If you never get an alert from your generator, you know that it will be ready to go when your household needs it. Permanent generators are also obviously not portable and are quite complicated to disconnect, thus are not a common target of theft. With a permanent standby generator, a licensed electrician can easily choose the furnace as one of your appliances to receive generator power when your electricity fails.
For a gas or diesel-powered portable generator, using it to power a gas furnace is a riskier proposition. Equipped with rubber tires and literally ready to roll, these home generators are powered by gasoline or diesel, which should be stored separately. You don't need to be an expert of any kind to get these machines to work. The Achilles heel of portable generators is that they must be run outdoors, which makes them vulnerable to theft and risk of electrocution in the event of a big storm or natural disaster.
The temptation to run them indoors is a strong one for too many owners, making carbon monoxide poisoning a very dangerous and fast reality. Even when run properly outdoors with the connection feeding through a window or door, you should always have a carbon monoxide detector nearby so you know if this odorless gas is leeching into your home. Because these fuels rely on volatile particles to get the engine firing, and these particles are the first to evaporate, having non-stale fuel on hand for emergencies can be a challenge.
Follow government-approved guidelines for safe fuel storage and backup generator use. To find the appropriate generator for you and your home, you must first figure out what you need the generator to do. Must it only serve emergency loads or do you need it to power the entire house?
This information changes what size generator you need and can also have an effect on where the switch should be located. It affects how the generator should be installed and more. There are some code requirements for generators with minimum distances from walls and buildings when installed outside since most generators need ventilation. It goes without saying that the generator you purchase needs to fit within your budget. Some generators may appear to have a better price but have a far inferior warranty, or have some other issue with the unit.
Otherwise, you may end up spending more in the long run. So, are home generators worth it? It honestly comes down to your own needs. As we move from spring to summer, high winds and thunderstorms that have the potential to knock out the power become more common.
An emergency generator is an ideal item to add to your emergency and weather preparedness checklist. Having an emergency generator will allow you to keep the necessary appliances running in your home, like overhead lights, the refrigerator, and even medical equipment.
An emergency generator will prevent this stressful scenario from taking place, keeping your fridge and freezer running smoothly. With thunderstorms comes rain that can cause potential flooding. If you have a generator, it can be used to keep your sump pump running, and help keep your basement from flooding during heavy downpours.
They are a hazard unless used very carefully, and are a major nuisance to neighbors who are not running generators but are trying to get along with windows open. The fumes and noise of a neighbor's generator outside our open bedroom window were tough on my asthma and let us get next to no sleep at night, which is bad because my husband was working 12 - 18 hour days in emergency services.
I didn't begrudge the neighbor the generator - the lady was dying of cancer and the husband was a seriously ill man on dialysis. They were worse off than we were. The use of a generator is a personal one, and it's not up to me to say who should and should not have one. But as gas prices and availability are just going to get worse and worse in natural disasters, I think that running them becomes less realistic all the time. Heat does kill, especially the elderly and infirm whose systems may be too weak to make the adjustment or who aren't able to take the necessary actions to cool themselves down adequately.
Starting in the early spring when air conditioners start running regularly here it has been around here, too, with extreme humidity, for weeks , we moved up the thermostat a degree or two every 4 - 8 days. We adjusted, over and over again. It was never as bad as I expected it to be. Maybe a bit like boiling a frog in hot water, but starting out cold! Now, we run it around 82 - 84 during the day -- just enough to knock off the humidity a bit, and at 80 - 81 at night, to sleep better.
I feel like we can do even a bit better than that, even. We run ceiling fans, which helps a lot. And my hot flashes are under better control than they were a couple of years ago, which makes this all possible.
It's surprising what you get used to. I wouldn't have believed it of us, but we just kept inching up, adjusting, and inching up again. Surprisingly, it feels nice and cool in the house when we come in from having been out in the heat for a bit.
And we're happy that our power bills are coming down. That said, if I had to go through our 6 months of hot summer here without ever having air conditioning, it would be really tough. But then, in that situation, there would be other things even tougher, I imagine.
Anyway, you can prepare to do without electricity by using less and less of it, gradually, during normal times. Drying clothes outside. Using a solar cooker for some of your regular cooking, getting used to being somewhat hotter or colder than you used to think you needed. Using a damp scarf, wetting your hair, a quick spash of water on wrists and face, or feet in a pan of water for a while helps to ward off heat stress. About losing the food in your fridge and freezer, yes, that's going to be a loss without a generator.
Our home insurance covers part, but never all, of what we lose in a hurricane. But I still choose that, bad as it is, to dangerous, carbon-intensive driving all over creation in constant search for more expensive carbon juice to keep the generator running one more day.
I'm in the process of transitioning out of having an extra freezer, switching more to using canning and drying foods for food reserves, and getting used to less of the convenience of a freezer. Except that when I realize most people in the world don't have those comforts to start with, and that our great grandparents didn't have them, and as far as I can tell our grandchildren won't have them, or won't have them to the extent we have them today - when I realize this, I think that I can do just a little more to wean my family off of the belief that life isn't livable without full power.
I agree that a generator is useless after EMP and makes you a target if things get really crazy. And I agree that it is not first on my list of emergency supplies.
During Ike we didn't have a civil breakdown, things just got very very very uncomfortable. I also lost everything in my fridge and freezer.
We did not have a generator. Our neighbor did and their conditions were much better than ours. Thankfully, they let us come over to charge our phones and cool off.
Lately, the temps in Houston have been over degrees with high humidity. If we have an emp, people will die from the heat. If we have a temp emergency like a mild hurricane, the generators may make a difference and you can get extra gasoline in advance of the storm.
We are not and these really high temps are hard on this mom. Maybe I need to toughen up and stop complaining.
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