Made it Through To The Other Side

[Travlin]

We had 100 mph winds here Wed night and Thurs AM and about 8 inches of rain The damage was not bad for us in our little pile of boards. Two sheets of metal roofing from the carport got partially loose and made quite a racket flopping around and our nice Ficus tree got partially uprooted and was at about a 30 degree angle. The good news is although I was prepared with a lot of generator gas, we never lost power accept for 8 or ten 20 second blips. A lot of my neighbors are still using generators as I can faintly hear them a block or so away. Finally got the internet back today (Sunday) afternoon. Thankfully I had three Brother Masons come to help me cleanup the yard and put up and take down the window plywood. At 76 I hope that I don't have this again while I am still here. Next week minor surgery to put "markers" in my prostate and then radiation starts Nov. 11. I hope anyone else that got intimate with Milton came out OK.

[BrokenolMarine]

Glad you made it thru and had back up for the aftermath.

[Cowboy Gun Fan]

I'm also glad that you did OK, but wondering what state you are from?

Also wishing you smooth going with your health concerns.

[BigAl52]

Hoping for the best with your health issues Travelin. Glad you made it through that storm with minimal damage. I hope hurricane season is over. Enough people have suffered from them this year.

[Hatchdog]

Happy for you Travlin and impressed with your preps. I suppose at 76 you have been thru this a time or two. Best to you on the health issue.

[Mags]

Good to hear you made it through. Thanks for sharing.

[Headhog]

Glad to hear you made it through in good shape.

Paul

[brm4450]

Happy everybody is safe, best to you going forward

[Travlin]

WHAT STATE! Surely you jest . Florida ,Clearwater just west of Tampa and about 35 miles north of where the center came on shore as a class 3. I live in an old neighborhood with excellent drainage so it could rain for a month and no flooding. I bought the Generac in about 2002 on my corp. card when I was still working and outside of a battery and an oil pressure switch it has been .no trouble and has an oil filter. With a detached garage I have a place to run it and not wake up dead. I use number a number 10 cord to go to the house and a wall banger AC that fits the kitchen window.

[Travlin]

Many thanks for all the good wishes. I have a friend that has just been through the prostate radiation and he says that it's no big deal. So as the monkey said when he ate the peach pit " this too shall pass".

[daytime dave]

I'm glad to hear you came through all right. Pictures I've seen must be newer neighborhoods. Lots of flooding seen. I'm glad you are dry, You are pushing me towards a generator.

[Travlin]

Dave , My advice on generators is buy once cry once. I bought a Generac and unlike folks that I know that went cheap, it has never let me down and I ounce ran it for six days an nights.Look for things like an oil filter for long life. Remember after you run it to turn off the gas valve and when it starts to sputter work the choke so you get all of the gas out of the carb. Next time turn on the gas and it will start tight up. Don't forget Stabil in the tank for the gas you keep in it Mine came with a float charger to keep the starter battery up and a heavy spider cable with multiple outlets. Also estimate how many watts you need and get at least 25% more so the unit won't be running flat out all the time I got an 8550 with a 13k surge and it runs a window ac , the rerig, microwave and the computer and numerous fans etc. with ease. You will need one with pure sine wave output to run electronics. I hope this helps.

[CT_Shooter]

I purchased a 10kW Propane Generac Emergency generator last September. It has a full ten year warranty (parts, labor, transportation) and will power the whole house and garage, except for 220 (water heater, dishwasher, oven, clothes dryer). The generator itself has a WiFi connection and is remotely monitored by the installer and by an app on my phone. I pay an annual fee for that service, which includes maintenance. It runs for "exercise" once a week for five minutes. The propane tanks are also monitored by WiFi and get automatically refilled as necessary (I use it for my stove top and fireplace log set, too).

Gave my 8kW portable generator to a neighbor.

[cooperhawk]

We purchased a Generac two years ago and have no regrets. I wanted the biggest one they had, a 24KW, but they were sold out, so we got a 22KW instead. It came with the transfer switch and all the hardware to install it and we had it professionally installed. We already had a thousand gallon propane tank to heat the house so we just hooked it up to that. As mentioned before, it starts up every Monday and runs for five minutes, and then sends me a text and an email on it's condition.

We live very far back in the woods on a lake and sometimes a blizzard will cut us off for a few days, so it's a nice feeling to have it if the temps go below zero and the snow hits knocking out commercial power. Also we travel a lot in the Winter and we can count on it to keep the house warm and safe for us. We also have the SimpliSafe system monitoring the house and yard.

Why a 22KW? Well, it will run my shop as well as the entire house.
The shop has a propane furnace and a 250 gallon propane tank of its own.

BTW, the gas company just installed a brand new 1000 gallon propane tank this Summer complete with electronic monitoring.

[rickhem]

Our place came with a Kohler 14RESA whole house generator. It has two tanks that hold the propane that powers the generator, and I believe they're 120 gallon tanks. Luckily, we really haven't needed it, and even when there have been outages in our area, we have seldom been effected. Ours does the exercise each week for 20 minutes. All the service and maintenance is done by me, and they do make it easy to change the oil and filters. It has a Kohler Command engine, and the good part of that is the filters are all readily available from Tractor Supply. Same filters as my Cub Cadet SxS uses, which is also a Kohler engine. I'm good with the 20 minute exercise runs, as it gives the oil an opportunity to get hot enough to evaporate any condensation that might develop in the crankcase. That 20 minute cycle is fairly common for other engines that sit unused for helping keep the battery charged, getting oil up into the top areas of the engine, and as previously stated, evaporating any moisture.

Just recently I've noticed that the weekly exercise wasn't happening. Once I had a break in the action, spent a little time troubleshooting it. When I reached the end of my abilities, I called in a service call, and they're telling me it's the control board. A few of the things that I found on the internet for these kinds of generator problems ended with this board being replaced, so now it'll be mine too. The new board is going to run a bit over $1800 installed. They'll cover that for 1 year, if it goes bad again. I figure most electronics will go bad fairly quickly if something is amiss, so a year is fine. Kills me to have to pay three times what a decent laptop would be, but without the board, the whole generator system is non-functional. I can find this part myself for a couple hundred less, but the new board will need the firmware updated, and I don't have anything to get that done. The good part, if you can find one, is that the tech that showed up was a sharp guy, and let me watch and pick his brain about a few other things.
I was soooo hoping it would just be a fuse or something needing to be reset. Oh well.

[Mags]

Our first generator was a Honda something, I think 3KW. Last one available in the area after a major storm blow in Dec'95. Otherwise I would have bought something bigger. Power was out for 7 days then. It was enough to keep the Frig, freezer and a few lights going. Did us well for several years until one year it didn't. Had another major blow that boxed us in with fallen trees and downed power lines. Went to use it and and it wouldn't generate. Engine ran fine just no power output. Tinkering with it discovered that some critter, mouse and or squirrel had pissed all down the generator casing shorting out the stator winding. So then I'm buying another generator in an emergency situation. Like before, found the last one around and not what I would have chosen if I'd had a choice. This one a Honda EX5500, 6KW peak, in an enclosed sound proof chassis. Worked well for us over the years. Replaced the battery once and I keep a trickle charger on it. It's not enough to run much at the same time. Won't run the electric furnace at all. Runs the frig, freezer internet, lights and wood stove fan. When the toilets run dry, we switch off the frig, freezer and wood stove fan breakers to run the well pump to recharge the water tank.
Neighbor bought a 22KW Generac with transfer switch a couple years ago and has never had it hooked up. Still sitting on a pallet in the mud.

[cooperhawk]

We've had two generators over the years that would not run the whole house but each one was bigger than the last.
This time we went all the way with the Generac and are glad we did. Now it's all automatic. The only indication we have
that the power is off is when we have to reboot our computers and the lights blink. When the power comes back we can't
even tell. No blink or nothing.

I'd go make your neighbor and offer.

[Mags]

...
I'd go make your neighbor and offer.

I've thought about. Though not sure it's any good now having set out in the rain and damp for two years. Specially the transfer switch. It's unboxed and laying in the dirt/mud.