Well we back to having our power turned off for an average of 5 hours a day 
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Are you living in a home you own and is investing in a backup generator system or some type solar/wind an option?Well we back to having our power turned off for an average of 5 hours a day
Yes I own my house but the last time I got a quote for solar power it was more than what I originally paid for the house so I just gave it a miss.
Check the cost of home standby generators. It should not be as expensive to buy and install. It will require other costs such as fuel. I’ve considered various options, but I live in a small townhouse and no land to speak of, so options are limited. Hang in there, energy rationing is not fun.
An additional consideration in a condo/townhouse development is the homeowners association. Any improvement/modification that is not contained within the home has to be approved, and a generator (because of the noise) will have difficulty being aproved if it is not contained within the outside walls.
True enough in most. Ours is what is referred to as “fee simple” and no homeowners association. Everyone takes care of their own. That is a good and a bad in some ways.
I live in fee simple area, too. I will not live in an HOA area.
Until now, I had never heard of "fee simple". I wonder if that is even available in California, or if the socialists have legislated against it.
I guess i am lucky, i live out in the country, my neighbors are "down the road" its quiet and i can't see a house from anywhere on my property. When i moved from the city and back to country life it made me wonder why i ever moved to town! I have to use a gen. a few times a year, this week we had some storms and lost power and in just a few min.'s i had my power system up and running, it only lasted about 2 hrs.
I would need a large generator to run my place, or I would need a special wiring serup to only run parts that I wanted power at.
Dave, I have an 8K watt generator. I simply turn off the circuit breakers to those parts I don't want to energize. For example, I turn the breakers off to my central ac and air handler and water heater. I do turn the water heater on and make sure we are not using the microwave and other high use devices while the water heater is on. Basically, I can run every thing in the house except the central heat and air with the 8K portable generator.
Agree with CarlS, one needs to size the generator according to the critical devices one absolutely needs to run. AC and the refrigerator would be critical in ours. If you have a multi-unit air conditioning system or spare window units this could reduce the load requirements.
We have three window ac units in the bedrooms just for this purpose. We can run two of them if the hot water heater is off with the 8K generator.
We don't normally have ac units in our house but I do have other high usage items that I would need to look at. When I did look into getting a generator the overall cost and mission to get it all working was just a show stopper.
I do have a gas cooker I could have filled and use that and a good few of these new type LED lamps that work really well. I think it is mostly the fact that there is no internet and TV during the power breaks that make it a bind.
I do have a gas cooker I could have filled and use that and a good few of these new type LED lamps that work really well. I think it is mostly the fact that there is no internet and TV during the power breaks that make it a bind.
That's the boring part about a power outage.
We're so used to having internet and TV to entertain us that It seems like we fell into a black hole
We're so used to having internet and TV to entertain us that It seems like we fell into a black hole
They make small solar panels that could be used to hook up to a battery system or by themselves run a few small necessary items. Have you looked into anything like that? Another idea is small wind turbines, they are used often in small secondary resistances like vacation homes.
For me a power outage is a minor inconvenience, for my wife with MS it’s a bit more of a problem. If it was just me I’d live with the knowledge that it happens after big storms. With her it’s an issue that I think of each time a storm approaches especially with mid to high 30C temperatures.That's the boring part about a power outage.
We're so used to having internet and TV to entertain us that It seems like we fell into a black hole
Yes even a small cost is a bit of a show stopper at this time. There never seems to be enough resources to do what needs to be done.
Dave, you could get by with a smaller portable generator that would keep your refrigerator and freezer going and power your computer, server and lights.
I agree with you except that I would hate to lose the contents of my refrigerators and freezer. The money I spend on gasoline is more than offset by the cost of the the food I would lose.
If you have a lot of game meat or such a freezer is a must save.
