Home Power Generators...For Emergencies...

[fred&nermal]

Better to spend the money on a generator than lose $400 worth of food in the fridge and freezer!

When we had a blackout for 3 days here in the peak of summer heat, a lot of people were quickly barbequing all their meats from the freezer so as not to totally waste it. I know a lot of restaurants suffered from lost frozen foods.

 

[hilda>^..^<]

Originally Posted by Fred&Nermal

Better to spend the money on a generator than lose $400 worth of food in the fridge and freezer!

You make a great point here. We'll definitely be getting one very soon.

One thing I need to find out about though...and those of y'all who have septic systems might be able to help me with this one...our aerobic septic system has a motor and a fan that just HAS TO keep running (for obvious reasons...ewww) but if there is a power outage...what happens to it? I can't imagine that it would be ok for it not to run for several days. I need to check with South Texas Environmental Systems about this...they are the company that installed it at this house. I wonder if we would have to somehow hook it up to our generator??? But there is no...power cord or anything like that...how would we do that? I'll just call them and ask.

Hilda >^..^<

 

[jcat]

It's easy to become complacent when your power lines are all underground, and outages are rare. However, last month we had a major hurricane, followed a week later by a blizzard that paralyzed the whole region for at least a day. Nothing in our house functions without electricity. I grew up in the northeastern U.S., and we always had petroleum lamps, kerosene heaters, plus a fireplace with plenty of wood to tide us over when the weather was bad. I really feel as if we're ill-prepared here.

 

[hilda>^..^<]

I so wish this house had a fireplace...very strange that it doesn't. Not that we need them here in Texas, but so many homes just have them added as a sort of 'feature' I guess you'd call it. Our previous home of 10 years had one...we rarely ever used it

but our power never went out either...so it'd be great to have that here. I love the huge ones featured at Cracker Barrel restaurants...wonderful!


Hilda >^..^<

 

[fred&nermal]

Originally Posted by Hilda>^..^<

You make a great point here. We'll definitely be getting one very soon.

One thing I need to find out about though...and those of y'all who have septic systems might be able to help me with this one...our aerobic septic system has a motor and a fan that just HAS TO keep running (for obvious reasons...ewww) but if there is a power outage...what happens to it? I can't imagine that it would be ok for it not to run for several days. I need to check with South Texas Environmental Systems about this...they are the company that installed it at this house. I wonder if we would have to somehow hook it up to our generator??? But there is no...power cord or anything like that...how would we do that? I'll just call them and ask.

Hilda >^..^<

Hmm. I wonder if you have to get an electrician in to wire it so you could plug it into a geny. I don't know a lot about genys, but is there a way you can hook up your whole house to one via the circuit box? Or wire it to only a few specific circuits? Or would that require too big a geny?

Do you have a sump pump as well. Or is just the septic? I guess it would get rather smelly without the fan. I assume your water pump is electrically powered as well?

 

[catsallover]

The septic system company will be able to tell her about the plug, but since, I will assume, there has to be a breaker in the box for it, yes, an electrician would be able to come out and install a plug and all for the generator to be directly plugged into the house's electrical system- the very important part of that being, that he would set it up so it doesn't -hmm, can't remember the term... well, basically, send the electricity out of the house,to the power lines and electocute the power company workers who are working on the lines. That would be bad

.

An electrician would probably be able to tell you how big a generator to get for what you want running off of it (like for us, it would be the refridgerator, a few lights, the hot water heater, and my medical equipment. So that would involve roughly 3-4 breakers. That's pretty much all my miniscule knowledge about generators in a nutshell