Sandy Left me Powerless for Several Days

Just a point of warning; I would stay away from connecting with neighbors. There are too many potential problems. One being who takes care of the maintenance/upkeep/repair costs? What happens when one of the original neighbors moves and the next person doesn't want to participate, or is a pain in the butt? If you want to help people from your generator, that would be a better set up. Just understand the human dynamics that come into play when there is a bit of traumatic event involved.

It is better to be independent. Here in Kansas we occasionally have to do without power for a variety of reasons. We have purchased a stand alone 3500W generator and that takes care of us quite adequately in the winter time. We can't run everything all the time but you just pick the priority items and run those as needed. The fridge and chest freezer don't need to be plugged in all the time, they can typically go for a day without being plugged in. We have a 10 ga. cord coming into the house and plug in cords from that point. We plug in the furnace (propane), lights, etc. It isn't perfect but it works pretty good till the power comes back on.

You also discover a bit how much you can do without for a period of time.

The ideal set up would be a generator that can service the whole house, with an Automatic Transfer Switch. That gets kind of pricey for the small amount of use it gets.

I would look into something that runs on natural gas, but would be easy to switch over the jets to propane if needed. With a backup propane tank, you would have the best of both worlds.

If you have access to the jets, converting over to your propane source could be done in less than a half hour.

http://www.generac.com/Residential/QuietSourceSeries/

I strongly agree with the last part of your reply and would like to expand on it:

As the ex-chief of a fire dept in a suburban/rural area of NJ I have seen several incidents where improper use of generators have caused extreme problems. Most recently during our 9 day loss of power due to Sandy a homeowner lost his Mc Mansion. He was operating a 5Kw generator in his attached garage located under part of the house built on a hillside. He had also stored numerous 5 gal cans of gasoline in the garage along with his cars (we had gas rationing due to Sandy). As he was refueling the generator he spilled some gasoline on the generator and the floor. It ignited and in his panic he dropped the plastic jerry can of gasoline onto the fire. He next called 911 and the first dispatch went out as a "generator fire in an attached garage with other fuel containers nearby". The second dispatch 2 minutes later went out as "attached garage under the house structure fire". Despite the fire company returning from another call about 1 mile away at the time the first engine arrived to find half the house engulfed in flames. Compounding the problems with the fire was that the area does not have hydrants and water had to be transported from a mile away in tankers. Needless to say the only things left of the house were the chimney, the foundation, and the storage shed located in the back yard.

Have others considered how they are going to obtain gasoline or diesel if there is no electricity at the pumps? This was a problem with Sandy. Many people who were fueling generators ran out of fuel during the first few days because the gas stations had no electricity for their pumps or they were waiting for tanker deliveries.

How can you store gasoline in sufficient quantities safely? 5 gal cans in sufficient quantities is dangerous. There are bulk systems but they are expensive and have the potential for the gasoline to go bad due to prolonged storage. Is the risk worth potentially losing your house? Natural gas with a permanent installation is much cheaper than replacing a house.

As an aside, the homeowner who lost his house left and checked into a hotel within 5 minutes of starting the fire. Probably the smartest thing he did!

Good luck, Old Salt

The best guarantee that you'll never get hit by another hurricane like that, is to buy a big backup generator.

That's the way it would work for me.

Here's a nice, quiet alternative source: fuel-cell generator with available waste heat recovery for water heating:

http://www.cfcl.com.au/BlueGen/

Mark Bingham
Relativity PL

What about using Solar Panels for such calamities. Solar water heater for space heating and shower. This will need an insulated storage. It will be cheapest and when Power is there also,you can use it instead of electricity. Investment will payoff in few months.

For Lighting and other loads eg Refrigerator and microwave, charging of gadgets ( for kids) you may install solar electric panels with maximum two days back up.( taking cloudy days for 2 days). May be a 5 Kw peak can provide around 25 Kwh/units of energy per day.

For long cloudy days ,how about charging the battery by the car engine?

How about fully equipped Caravan at backyard ?

Cheapest option is a portable 1 or 2Kw gasoline operated generator. It can be used with manual changeover. It is portable enough to carry in the boot of car.

Many options.

What about Heating by Solar water heater and Electricity by Solar panel with battery back up?

There is one option that seems to have been missed if you use a gas generator you can also purchase a conversion kit to run it off of propane that way you will have a multi-fuel backup.You can run it on gas till you run out then switch to propane for the duration or it runs out. I am not sure if you can also run one of the conversions on natural gas as well but it might be another alternative fuel if it can be done just by changing the jets/orifices, that may also be another alternative. I myself have solar panels and run off grid most of the time. I am working on increasing my battery bank to last me at least a week with little or no sun. Plus we are working on a tower to install a 1500 watt windmill, when it is not charging the batteries it can divert the energy into the water heater and when the wind gets too fast you can bog it down by putting the energy to the water heater and slow the windmill down or a restive load to burn off excessive energy and slow the RPM's. Here in tornado alley you stay prepared for anything from season to season. Also on the wind mill I am also including a disc brake to totally stop it from turning in winds above 65 mph so as to not damage the blades or the generator head when the wind speeds hit the upper limits usually about the time you see Dorthy flying by with Toto in the basket.

I just thought I'd throw a link in here. I've seen these advertised lately, but I can't say much about them.

Here on Ft. Lauderdale Beach we have some pretty nasty wind storms in addition to the Hurricanes every few years.

Outages are getting fewer and fewer, as the system weak points get beefed up. This year despite Sandy, concurrent neap tides and sand closed beachfront roads, the famed Boat Show went on, 2 blocks from the Beach.

Over the past 20 years I experienced two outages. One lasted almost a week, second one lasted 2 or 3 days, Shorter interruption. During Sandy 2 neighbors had wind driven rain pushed back thru window A/C units, amounting to less than a quart or so of water in their apartments.

During the first outage 11 or 12 years ago, I borrowed a barely liftable portable gasoline unit. running 2 or 3 hours out of 12, was able to keep the fridge cold and the several UPS units charged up, so that I had phone, answering machine, computer constantly available. Some neighbors bitched about is fairly noisy operation. Even one that I "time shared" the generator with! I had a portable propane camp stove, and several lanterns, some kerosene or "lamp oil" and several battery powered lights. Getting and transporting the gas was a major pain and source of worry carrying gas in a 3/4 full can in the car, risk of fumes, explosion etc

So, I spent about $800 to buy a slightly smaller Honda unit, known to be ultra quiet. It still is in the box. The last need was over before i was able to get a can of gas, after trying to siphon some from the car, Filler pipe has some "anti-siphon" gizmo that defeated ME!!!

So, my experience taught me to not worry about the 50 or 100 bucks of stuff in the damn fridge. Get bigger ups-es. And look for a buyer of the Honda, Oh yes, I did buy about a dozen new LED flashlights. Be Happy, don't worry so much, drink all the milk on day 1 and 2, then water from the toilet tank, flushing the potty with a bucket from the swimming pool. Enjoy going to bed when it gets dark.

The first question for yourself is why the whole house? What do you really need in a power out situation? If you want to pretend that nothing is wrong and go on living normally look for something 220V, 60-75A, auto transfer switch, monthly load test. Natural gas is good as long as the lines are hooked up. If you want to stay in the house and survive, decide what you need. Then 5-7.5KW, portable, plug in manual transfer switch, gas is good if you can keep about 30 gal. on hand and rotate it through other equipment to keep it fresh. Or the same unit on propane.

To answer your questions, Warranty, how long, by engine hours or month/year. Installation, by seller or subcontractor. Ask about the monthly test, most are no load,just runs the unit. The box stores sell stand bys but I would suggest going to someone who does it for a living.

Not only your home has become powerless but due to Sandy many homes has become powerless.