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Home Generators (or How DTE Energy Ruined My Holidays)
We are among the thousands without power in the northeast. Day four actually, and we've decided to look into generators so that next year's New Year's doesn't involve fears of frozen pipes bursting and hypothermic babies and cats. At the very least we just need enough juice to run the furnace blower, but if we're going to lay down the cash I'd like to know what it would take to get a little more power ... like enough to run a fridge, router, laptop and lightbulb. I know nothing about this sort of thing, but figure there are more than a few experts out there so I call out to the wisdom of the mob. What am I looking for? How difficult is the wiring? What will it cost me? On the extreme edge, what would it take to get off the grid entirely? (And on a side note, thanks to DTE Energy for telling us we had power when we didn't, for losing the ticket for our neighborhood, for telling us it would be back every single day when it wasn't, and for the helpful DTE representative who warned us that our pipes might burst. Thanks.)
Thermally driven fans are available for wood stoves. The ones I have seen mount inline with the exhaust pipe and use the thermal temperature difference to operated the fan but stove mounted ones for just circulating air around the stove are available also.
Car Generator
Eschew Obfuscation
Make sure the generator is in a locked location, or at least chained down. They have a tendency to sprout legs during emergencies."
I 100% agree! That's how most everyone along the coast does it durning hurricane season when they hit and take power out here. I was at a friends house during Gustav near Baton Rouge...and he had one generator we did fine on. I'm not sure the size, but, will try to ask and come back with an answer.
But, with this one generator...we kept a window unit AC going (hot and muggy is our problem during that time of year)...we could run his 50" LCD flatpanel tv...along with DVD and stereo for entertainment...we'd also plug in cell phones, charge computers...etc. I know we had to unplug something occasionally to plug the fridge(s) and chest freezer in, to keep food good, but, over all it worked well.
The things get pretty darned LOUD tho....but, I've heard that the Honda ones...at a premium price, and very, very quiet. Just make sure to have plenty of gasoline stocked up, and oil. We actually ran through our gas supply...and built a little dc pump out of a fuel pump, hooked to a hose and run off a car battery...to siphon gas out of their large Surburban SUV. Now..I am not a fan of SUV's....but, the thing did serve well as a tanker truck for quite a number of days. After the gas stations got back online, and actually got gas delivered to them...we filled up all our tanks...and the SUV tanks to brimming....and had plenty to last us till the electricity came back on.
Thank goodness for gas to cook on, as well as for the water heater....and we also used the propane gas grill outside s few times too....kinda turned into a fun camping trip with them!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Its not only "probably illegal", in most places in the US its very illegal. The cord used to back-feed a house that way is referred to as a "dead man cord". The reason for that is because besides back-feeding your house, if you don't throw a transfer switch you are also back-feeding part of your neighborhood's wiring. This will make the linemen who are repairing that wiring at the least very unhappy, and in all likelihood it will make them very dead.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
You can use a Toyota Prius to generate power enough to keep essentials operable.
I think that the first thing I would do is figure out what circuit breakers go to essential services (that you need in a cold weather power outage) and carefully label those fuses. Then run the power to your box with only those circuits hot.
This is not something you can just throw together, this is something you should get a licensed electrician to put together for you. The link to the article should tell any electrician what kind of power is coming off the Prius and that should give him ideas about how to set things up.
I highly recommend that your Prius have plenty of gasoline before you set it up as your generator. But this article suggests one person was able to supply his home with three days worth of power on five gallons of gasoline.
Of course you'll have to take the other car to work.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Good advice. I have a generator and a manual transfer switch set up, and I did the "define needs" process, too. Since we'd just had an ice storm that knocked out power for two days, I knew exactly what I would've liked to run off the generator.
In my case, I'd have a generator anyway, because it's permanently mounted in my camper (I probably wouldn't bother otherwise). Also, the generator in the camper was new; I'd just had it replaced a few months before the ice storm, so being able to use it for backup power was a nice bonus.
I bought a small 15 amp transfer switch for four circuits and had it installed. I verified the installation using a multimeter to make sure I wouldn't be electrocuting anyone and to make sure everything operated the way I expected. It took half an hour or so but now I KNOW there are no problems.
The generator can produce 2500 watts, but I went with a 15-amp transfer switch because that's all I needed for the circuits I wanted to power. Since my generator isn't that large (20 amps max), a 15-amp switch was fine and I knew I wouldn't be able to power more than one, possibly two, circuits at once. No problem.
The four circuits I chose were:
1. Furnace fan (I have natural gas heat)
2. Kitchen lighting/outlets
3. Master bedroom and bathroom lighting/outlets
4. Refrigerator
The main point was to be able to keep food, keep the house from freezing, be able to use the bathrooms, and be able to sleep in the master bedroom (possibly using an electric space heater if necessary). I actually got more than I really needed, but only because my house has relatively few circuits wired and a lot of things are on the same circuits (the house was built in 1964).
Why not just stay in the camper? Because, during the winter, I have it winterized, so I can't use the water system, and it sits at an odd angle in the driveway, making it uncomfortable to sleep in. I did make some spaghetti one night during the outage (propane stove in the camper), but with everything so far off level, you really have to be careful what you cook and what pan you use.
Everyone seems to have their own method of doing this. It seems to me it's a rather simple process:
1) Go to Home Depot store or website.
2) Plunk down cash (or credit/debit card) for THIS plus installation costs.
3) Enjoy whole house LP or NG powered emergency backup power.
See? That wasn't so hard now, was it? And nobody got electrocuted in the process either.
(yeah, yeah, I skipped the stupid ??? -> Profit! meme. So sue me.)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Things like furnaces are usually hardwired into the house electrical system - so you can't just "unplug" it and plug it in to an extension to your generator.
So wire up your furnace so it plugs into an outlet. Mine is exactly like this (already done by a previous owner). It's easy enough to do yourself, and will save you a lot of effort if the power ever goes out when it's cold.
As a result, many people build themselves a "male to male" extension cord
Sounds inherently dangerous. I'd rather not someone trip on an extension cord and pull out a live wire with live ends ends sticking out.
AccountKiller
1. Always have everything turned off when working with a cord with two male plug ends. Otherwise, when one end is plugged and the other isn't, you have a nice arc welder. A few extra minutes of running up and down your stairs may save your life.
2. Let the generator warm up first (see #4), then shut down and g to #1. Otherwise, when the furnace blower surges and your generator dies, you get to undo/redo #1 a few more times.
3. Typical master switch on your breaker panel is not really designed to prevent electricity inside your house from going back out onto the grid. This means, you might actually injure the people trying to fix your electricity. Lawsuits? might just want to wire in a outlet for your furnace and run only the furnace and fridge etc. directly from generator bypassing house wiring.
4. Most generators in the 3500 W range are really alternators, not generators. This means as long as your generator is perfectly tuned and running at the correct RPM the frequency of your electricity is good. Otherwise, not so much. So, I generally recommend run your furnace and your fridge/freezer, and not your expensive electronics that prefer clean electricity.