I had a dream last weekend about wanting a generator. I’m a geek, though, so wanting a generator is a year-round thing for me. Still, I don’t normally dream of one. And last night I had a dream about charging a armful of rechargeable batteries.
I suppose I’m wary of Tropical Storm Hanna. And Ike’s (or Josephine’s) follow-up act could really be devastating if Hanna hits and loosens the soil considerably. Any trees that might withstand Hanna would be pushovers for Ike or Josephine.
Keep an eye on the weather, y’all. It doesn’t look like this will be a dry hurricane season around here.
They were actually selling one in the grocery store the other day, 498 bucks (Kroger). I didn’t ask if I could get a Kroger discount.
I’m thinking one that is based on a Honda engine instead of the ubiquitous Briggs and Straton. I noticed that my neighbor’s super powerful deck washer (with a Honda engine) runs longer than my less powerful washer with its Briggs and Straton power plant.
Nerds Unite!
Just a warning from someone who has been there, done that. After a hurricane, most of your gas stations will not have power so getting gas for the generator can be a real problem. After Wilma hit South Florida, the closest available gas was here in Brevard County. (3 hour drive from Ft Lauderdale.) The turnpike had gas but a 6 hour wait and a max of 10 gallons. Gas containers were also in short supply – The Highway Patrol caught people filliing large coolers with gas in Brevard county and driving 3 hours south. (FL gas stations are now required by law to have generators.)
We’ve lost power twice here in Richmond and quite a bit out at the lake house. I’ve thought about it mostly for the lake house where the cooperative can take several inconvenient hours to get around to fixing things. The biggest inconvenience there is running the well so we can flush toilets. That leads to its own set of problems as it runs on 220… Since everything is at least 45 minutes away there, having spare containers of gas usually isn’t the problem.
At least one neighbor with a generator out there told me that when he finally really needed to use one, it just sprayed oil all over his deck and quit. So, I’m thinking the “cheap” route is probably not the smartest.
We actually have a Honda generator. My wife bought it (FEMA paid for it) the day power came back on after 12 days without and we have never used it. Supposedly it’s very quiet and very efficient but the thing has such a small gas tank that it will only run 3 hours before it needs filling or so the manual says. I’m wondering if I couldn’t mount an old motorcycle tank above it somehow to increase the time between fills. I have a small window AC unit that I would like to run at night so it would be cool enough to sleep.
It’s not much fun after a hurricane with no power and no AC. Usually there is no wind after the first day and it gets very hot and muggy and then all of the neighbors run very loud generators so sleeping with the windows open is sort of hard without earplugs. The hurricane took out some of our screens so we couldn’t even open all of the windows or the bugs would eat us alive.
Our neighbor is a vet and her office was right next to the fire station so she got power there fairly quickly. We were so desperate for AC we all went to the vet office and slept on an air mattress on the floor of the exam room.
I wonder if you could run the well pump using a transformer to step the 120 up to 220? We used to have some really big ( 1 or 2 KVA)transformers to go the other way in Germany when I worked there. Expect there are a few on E-bay that military folks have brought back. Would depend on the power required by the pump and the generator’s capacity. Probably simpler to just fill a big tank ahead of time and use a bucket to flush.
The problem with generators, cheap or not, is that they need proper maintenance. Routine oil changes need to be done every so many run hours (Something like every 100 hrs which is only 4 days if you run them constantly) and most people don’t know or don’t bother which leads to early failure. Also when the power comes on most people just shut them off and forget them and the gas turns to gum over time so they won’t start the next time you need them.