How to weather outages without generator
I kept seeing the ads on TV. There’s a big storm and the power goes out. But this one house has lights that continue to shine. In fact, everything in the home stays just as it should because it is the lone house on the street with electricity during the outage.
The secret, the ads tell me, is having a whole house generator: A marvelous gadget that fires up within milliseconds when the power goes out. I have a friend who has one, and it’s true. He says that there are times when he doesn’t even know the power has gone out – the system comes on that fast.
So I invited one of the companies that sell these systems over to check out my house. And it all looked great until we started to calculate the bill. Surprisingly it wasn’t just the cost of the generator itself that made things so expensive. The installation that is required is darn near as costly and a sep- arate expense. Considering that — in my own home — we’ve only experienced extended outages two times in the last 10 years or so I just couldn’t justify the expense. I would have needed to find employment for Lucy the Beagle to afford all that.
If I lived in an area where outages were frequent I would have a different attitude. But, it just doesn’t make financial sense for me. So I had to figure out a sensible way to deal with outages and still not put a dent in my bank account. If you are in the same boat, some of today’s hints may prove valuable.
Let there be light
Getting rid of the dark is my first priority. There are some great choices today thanks to the high light output and low current draw of LED camping lanterns. Unlike a flashlight they throw a wide swatch of light. That means you can cook, read and pretty much live normally when the lights go out. You’ll find them at almost any big box store or on Amazon. Almost any LED camping lantern will do fine. Buy one for each family member and then add one more as a spare. Also stock enough batteries so each lantern will have a second set. Avoid rechargeable TECHNOBUDDY’S BIG Q&A batteries — hey, the electricity is out so you can’t recharge them.
Staying in touch
Often, when the lights go out you are also dealing with some emergency such as a hurricane or tornado. At times like that you especially need to be able to check the news for road conditions and other warnings. I suggest that you buy a battery powered radio that can receive AM and FM commercial broadcasts as well as be able to tune directly to Weather Service broadcast. Use Amazon’s search feature and type in “weather radio with AM and FM.” I found one for about $16. Just to be safe you might want to spend twice that for a better one – that’s still affordable.
The great thing about a radio like that is it not only offers information that may save your life, you can also use it as entertainment while you wait for the lights to come back on.
Chilling news
The reason a whole house generator appealed to me so much is this – our forced air heating system doesn’t run when the power is out. The natural gas powered furnace requires that the electric fan run before it’ll kick on. And, at my home in Atlanta, outages can come in the winter when trees ice up and fall on power lines.
My low budget solution is a small gasoline powered generator. It sure can’t power my whole house, but it does a fine job with the heating system and also lets me turn on a few regular electric lights. To be honest it has a lot of disadvantages. For instance you need to store gasoline so that you’ll be able to power it. And, even if you don’t use the gas, it will go bad in a few months. Besides there’s the need – usually in the midst of a storm – to crank up the generator (ours stays on a carport where I don’t have to worry about deadly carbon monoxide) and run some extension cords. Never plug a generator like this into your wired electrical circuits. Connect each device individually using an extension cord.
That’s my advice or today. Treat this as the poor man’s whole house generator. It doesn’t work nearly as well as a real one, but it does have one huge advantage ... I can afford it.