Second, the won’t stay running. They get bad cases of the heebie-jeebies, fear of cold weather, fear of warm weather, bad gas, bad air, bad temperament, the swoons, bird-strikes, power overload.

I had one during a power outage that lasted 4 days. It lasted one. I took it in to the warranty place and was talking to an underling. Along came the boss.

“How often have you had that in for service?”, he asks.

“Never”.

“See, and you expect it to run. Ya gotta take care of them. They don’t run forever, you know.”

I smugly explained I just got it, and he walked off. Don’t think I dented him.

If you want to have power AND peace of mind, my advice is to not get a Generac. I tried to give it away, finally threw it out.

And if you’re drawing 200 amps you are doing something wrong. That’s an enormous amount of power for a house.

Just for the heck of it I wrote the owners of a store which is being demolished not far from here, asking if I might bid on or purchase their back-up power system. Don’t know what I’d do with it, would fill up the garage and spill over onto the driveway.

Would be nice to put 4 tractor tires around it and call it my new hybrid. Start the diesels once in a while, Sunday mornings, and when someone complained tell the sinners they should have had their souls in church.

Arf

I was guessing from by my main switchbox, which contains circuit breakers adding up to 325 amps.

In reality, I could work with a lot less, but the fantasy is not having to worry about what you have switched on in the house.

A fridge takes about 1200w to start.

If someone is going to spend $1000 on a gas generator, might be a good idea to save up for one of these.

The come with the transfer switches, etc, which would break a normal Silicon Valley person, probably incidental to you.

I don’t think that includes installation and the critical switching system.

That’s a lot of money, but I’ve seen people spend that much on entertainment systems. It’s an investment, like the house, and would probably be essential if you lived in a rural area.

They lived in a very large house in a wooded area in NW Portland, on top of a ridge which gave them spectacular views to the east, north and west. They had bought the house from the original owner, one of the Pendleton Woolen Mills founders, or heirs or something.

The weather was lousy, great for New Year’s Eve inside, and Pat and I were talking about something when the lights flickered a couple of times and the countryside around us became dark – pitch black. I heard a rumbling, low, quiet and somehow reassuring if it’s on your side.

I asked him about it, and he said it was diesel running a generator. I commented that he didn’t seem to be that kind of guy and was told it came with the house. It was a problem, though, a mixed blessing. Took a lot of maintenance.

I asked what. So help me, honest to God, he said that about 4 years ago it needed a new battery.

Such is life. I think maybe a trust fund is a mixed blessing.

I have a couple of inverters that can clip onto a battery, but it takes a hellacious big inverter to run a full-size refrigerator, probably for the same mechanical reasons as generators have trouble with AC units.

I have several ways of running a computer online if I really need to do it. My van has its own WiFi setup and inverter setup (not enough current to run my house, though). I have probably half a dozen uninterruptible power supplies in the house, connected to various computers and electronics. One of the big ones can run my modem and router for over four hours to maintain my home internet connection. I can also recharge my laptop off one, or off the van’s inverters.

I didn’t need a computer that badly today. I missed the washing machine more.

My ideal house would have a full-power auto-switching generator system, like a hospital does. Can’t afford it.

There are expensive generators, only two of which are quiet enough to consider. Those are Yahama and Honda, and at around $1000 not worth the price for strictly household power outages.

Then there are inverters which can be used on your car. I have one which puts out something like 175 watts and plugs into a cigarette lighter. About $35 if I recall. And I have one which is 1500 watts and I have plugged into the “house battery” on my little RV now. The reason I purchased it, though, was to hook up to the car and have enough power to run the gas furnace in case of a winter outage. I believe that came from Amazon for about $120 and the brand name “Cobra”. On a whim I bought the remote control for it, which is handy i the RV.

You would have to keep your car running.

At any rate, the larger inverter is a good investment for power outages. There is enough power to run a refrigerator or freezer and a computer in the event of longer failures. The smaller inverter is super for running a110 VAC laptop or DVD player in a vehicle on longer trips.

This http://www.harborfreight.com/200-watt-continuous-power-inverter-66967.html would do you, for $20 and be nice to have around.