Ready for Winter?? (renters, homes, neighborhood)

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by OutDoorNut

I had no idea such a system was so expensive--sounds crazy to me.

I'll have to ask my brother, who has a generator for his house on Long Island (New York), which he set up himself (long story, but he's both an electric/electronic guru and a cheapskate, and our father and uncles were all in the homebuilding trades).

Although I believe my brother's generator is not set to come on automatically (who needs that anyway, if you're home most of the time) and is only used to run the essentials (not supply complete power to everything), which is all that I would need.

I mean, who cares if you can't run your jacuzzi during an ice storm (what sane person would want a jacuzzi anyway?)?

It's not crazy if you can afford it.
It's not so much the generator itself its all the stuff with it. I posted that figure on here years ago and everyone freaked and called me a liar but I saw the actual bills they paid to install the system. The generator is pretty big about four feet on a side. Then they installed a 500 gallon propane tank to go with it. This whole set up was put into a little shed with a concrete floor. The conduit was run about 100 feet under ground to the house. There are a bunch of batteries involved that actually carry the instant load while the genset fires up and takes over. All of this stuff is seamlessly automatic so you never even know when the power is out. It even calls the fuel company when it gets low on propane to get filled up. Then they had to re-landscape the area and planted bushes around the shed to hide it a bit. It was expensive the way they did it but it is really nice and you would never know it's there. It is really state of the art but you have to realise this is a $1.5M house we're talking about here not a four room ranch on an acre.
Mine is set up like a camp. It works well but the hookup is all maunal.
You can spend $400.00 on a generator at Home Depot and a handful of extension cords and be fine or you can go the fully automatic route and spend $8,000 to $39,000 or more. It's up to you!

[genmomto5]

68 was the high in Portland today. Where is winter? I'm overly prepared for it.

[Fern435]

Originally Posted by Maineah

Mine is set up like a camp. It works well but the hookup is all maunal.
You can spend $400.00 on a generator at Home Depot and a handful of extension cords and be fine or you can go the fully automatic route and spend $8,000 to $39,000 or more. It's up to you!

Thank you for explaining more about their automatic set up, Maineah. It sounds great!

I'm fairly certain my husband will go for the less expensive manual method. Our Maine home is on the small side and would not need much for back up power supply. But I'm planning for my first Maine winter now.

[OutDoorNut]

Originally Posted by Maineah

It's not crazy if you can afford it.
It's not so much the generator itself its all the stuff with it. I posted that figure on here years ago and everyone freaked and called me a liar but I saw the actual bills they paid to install the system. The generator is pretty big about four feet on a side. Then they installed a 500 gallon propane tank to go with it. This whole set up was put into a little shed with a concrete floor. The conduit was run about 100 feet under ground to the house. There are a bunch of batteries involved that actually carry the instant load while the genset fires up and takes over. All of this stuff is seamlessly automatic so you never even know when the power is out. It even calls the fuel company when it gets low on propane to get filled up. Then they had to re-landscape the area and planted bushes around the shed to hide it a bit. It was expensive the way they did it but it is really nice and you would never know it's there. It is really state of the art but you have to realise this is a $1.5M house we're talking about here not a four room ranch on an acre.
Mine is set up like a camp. It works well but the hookup is all maunal.
You can spend $400.00 on a generator at Home Depot and a handful of extension cords and be fine or you can go the fully automatic route and spend $8,000 to $39,000 or more. It's up to you!

Whooha--4 foot X 4 foot generator, 500 gallon propane tank, yikes!

I spoke to my brother--I think he said the generator cost him around $2,500 (sounds like a lot for him to spend, I might have heard him wrong about the price.).

He wheels it out to his patio (no poured slab) when he needs to use it.

Plugs it into a transfer box ($200 at home depot, but he found one for $20 somewhere) he installed, and he's up and running with his refrigerator running and hot water circulating in his radiators again.

Of course, he also has electric lights and TV and computer back on too.

His neighbor, an engineer, installed a similar setup.

Sounds fine to me.

(BTW, if I see a house advertised with a jacuzzi or built in swimming pool or gas fireplace, I read no further--costs money and trouble to rip those things out.)

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by OutDoorNut

Whooha--4 foot X 4 foot generator, 500 gallon propane tank, yikes!

I spoke to my brother--I think he said the generator cost him around $2,500 (sounds like a lot for him to spend, I might have heard him wrong about the price.).

He wheels it out to his patio (no poured slab) when he needs to use it.

Plugs it into a transfer box ($200 at home depot, but he found one for $20 somewhere) he installed, and he's up and running with his refrigerator running and hot water circulating in his radiators again.

Of course, he also has electric lights and TV and computer back on too.

His neighbor, an engineer, installed a similar setup.

Sounds fine to me.

(BTW, if I see a house advertised with a jacuzzi or built in swimming pool or gas fireplace, I read no further--costs money and trouble to rip those things out.)

My inlaws don't even own a jacuzzi or a pool (they do have a gas fireplace ) but they do have a nice 10 acre pond....It's just a big house. I think the generator they have is 15,000 watts or something like that. More than enough to run their house completely.

My set up is like your brother's. It works well enough for our needs. $2500.00 doesn't seem too bad for a generator . I got mine discounted from $2400.00 to $1800.00 by buying it online. Now it's over $2500.00 at any Yamaha dealer.

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by Fern435

Thank you for explaining more about their automatic set up, Maineah. It sounds great!

I'm fairly certain my husband will go for the less expensive manual method. Our Maine home is on the small side and would not need much for back up power supply. But I'm planning for my first Maine winter now.

The automatic setup is sweet but it's a real investment and as far as I'm concerned not worth the initial investment unless you have alot of disposable income or you have someone on a ventilator or some kind of emergency medical equipment that has to have power all of the time. Then you might invest in it. I'd have one if I was rich...but I'm not!
Ours works well for our needs and it's far better than not having any backup power at all. Heat is the real issue. A back up heat source gets you half way there. I don't know what we would have done in '98 during that ice storm if we didn't at least have a fireplace to keep us warm. We had relatives staying here who didn't have backup heat.

[moughie]

Originally Posted by genmomto5

68 was the high in Portland today. Where is winter? I'm overly prepared for it.

I was shocked when I saw this on the yahoo weather.

What the heck? Maybe Maineah is right, after all, with his view on global warming!! ( no I don't think so!)

[Maineah]

Originally Posted by moughie

I was shocked when I saw this on the yahoo weather.

What the heck? Maybe Maineah is right, after all, with his view on global warming!! ( no I don't think so!)

You here to start trouble again???? It was wicked warm here today. I don't know why but I'll take it! My thermometer said 69 and it sure felt like it. I snoozed in the sun in a lawn chair for a couple of hours this afternoon! I know it ain't gonna last so I'll grab it while it's here! Even right now at 12:25 AM it's still 48!

[OutDoorNut]

Originally Posted by Maineah

My inlaws don't even own a jacuzzi or a pool (they do have a gas fireplace ) but they do have a nice 10 acre pond....It's just a big house. I think the generator they have is 15,000 watts or something like that. More than enough to run their house completely.

My set up is like your brother's. It works well enough for our needs. $2500.00 doesn't seem too bad for a generator . I got mine discounted from $2400.00 to $1800.00 by buying it online. Now it's over $2500.00 at any Yamaha dealer.

My brother said that generator you recommended, the 3500 watt Honda Generator, is a very nice one, BTW.

My brother doesn't have a jacuzi or swimming pool either, but he did convert a perfectly good wood burning fireplace to gas.

His wife said with a gas fireplace, she wouldn't have to wait on my brother to start the fire, she could just push a button and instant fireplace.

I recommended that they leave their wood burning fireplace alone, and that she do her knitting by her gas burning kitchen range instead. LOL.

Well, they didn't take my advice; they now have a gas fireplace instead of a wood one, and she rarely turns it on anyway--I just now realized, could be they don't use it because it's boring compared to burning wood.

Does that pond cause your inlaws a mosquito problem or problems with their septic system?

[RMoore007]

While visiting a family member last year in Missouri, he had this set-up done for about $20k. It comes on automatically and runs his whole house. I think he used it once or twice and has since put the house up for sale and is moving back to CA.