Electric power in Eastport (Hope: house, buy, maintenance)

[dano04631]

I'm curious as to how often, on average, the power's down in Eastport. Since DW's check is dependent on the computer, continuous electric power is necessary. We took a gander at generators and have absolutely no idea what we're looking at. Pretty much all of the ones we looked at are LP.

My questions are:
Can you have them in the home and vented to the outside, or do they need to be outside of the house?
How is the fuel supplied? Do you need a large tank?
On ones that automatically switch over, can you time-delay the switch over so that they won't go on for short outages?
Do they power the whole house, or can they target specific circuits to keep price and fuel consumption down? Obviously we'd need to keep DW's computer going, as well as the furnace and refrigerator.

We'd like to keep the price down, but we don't want to go completely on the cheap. Any help and/or ideas would be great.

[mollysmiles]

dano, Bydand is an electrician and a wonderful resource for this type of information. Hopefully he'll be on soon and answer the generator info.

As far as losing the power in Eastport I can't be certain of the frequency, but I know that the town does have a generator. I'm not sure why it didn't kick in during the last outage, but maybe corgis or MenMe would have some info on that

[corgis]

Power has gone out at least 4 times in the last month - the city generator only powers part of Eastport because the last 3 hour outage we didn't get power back on upper Boynton St but the generator did power up lower Boynton where the clinic and nursing home are - don't know the generator coverage area.

[dano04631]

Originally Posted by corgis

Power has gone out at least 4 times in the last month - the city generator only powers part of Eastport because the last 3 hour outage we didn't get power back on upper Boynton St but the generator did power up lower Boynton where the clinic and nursing home are - don't know the generator coverage area.

About how long did it go out for each time?

[corgis]

I'm not sure I remember how long each and every outtage was - one was for 3 or 4 hours, a couple were only a few minutes and one was for maybe 45 minutes. None of them for very long.

[Maineah]

dano19606 My inlaws have a Guardian LP generator which comes on whenever the power goes out. There is a bank of batteries like an uninterruptable power supply for a computer that catches the outage automatically and powers the house while the generator fires up to take over. My mother in law says she never even knows when it comes on. It actually stores the start up info and sends it to the company that maintains it once a month so they can monitor it's use and schedule maintenence as necessary. They have it hooked to a 250 lb LP tank and that is on automatic fill with the fuel company too. The whole thing is landscaped so you don't even know it's on the property. It's a slick system......expensive...but very cool. It runs the whole house.
FIL almost killed himself and MIL by trying to run a generator IN THE HOUSE during the Ice storm of '98 He was fortunate it would not run well and called me to come get it started. I couldn't believe he didn't have the sense to run a motor OUTDOORS only and when I told him he' was lucky to be still alive my mother in law made him put in the back up system.
We have a 6500 watt generator and an outside power cable hook up to a genset switch on the house breaker box. I hooked up 10 circuits that I thought were necessary for long term outages. Refrigerator, freezer, well pump, oil burner and circulation pump ,and several lighting circuits.
It is not uninterruptable of course though I do have UPS systems on the computers giving me plenty of time to get the generator hooked up or shut down the computers if the outage ends up being a long one.
So far I haven't even used the system since we installed it.
I have a 2000 watt Honda generator I use once in a while for short outages just to keep the fridge going if the outage is just a couple of hours.
I won't hook up the big generator unless I'm sure power will be out a day or more.

[mensaguy]

There have been a couple of threads about generators here, dano. Doing a search for generator on the Maine forum will bring up more than you want to know, but the useful threads are there. There is a lot of research to do before deciding exactly what you want to get, and it will almost certainly include hiring an electrician to connect it to your existing wiring.

[dano04631]

Thanks all - I always forget about the search option

[tapestry]

Originally Posted by Maineah

dano19606 My inlaws have a Guardian LP generator which comes on whenever the power goes out. There is a bank of batteries like an uninterruptable power supply for a computer that catches the outage automatically and powers the house while the generator fires up to take over. My mother in law says she never even knows when it comes on. It actually stores the start up info and sends it to the company that maintains it once a month so they can monitor it's use and schedule maintenence as necessary. They have it hooked to a 250 lb LP tank and that is on automatic fill with the fuel company too. The whole thing is landscaped so you don't even know it's on the property. It's a slick system......expensive...but very cool. It runs the whole house.

Maineah,

Do you know what the specific model number and wattage is of the LP Guardian generator your MIL has? Also, when you said the whole system is expensive, how expensive do you mean?

This sounds like the kind of generator Dano and I should get when we move to Eastport shortly. I looked on Home Depot's online website and they have a bunch that say LP Guardian with a bunch of different wattages, etc., so I was confused as to which one your MIL has. Sounds like a good one from what you said!

Thank you!

*tap*

[Coaster]

The size of the generator depends on what you want to power, of course. First you need to determine what you want to keep up in a power outage -- just the fridge and the computers, or that plus the furnace and the freezer in the garage and the television, or the whole house. If you're not familiar with electrical matters, this is where you hire an electrician to come in and determine your needs -- before you buy the generator.

LP generators are favored because they have low maintenance requirements and LP gas can be stored for long periods without degrading. I've heard of diesel generators that run off your fuel oil tank, but never seen one installed.