Country living and the hummmm of the generator

[Melensdad]

You know you live in the country when the lights go out and then, within a few minutes, you begin to see lights come on and hear the sounds of generators being fired up and running.

Some of my neighbors still don't seem to have gotten the idea hat a generator is a good idea, but more and more of them seem to have lights. Tonight it looks like about half the houses on the road have lights. Good thing too because its cold outside. The power has been out for 2 hours, the utility company still has not determined a cause so we have no real idea when we'll have power again. They say there is a "crew on site" but that has been the same report for the past 90 minutes.

In the mean time, we're comfy and cozy in the house with the natural gas line giving us uninterrupted fuel to the generator for as long as it takes.

 

[snow dog]

Bob,

How big is the generator?

 

[danocheese]

Lived here for 6 years one power outage for about an hour watched the crew re=route the power, then fix th ebad underground section.

no reason to buy a generator. well maybe for a natural disaster type situation

 

[Melensdad]

Bob,

How big is the generator?

12,000 watts.

We seem to have all too frequent outages in the winter. For whatever reason outages in the other seasons tend to be of very short durations but its not uncommon to lose power for 6 hours to a couple days in the winter. Our longest outage was 8 days, temps during that period never exceeded 10 degrees above zero, but did hit -21. We had 3 days in a row where the temp was below 0 for the high.

Today the temps are in the teens. Power has been out for 4 hours now, without the generator it would be uncomfortable in the house even if we had all 3 fireplaces roaring.

... the crew re=route the power, then fix th ebad underground section.

We have power coming in from one point, can't be rerouted. Our power is underground, but the feeds to our area are above ground.

 

[thcri]

My inlaws on the farm out in North Dakota would get hit sometimes a week or so at a time. With the livestock and all they had to have power or risk losing the animals. All of the stock tanks had electric heaters and the house was heated on electricity. They had one that ran off the PTO of the tractor. The smaller 40 or 50 HP tractors were not large enough to run the generator. Typically he had the Case 1070 on it but if that didn't start in the cold the big 4 wheel drive was hooked to it.

 

[Ice Queen]

When I first moved to Wales we had a lot of power failures, they used to send the electric along in lumps and would forget a lot. These days they seem to have got the hang of it and it doesn't happen too often. I only have two small generators which I carry in the lockers on the side of the norsebox, they would not run the house electrics. I have bought a solar panel set up to charge the interior batteries in the norsebox now. I have, obviously the two batteries on the lorry (and on the Iveco they used to run the interior lights of the box itself and it was rather risky as they could flatten easily and then the lorry wouldn't start). I have now two large batteries inside the box in the new room (the bit that was under the luton on the Iveco) and I run them alternately for the interior lights, 12 volt. One running and the other to go on charge, hence the solar system, all we need now is the isolator on the lorry batteries as the tachograph runs them down, and some sunshine to charge the interior ones while at a rally. I am busy doing some alterations to the inside of the box, lace and things to make it pretty (got to make it a bit 'girly'), will post piccys when done.

 

[Trakternut]

My inlaws on the farm out in North Dakota would get hit sometimes a week or so at a time. With the livestock and all they had to have power or risk losing the animals. All of the stock tanks had electric heaters and the house was heated on electricity. They had one that ran off the PTO of the tractor. The smaller 40 or 50 HP tractors were not large enough to run the generator. Typically he had the Case 1070 on it but if that didn't start in the cold the big 4 wheel drive was hooked to it.

Ahh yes! The venerable ol' Winco. I think there're about a zillion of 'em around here.

 

[muleman]

I keep my eye out for one of those pto gensets at sales. Would be nice to have one for an extra in case SHTF. I only have X amount of gas on hand but always have a bunch of diesel for the tractors.