A few weeks ago, we had a rather intense storm – one that broke power poles by the dozens, and left us without power for over two days. A few lessons were learned.
First off, my house is DARK. Looks like I’ll be adding a tubular skylight to every room, and not just the kitchen or bath. Even the living room, with generous windows, was dark.
Second, I am rethinking parts of my plan – especially for the kitchen – with an eye to greater openness.
My electrical service – which I had ensured was properly braced and clear of any trees – survived without damage. Many others had theirs yanked right off their houses.
My neighbors’ tree dropped a pretty large limb into my yard. How large? Well, after stripping the limb of every twig, the main limb was still to heavy for me to move around – let alone pick up. I’m pretty glad that it didn’t land on the house!
Say what you will about the previous owners, but they knew enough to keep the trees far enough away from the house. This is most unusual in my area; many homes were damaged by falling limbs.
Finally, my 2-yr old roof survived intact. Oh, there are plenty of shingles in my yard for me to pick up … but none are from MY roof! Looks like my hiring a quality contractor was a good decision.
One more thing: This happened in pretty temperate weather. I hate to think what would have been the result, had this power failure occurred in mid-winter. Indeed, it seems every winter we lose power for a half-day or so. I need power to run my furnace. Looks like having a small generator is a necessity, and not an option. I expect I’ll place a small, quiet (and expensive) generator in my storage shed, and power the furnace with an extension cord as needed.
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I used to have a standby generator...
...until several years ago I pulled it and installed it at my mother's house.
After that I was without backup power for a few years. During that time we had a few storms roll through (Irene, Sandy, etc) that knocked power out for a week at a time. No power is pretty easy when I'm home. But with my travel, I'd not want my wife stuck withut power.
Last year I bought a Honda Generator and a standby panel. The generator is a 5500W continuous generator, and is ridiculously quiet. Has an auto choke for remote starting and an "eco mode" so with low loads it runs at lesser RPMs. For remote starting, it can be wired with a remote start kit, or with the standby panel I bought it can be wired to auto-start when the power goes out and auto shutdown when the power comes back on.
Other nice thing about the panel is that is has load shedding. That allows you to have more circuits on the generator than the generator can feed, and it'll shed lower priority circuits to keep the more important circuits powered. That helps me being on my own well, where the well pump only kicks on intermittently. Without the load shedding I'd have to plan for the load from the well which might only kick on every few hours. With the shedding feature, when the well pump kicks on the fridge circuit (for example) might depower for a bit, then repower when the well pump kicks off. The load shedding is a really nice feature for intermittent use of high-load items like a well pump or a microwave oven.
I also got an inverter generator. More expensive, but it can feed the sensitive electronics (computers, flat screens, etc) in my house and not hurt anything.
With the 5500W generator I can run my well pump, the oil furnace for domestic hot water and radiant floor heat, the fridge/freezer/microwave/gas cooktop in the kitchen, all entertainment, and pretty much all lighting. The main things that I can't power are the electric clothes dryer, the electric wall oven, and the six tons of air conditioning.
One last thing, the standby panel also has an input for a backup battery power source. If your house power goes out, the battery powers the "important circuits" like sensitive electronics or an emergency stairway lighting circuit. That gives you time to turn off your computers, or lighting needed to get yout generator started. If you have the auto-start kit the battery completes the relay to automatically start the generator.
The generator was pricey, about $3k, but I bought large. You can certainly go smaller. I also bought this style due to the auto-start feature.
The APC 10-circuit load shedding panel was about $350. They have a smaller panel.
Cords, receptacles, and plugs to connect, were about $100 or so.
Backup battery was about $100, it give me about 30-minutes of power. You can buy bigger or smaller.
Auto-start tidbits to get the generator to auto-start were about $60.
Agree with you regarding trees around the house. I'm pretty adept and very comfortable with a chainsaw, I just took down 7 or 8 trees last week. But I have a large branch overhanging the roof of my house that I'll need to bring a crew in to take down. The tree provides great shade for the south side of the house in the summer. But the branch has to be 10-12" in diameter and it's about 40' up on the trunk. The older I've gotten, the more gravity hurts.
Your post wasn't about generators, but heck, I hope I didn't go off on too much of a tangent.
And FWIW, my house is almost all LED lighting. I have a few CFLs remaining. But for the most part, it's about 90% LED.
For liability reasons, APC stopped advertising that their panels can auto-start generators. The reason is that people had them in their garages...wired up...ready to go. Last thing you want is a self-starting generator in your garage while everyone is sleeping.
Up until about 2 months ago we hadn't had a power outage in about 2 years. Since then we've had several short ones, one apparently storm-related (lasting maybe 15 minutes) and several (always early Sunday morning) lasting only a few seconds. (I figure these latter outages are the POCO switching circuits.) Hardly worth it to have a genset.
Thanks for the replies!
I didn't focus too much on my power outage, as I thought the falling branch issue was more important- and often overlooked.
When homes are built, folks tend to plant all manner of fast-growing stuff right next to them. The desire is to quickly provide privacy, shade, and a windbreak. Folks just don't want to wait 20 years. It's also hard to understand why that little 'twig' of a sapling needs to be planted 50-ft. away.
Well, that '20 years' has arrived. If you bought one of the 90's "McMansions," it's time to start replacing those fast-growing oversized weeds. FWIW, it's not just a matter of pruning - the roots are also capable of damaging the foundation of the house.
As for the power issue .... well, I come from a time when we used a lot less power. Among the first things to go over the years were the big windows and tall ceilings that allowed for plenty of light and cross-ventilation. In the names of building economy and energy efficiency, houses took on squat floorplans and smaller windows. The result is a house that's dark even on a sunny day. This point was made to me by this power outage.
I have nothing against generators - though I do feel that most household generator installations are either wildly dangerous, or madly over-designed. No matter: for purely political reasons, we all need to realize that our electrical utilities will become LESS reliable as years go by. In any event, two days is plenty of time for a power outage to cause some real harm, if you're not ready. I'm not talking about food spoiling - IMO, there's no reason to lose food in just a few days. No, we're talking frozen pipes, and the dangers of space heaters. We're looking at flooded sumps. If you're on a well, the loss of power will lead to problems in the bathroom. Plus, the gas in your car will only last so long ..... and gas stations depend on electricity too.
Just some things to think about.
Thanks for the replies!
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