ran my whole house off one of the 50 amp connectors during the last pge outage.
The outage lasted about 3 days. The MMG25 Isuzu 4 cyl consumes about 2 gallons and hour.
other than the fuel cost, it was business as usual for us. We live in a rural area, i have a pretty big house with lots of lighting, I turned ALL the lights on the first night, just to see what she could do.
the second night my wife pointed out that i could be attracting alot of attention so i toned down my "eff you" pg&e display. We ran 3 full size refers and one freezer 24-7, lighting, 220 wall oven worked, elec clothes dryer made funny noise so didnt try it
things to consider about power outages i learned:
1. get prepared NOW
2. We got 48 hour notice of the shutdown, plenty of time for me to rig a suicide plug and 220v receptacle in the garage (please spare me the lecture on suicide plugs and backfeeding, I'm aware of the risks and will be installing a proper xfer switch by next summer). But if had had no warning and it went off in the middle of the night, it would have been much more difficult
3. consider bulk fuel storage, humping 5 gallons cans around gets old
4. ALL the gas stations in my little town were closed, the one supermarket was closed, ALL the restaurants were closed saved round table pizza they were super busy!
5. Comcast internet was down and phone internet was mostly down.
6. I lent a small HF predator generator to a neighbor who would have lost all her food, and the chicks she was incubating.
i think the best bet for the average helpless homeowner types, would be a duel fuel propane gasoline unit. just for the safety aspect and if using propane, you wouldnt have to worry about bad fuel taking down your stored gen when you need it most.
7. there were several reports of gen sets getting swiped in the middle of the night, secure them if you can or terminate a couple tweakers and mount them on a pole as a warning.
8. Stop voting for any democrats, without democrat criminal incompetence and corruption, we wouldnt be having these problems.
1) when an emergency happens, you only have the skills and equipment you start with. Very steep learning curve, and modern society is way too pampered to survive without reverting to pure savagery.
2) yes, please get the proper switch, linemen have literally been killed by homeowners doing this, and many places it violates the law.
3) As long as the bulk fuel storage is close enough to be useful, but far enough away to be safe. Diesel is a lot safer than gasoline to begin with, but if it does burn, you won't likely be stopping it.
4) A few fuel stations around here have installed generators, but if power doesn't go out much in your area then they probably can't justify the expense.
5) Once again, we're too pampered, and too many people have no clue what to do if they can't google an answer to everything. Sucks to be them.
6) yes, this is the route I typically recommend to customers and people that ask me about what small generator to get because they don't want to put in a home standby. Best of both worlds, provided you make sure to run ALL the gasoline out of it before storing it again.
7)They'll steal anything that's not welded in place, and even then sometimes they'll figure out a way. Generators also get stolen from campgrounds, people will walk up to them while they are running, just unplug them and walk off.
They don't understand the correlation between their votes for fantasy and why it doesn't equate to the reality that is around them. I remember hearing a woman talk about how she moved away from Houston. She had voted for every single tax increase to make the place nicer to live, then couldn't afford to live there anymore. Idiots.
