Posted: 10/16/2008 8:33:30 AM EDT
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So I've been into seriously preps for five years now. I've acquired most of the stuff that we discuss needing in this forum. Just getting my wood stove up and running now (after four years sitting in the garage). But I just can't motivated to get a decent genny. They're expensive (for a good, quiet one). They use fuel that's not practical to stockpile for long-term storage. My thought is that other than specialty duties (like keeping the freezer working, keeping electronic devices up, etc) a genny is of limited use in an extended SHTF scenario. I can see the usefullness of one for a 1-3 day power outage, but beyond that I just can't see it. And the longer term ones are the ones I prepare for. The neighbors had what must've been a cheap one running the other night during a snowstorm power outage. It was quite noisy and I wouldn't want to be running it during a serious STHF event. My wood stove seems like a MUCH more practical SHTF investment. Am I wrong? |
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I actually would agree that a wood stove is a better investment from the cost standpoint. The wood stove will save you money and also provide power free heat. However, I would still get a generator. I assume you are on city water. If you are on a well you HAVE to have a generator to pump the water (unless you have some sort of fancy solar pumping system). I like to have a generator to be able to run the refrigerator and the freezer. Since my water heater is electric, I have a big enough one to run that as well. If all you have to run is a refrigerator and a freezer, I'd look into one of the small Honda or Yamaha inverter generators. You can probably get a new one for about $800 or so and might be able to find a cheaper used one. Also, the Kipor generators can be found new for about $500 IIRC if you don't mind having a chinese made Honda clone. |
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No you are right. Long-term there are better ways to do about every thing you currently use power for except one and that one is a biggie short-term, your freezer and refrigerator. A generator buys you the time in a short-term outage to not have food spoilage and in a long-term time to preserve those foods before they go bad. That's its strength. Of course, you could do what the average I didn't prep guys does and have a big BBQ and invite the neighbors.  Tj |
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You guys confirmed what I thought... that it's good to have a genny, but not essential. I don't keep much stored in my refridge or my freezer, so I wouldn't stand to lose much if I lost power to those. And I have several coolers that I could throw that stuff in (or just leave it in the closed refer as I have done during outages in the past). Obviously, that's only going to buy me one day or so. I would like to have a genny eventually, but it's really for totally unproductive reasons. When the whole world has gone to hell and I'm feeling really down... I'd like to be able to just turn on few switches and blast my troubles away...  
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| Personaly, I'm just going to pick up a Honda EU2000i. It's compact and quite. That way I hopefully I will avoid alarting my neighbors to the fact we have a genny and it's easy to pull inside for the day. Power wise it's not a lot but I'm not looking to light up my whole house. Just something to power a few things like: TV, Freezer, and heater/fan. |
| One day in my dream house, I plan to have a solar system to run the refrigerator and freezer. A few batteries and a couple good sized solar panels and I think I can run it full time off solar. It won't be cheaper than the grid but will enable me to only use the generator for essentials. |
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I have a genny, but it is not a long term stratagy, as all have rightly stated. In fact, I regret buying as large a generator as I did. A much smaller one would have been fine to run my fridge and freezer for a few hours a day to keep them cold. I would be fine for a few weeks of no power, then I would have that bbq! |
I just added you to my potential survival group.  Key word being Group.  BTW, Buy some boxes. They don't need power. Love Les Pauls. Tj |
Ideally, you prepare for the most likely emergencies first - and plenty of those are relatively short-duration. Of course, "short-duration" is a relative term: Plenty of folks were still loving their generators well beyond 1-3 days after Katrina or Ike hit - In some cases, more like 1-3 weeks... |
You're always welcome in my "group" TJ! Or I'd be more than happy to be in yours! We could be called the "SF All Stars"... LOL! "Boxes"? You mean acoustics? I have more than a few of those as well. I haven't been playing them much these days, but they're always there for when the power is out. I've got several dreadnaughts, several classicals, a ukelele, and a mandolin. So we could have quite the acoustic jam session! Still... there's just something about plugging into a Marshall stack and hitting a few power chords ala AC/DC that just makes a man feel SO good after a long day. BTW... those are ESP Ltd EC-400's. I've had a lot of guitars over the years (including several Gibson LP's) and these things are pretty much my favorites for the rock thing ('cept maybe the two PRS Custom 24's I used to have). I've got matching G&L Tele and Strats that I use for the country thing though.
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It doesn't surprise me pal. Guitars, guns, and motorcycles, I call it a James Dean thingy. Guitars are like guns, if you can count them, you don't have enough. My friend and founder of this forum Frank Squid is as bad as me if not worse. He may have me on quitars but I'm hard pressed to find anyone as amp heavy as me. I think for 20 years every band I was in I ended up with all the band gear.  I mainly play electric at home but switch out to acoustic when pretty regularly like a nice evening on the front porch (Margarettaville type thing). It keeps me in practice on the box, which comes in handy since most the time I'm playing in front of others these days its outdoors somewhere and miles away from home. I'm really a bass player who well honestly plays six strings because bass is boring by yourself. I will tell you that when the powers out, its a wonderful thing. It sure beats trying to read a book all the time, play cards, or some board game. I grew up in a part of the country where before we had all this electronic wonder entertainment, it was a way of life. Every Friday night you would hear music coming out of those hollers of Appalachia as folks gathered on their front porches for companionship and music. It almost disappeared for a few decades but surprisingly its making a come back now. Its different though. Where it use to be every valley now there's signs on the road telling you where to go on Friday night. It was a way to pull neighbors together, get to know them, and learn to count on them in hard times. It was oh so popular during the Great Depression. People would not only share the music, food, but was a way to network for trade and barter. Tj |
You know... I never really grew-up doing the acoustic thing. My parents used to both play (a little) and would play and sing stuff like Simon and Garfunkel and Gordon Lightfoot in the living room. So I just wanted to rebel (of course) and I got into the heavy metal/guitar hero stuff in the 80's. But I kind of went back after that and filled-in that part of my experience later-on. I was a classical guitar major and took several years off from the electric and only played that. But carpal tunnel had its way with me (hunching over the classical for 4-5 hours a night). So I came back to the electric that that's pretty much been my thing for the past 10 years or so. But I did take a year or two and study the mandolin pretty hard. Bought a couple of them and learned a bunch of Bach violin partitas on it to get my technique down, then started to get into Bluegrass a bit after that. Also had a banjo for a while that I played around with. Haven't done much with the mando in years because it's so small that my fingers trip over each other. I definitely prefer the 6-string neck for my hand size. My main steel-string acoustics are a 1986 Yiari DY-75 and a 1975 Takamine with Brazillion Rosewood back and sides. Pretty nice dreadnaughts and I should really pull them out of the case and play them more. For a while I was into Tony Rice and was doing some of that fast flat-picking stuff. I'm a speed guy. When I was into metal it was Yngwie Malmsteen, when I was into acoustic it was Rice, and now that I've been doing this country rock gig for the past 10 years I've been doing the Brad Paisley thing. Anyhoo... 'nuff hot air for now. Suffice it to say that should I ever find myself in your neck of the woods, I'd love to sit out on the porch and bang-out some "mountain music" with you. And should you ever find yourself in MT, please IM me and we do the same here! And P.S. I'll bet you have a nice little vintage amp collection. You'll have to give me a rundown on that sometime. Mine's pretty humble as I just sold several off. Right now it's pretty much just what's in the pics. I gig with a Traynor YCS100 3-channel tube head, and the 50 watt Traynor blue 1X12 combo is for recording/practice. But most days for practice I just use a tiny little Crate Power Block 150 watt solid state head into both my Marshall JCM900 cabs. The little beasty sounds like a Marshall JCM800 head and is just awesome for the rock/metal stuff. I need to get rid of some of my guitars as they take up half the room. I only play about 5-6 of them anyways. |
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A generator offers a lot of options but depending on choices you have made the generator answer may wind up being a total luxury. I can get by without a generator but I have a cheap small portable one since I got it for a decent price. I have relatives and friends I would help if possable and because of their daily lives a generator would be much more useful to them. And I admit a generator does give me a lot of other options. Only you can look at your setup and figure out what is needed and what is not needed. I agree a woodstove is a good thing to have but until I get back to owning vs. renting it is not an option for me. Once I get back out in the country I hope to get to where I don't care if I own a genny or not. But I suspect I will always look for a really good deal on once since I do like the ability to have more options. As for tj and his group, I am sitting here shaking my head thinking of all the folks in the jam session with a musical instrument in their hands and wondering where all the rifles are going to be put. |
 The audience enjoying the entertainment can pick up the slack and handle security. |
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I see these threads and notice a wide variation from those who need heat to survive and those of us that don't. I live just North of Houston and we get a real freeze (below 20 degrees farenheit) about once every 20 - 40 years. That being said, we also get mold an mildew and quickly spoiled food without electricity and/or Air Conditioning due to heat and humidity. I recently ran on portable generator power for nearly 6 days due to Ike. It is a gasoline genny at 8000 watts and saved my two refrigerators full of food and gave us comfortable sleeping arrangements with one cheap window unit to supply air to the kitchen and family room where we put an air mattress. It was loud. Some nights I found myself listening to it as I lay in bed. I think a propane conversion is imminent, or perhaps a true 15k - 15kva propane automatic generator is called for here. We are on well water and have aerobic septic so we need to keep up the electricity. I would always like to have a portable generator as on 3 acres, it would be nice to roll it out to the front fence to do some repair work or wherever to have access to decent power. |
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There are two mindsets for gensets. There is the "turn it on as soon as the power goes down and run it a lot to make life like it was" mindset. Then there is the mindset that I subscribe to- A genset is a tool to be used when needed and left alone when it it not. The ability to use your power tools is a "force multiplier" and saves you a lot of time over going to all manual tools (that you should also own). The ability to have lighting when critical, power communications equipment, charge batteries, run a well pump, etc. Used like that, planned out for minimal use, it is a good tool and you can stretch a whole lot of life out of a small amount of fuel. |
I have a Yamaha inverter that I could use for much longer than 1-3 days. It has a tri-fuel conversion and I have it plumbed so I can run it off my home's 1000 gallon buried propane tank. It only uses about 150 to 200 gallons of fuel a month depending on load. I stock enough oil for necessary changes and keep a spare plug or 2 as well. Obviously we are not talking time measured in years but a month or even more would be very doable. I have used it to run the freezer and refrigerator and my wood stove fan/blower and a few lights. I have another older gasoline genny to run my well pump when I need to refill the pressure tank. The inverter generator is very quiet and I can't hear it when I am at the neighbors. It works for my location and situation. |
Yep. If you're running it 24/7, you really deserve your fate: Out of fuel, and deaf from the noise. 1-2 hours at a time, several times a day is all it takes. |
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The mention of power tools reminded me that I have a small setup to let my vehicle do some battery charging for my cordless dewalt stuff. I want to expand the vehicles capabilities but for now it is possable to let the car battery charge some smaller stuff and still be able to start the vehicle when needed. I also realize I fall into the category of run the generator for a bit and shut it down. If it is hot and muggy and people can't sleep I would just run a window ac unit for a while and then shut the generator down once the room was more comfortable. So there are a lot of ways to accomplish the intended goal. How valuable something is depends on your specific needs and thoughts. |
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I got my EU2000i for: - Run the frig / freeze for power outages (did 5 days for Ike). Can also run a one-room AC. - Wife appreciates having the power and won't want to go to a hotel if we lose power (so it helps pay for itself). - Great tool in the tool chest. It was critical in a massive clean-up effort recently. - Can be used for fun. I did not get it for long-term SHTF. If SHTF, I'm not running it at all and saving the gas for a potential bug-out. |
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Today I picked up a new Briggs & Stratton 3250w generator for $350 at Lowes. If you can't afford that then... In actuality, for what little use they will get, I don't see paying $1,500 to 2,000 for a top of the line generator either. But $350? I thought it was a good deal. |
| Briggs is usually pretty good stuff - Still mostly American-made, with parts, documentation and service available long after the model has been obsoleted. Most B&S generators are made by the former Generac Portable Power Products, which was bought by B&S several years ago. They also sell models under the Troy-Bilt and John Deere brands. |
| last year i picked up a 5000 watt briggs after we had a major storm. HD had them on sale then for $400 - signed up for there card and it knocked another $40 off. I had been using it to build my cabin but it will soon be in my garage again for winter. I look at it as insurance for the stuff in the freezer... and the sump which runs every two hours here. If they come on sale again I will get another one for the cabin... It just is too cheap not to do... |
Well I wish you the same luck as I've had. Mr. Murphy loves generators I think. Since I have bought my two, I've yet to have to use them let alone days on end. 
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| Seriously, I love mine, although I know I have to heavy chain and padlock it down when it outside, kinda like lawnchair and shotgun to sleep next to it, I get a fan to blow the mosquitos off me I can sleep about 6 hours or so before it runs out, keeps my fridge cold the rest of the day. |
Who is Mr. Murphy? |
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I don't have a generator. I figure I can survive a day or two without electricity without too much trouble. Storing enough gas to run it much longer than that is adding to your risks. If I was real nervous about it, I would get a NG powered generator and have it plumbed into the NG line that already feeds my house. I'd probably have to pay for another regulator, but that would be a fairly minor thing. NG service is pretty reliable compared to electricity. If I lived in a more rural area, i would probably get an LP fired backup generator as electricity tends to fail more often and for longer periods of time in rural areas. I am not in a hurricane or earthquake zone, so my concerns about widespread devastation in my area are not that great. I am most concerned about things like ice storms, as I see that as the most likely threat likely to last more than a day or two in my area. |