is a bit of a “keeping up with the Jones’s” element. Nobody wants to be the dark house on the block.
It isn’t really a status item. It’s that Pepco has become less reliable over the years. I don’t recall listing power like people did during the derecho she I was growing up into the DC suburbs.
If I lived in a neighborhood that loses power for multiple days every year, I’d get a generator as well.
Bullshit. If you have a basement and a sump pump it is a necessity. Unless you want to spend thousands getting rid of mold And redoing the basement every time the power goes out. Many people were scrabbling for that reason after Irene and the snowstorm last year. Plenty of friends were running lines to neighbors pumps. It had nothing to do with status. And no I do not have one.
Wouldn’t it be fairly consistent then, from neighborhood to neighborhood? Neighborhoods where people generally have basements would have them and neighborhoods without them would not? And wouldn’t this be a much older phenomena?
I’m new to basements, so that may be what I’m not getting.
Not really. I think every house in NYC has a basement, but not every neighborhood has the same chance of flooding and power outages. My cousins live about two miles south of me, and their streets and basements were full of water and they have no power. Five miles south of them is a community where houses are built on stilts .Broad ChannelMy neighborhood had no flooding and the power outages are localized and due to downed trees.
Yeah my girlfriend has a basement and a sump but its usually bone dry. She does not have a generator. If things go the way I think it will and I move in there I will buy one. Her house tends to get power back late compared to areas around her. Just to keep the food from spoiling.
Not “necessity”, perhaps, but a good idea to have some kind of backup mechanism (I started a thread on that very subject as Sandy was bearing down on us).
We’ve been in this house for 10 years. 3 hurricanes now, plus that derecho this summer (we’re DC-suburban also). Lost power for a bit during Isabel but no water in the basement - I guess the worst of the rain had passed by the time the power died, or we just got lucky with the groundwater, or something. No problems with the next hurricane (Irene) - no power lost etc. Nor during the derecho. We did lose power on one other occasion, for well over 24 hours, but fortunately it wasn’t raining.
So in our case, the risk didn’t seem especially high; all those and we’ve only once had a water problem.
It may well be a status thing in some areas, however, especially if you’re in an area where such things are pretty rare (as with ours).
I really think that in 20 years, having a sump backup system will be as commonplace in new homes, as having a sump at all is now. When I was growing up, a sump pump was highly unusual - as far as I know, only one house in our entire neighborhood had one (and that house apparently had been dug right into some underground springs or something). As I understand it, our county must have mandated them in new construction some time in the late 80s but I’d bet a lot of older homes don’t have 'em at all.
Chiming in from Ohio, I will concur that neighborhoods where basements are prone to flooding are more likely to have generators than ones where they are not. We’re on top of a hill. The only way our house is flooding is if floods reach Biblical-level proportions. In our old house, however, the basement would have an inch of water in it every time there was a heavy storm. (We did not have a generator because we were extremely broke then, but if the sump pump were an issue at this house, we certainly would have a generator.)
Be aware that generators require maintenance. Start it at least once a month and let it run 10 minutes. Fuel stabilizer in the gas.
Even then, you’ll eventually need servicing. The carb will get gunked up. Thats why the monthly start is so helpful. It tells you when there’s a problem.
The only thing worse than sitting in the dark with no power. Is…
sitting in the dark with no power and a dead generator in the garage.
If you’re serious about having a standby generator, get one that runs on propane. They store longer and have far fewer fuel and maintenance issues. I saw a portable Generac with a saddle for a standard 20-pound propane tank at Sam’s Club for around $500, much the same price as a decent gas generator. Propane has somewhat lower fuel density than gas, but if you have three 5-gallon tanks around (maybe one on the grill, one in the generator and one spare) you should be able to run indefinitely by taking two tanks at a time for refill - and I’d bet that propane will be available in most areas long after gas has run out.
