About an hour ago, PSE restored power to our house out here in Fairwood. We lost power at around 7:45am yesterday and our internet and cell phone service became unavailable at 2pm. This would have been a miserable experience for us had my father-in-law not set us up with a homemade generator he built this summer. He does this as a retirement hobby/business and I totally owe him some incoming traffic (at least) as it was so nice to be able to use our fridge, microwave, furnace, and even the TV while many of our neighbors headed out to hotels for the night.
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A Honda portable generator and extension cord are simpler and cheaper. Just make sure you run it outside (because of the carbon monoxide).
@1
Well, it was free for me, so I’m not sure a Honda generator would be cheaper. :)
What was great about this thing was that it still supplied power to much of the house for only a minimal amount of fuel. We were able to keep the fridge and furnace running throughout, while still powering our entertainment center and using the microwave. My next door neighbors have one of the portable generators and they were only using it to keep their lights on and run a freezer.
Our power goes out a lot here, so I’m pretty happy to have this thing.
I have a 4-cylinder, water-cooled Universal Atomic-4 converted to propane that is coupled to a 15KW 3-Phase generator, wired for 10KW 120/240V 1-Phase. It used to power the old Nile Seafair float. It could run all winter. Even with that, some load management is required.
@2 Well, free is hard to beat, isn’t it? That’s why I help Wall Street twirl money in endless and meaningless circles instead of commuting to a job — free money beats wages any day!
@3 Atomics are okay, but I pine for the old-time Listers that could run for 100 years without stopping if you kept refilling the diesel tank. Like everything else that was any good, real Listers are just a memory (unless you can find a farmer in India willing to part with the one that’s been in his family since 1900).
@4
He writes about Listers occasionally. I’ve even gotten to see one in his shop before. Here’s a recent post.