6 days without electricity here so far..

[shooterdon]

For us, a propane whole house generator made more sense. Storing enough diesel for a long outage is not practical. Our tractor goes through about 75-100 gal per year. Makes it difficult to keep 250 gallons of “good” fuel on hand. 400 gallons of propane will last years untreated.

Ours is 13kW and it does all we need. Consumption is about 25-30 gallons per day. Less than $75/day at current propane price. We can go two weeks without a fill and without cycling the generator. If we had a long outage, and cycled it, we could go over six weeks.

 

[5030]

You loose power up there? Looking at the Consumers Energy and DTE outage map it seems to be pretty widespread, especially around Ann Arbor.

 

[Torvy]

For us, a propane whole house generator made more sense. Storing enough diesel for a long outage is not practical. Our tractor goes through about 75-100 gal per year. Makes it difficult to keep 250 gallons of “good” fuel on hand. 400 gallons of propane will last years untreated.

Ours is 13kW and it does all we need. Consumption is about 25-30 gallons per day. Less than $75/day at current propane price. We can go two weeks without a fill and without cycling the generator. If we had a long outage, and cycled it, we could go over six weeks.

We are getting the same type of setup. Propane generator. It would be natural gas if we could have tapped one of the lines crossing the property.

 

[Tinhack]

Huh, I thought it was only Texas that lost power in ice storms.

I thought every other state had it figured out with their regulated expensive power

It was a circus of errors that led to the Texas outage--Not just the ice storm. I camped for a week with nothing. No genset for an all-electric house and very little water pressure. The water company couldn't even pump water up into the towers. Had to keep warm and "cook" by burning chaffing dish lamps. (I had a bunch left over from my great-granddaughter's wedding.) It was so cold steam from boiling water was freezing on the inside of the windows. I don't know how anyone survived on cowboy coffee back in the day.

 

[LittleBill21]

5030, I could have sworn I read in one of the older generator threads that you had a 35KW standby with a 4 cylinder diesel. Your HWH is electric. Why haven't you showered?

yea this is confusing, you have this huge generator and you DON'T have the HWH hooked to it? seems odd, i run mine on a 7k generator. a hot shower is one of the best things a person can do after a day outside dealing with the weather

 

[Joel/ak]

Losing power does suck but if prepared...

In 5030's case, power companies were set to get them going again then mother nature had to hit us again. Roughly 50k+ up here north of Grand rapids. Grant it we don't have DTE but I'm sure consumers ( our power company) was grabbing everyone available including folks from the SE.

Gotta love an archaic power system.

We got more weather coming in and it doesn't look bad but with saturated soil, heavy snow and possibly high winds...what could go wrong?....

Glad I got full house power if need be

 

[Jstpssng]

Keep in mind that you will still have to fuel your tractor and maintain the fluid levels. Plus you'll need a transfer switch to isolate the utility power or you will have to manually trip the main breakers. The issue is, utility workers working on lines can get electrocuted by voltage coming from your home genny. I don't ever want to see that happen here.

People around here are using box store generators and they aren't built for continuous duty so they crap out. Guy across the road went through 2 0f them. Not a 24-7 genny.

I have a transfer switch. Fueling and maintaining fluids is part of running any engine. I'll bet that after this storm there will be a run on whole house gennys. My power rarely goes out and I can get by without power for a while, including running up to the spring with a bucket for water.

A hint for the next time... you can take a passable shower with a 5 gallon bucket of warm water and an open dipper or big Maxwell House coffee container. I used to do that a lot in summer if I wanted to go someplace after work. A 5 gallon bucket painted black absorbs a lot of heat with the summer sun beating down.

 

[Jstpssng]

I don't know how anyone survived on cowboy coffee back in the day.

I was going to say that if you wanted it badly enough you would drink it. Then realized that I never have been able to drink bad coffee.

 

[Joel/ak]

In the military I would take the pack of instant coffee, open it and pour the contents in my mouth and drink just enough water to swallow everything...those days are over thank goodness.

I will waste the fuel to power the coffee pot...

 

[shooterdon]

You loose power up there? Looking at the Consumers Energy and DTE outage map it seems to be pretty widespread, especially around Ann Arbor.

We never lost power. But we are serviced bu Great Lakes Energy and not one of the “big boys”.

I have lived here 10 years and our longest outage has been four days.

GLE does a good job.