O.k,

I live in one of the many famous "Hurricane Catch All States", Charleston SC, and am looking at purchasing a Generator to have for the "what if". I realize I should have purchased it before hurricane season to get a better deal, but honestly I forgot we even talked about getting one until talking with our neighbor last night as we were comparing our supplies to see what else we needed to stock up on.

I have no idea what to look for when purchasing one of these. WAY to many technical names and abbreviations for me to decipher what the heck I need. lol.

I will tell you that it is for my home and we would love to see if it's an option to get one big enough, or enough power to cover both my neighbors home and ours. (we live in town homes). We figured if it was possible to just buy one then the cost might be less to just split instead of buying 2 complete units.

Our homes are both 3 bedroom, 3 bath and a little over 2000 square feet each. Again, they are town homes and are attached. She is an end unit and ours is directly next to hers if that makes any difference.

Ideally, we would like to run daily the AC (of course, however if it only can run one that's fine. We'll just use one and the other couple who doesn't have AC can stay with the other one). We're never home alone at our own home anyway. lol. Might as well make it a camp out! Would also like to run both of our refrigerators (if possible, but again if only one is "runnable" that is fine too. Our smaller deep freezer since we'll need to keep all meat fresh and are planning to use the outdoor grill as source of food while without electricity. Also, possibly one of our washers and/or dryers, the hot water heater (or we can boil water on grill if we have to.)

Can anyone enlighten on if what we're looking for exists and where might be the best price to purchase this? Also, maybe some opinions on a better brand or features we may or may not be thinking of to look for. Thanks so much for taking the time to read and I welcome any opinions on this subject seeing as I have NO idea what we're looking for.

Belinda

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~ Wife to my loving husband Brian and Proud mama to Logan!! ~ Aunt B. to my precious nephew and niece Simon and Alicia! ~

Unless you plan on buying a fully installed propane,whole home back up generator, you won't be able to run the a/c in most cases on a gasoline generator. We have medium sized (5500 w) generator that we had wired for hooking into the house (by a professional) and when it runs, we can run the fridge, lights, ceiling fans at one time. If we wanna run the washer and or dryer we unplug something else.

Now, they certainly make bigger gas generators, but you are looking into the $1000s for them. Ours ran us about $699 but that was during Wilma when nobody had power and I stood in line for 4 hours to get it! If you are both homeowners, and it is within your budget, maybe the home propane backup system is within your reach if you split the cost. It's not something you can take with you when you move. :-)

Here is a link to give you some information on wattages
What Size Generator Do I Need

And some more useful stuff-

HomeEnvy - What's a generator good for, anyway?

Everything you ever wanted to know aboutemergency power, lights and generators! (Part one)

Generator FAQ's - Power Generators - Electric Generator Store


Hope this helps!

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If you are getting a gas run generator would you have a place to store enough gas to run the generator (you said you lived in a town house). If there is no electricity you will not be able to go to the gas station to get gas, you will have to have it stored where you live, you will also have to rotate any stored gas that you have. Since you live in a townhome would your genrerator be safe from theft. How secure is your area?

There are alot of alternatives to having a generator, these are some of the things we use there are flashlights/batteries, solar yard lights can be brought indoors at night for light, candles, camping lanterns, battery operated lanterns, battery operated fans and tvs, there are solar chargers for cells phones, hand crank radios, battery operated radios. A couple of us have ashtma, so we keep a car battery and an inverter (can buy in the automotive dept) and can run a nebulizer off this, the inverter also allows us to run the nebulaizer off the car cigarette lighter (could run any small appliance with this for a short time). For cooking you can use grill, gas or charcoal, camping stove, sterno to heat stuff with, a solar oven (you can make really easy with a silver car shade, a bucket and baking rack). I would love to have a generator, but I am afraid to store all the gas that it would require to run it.

I was going to say the same thing about the gas. After Hurricane Katrina...there was NO gas available, so most people had trouble running a generator after their tank was empty (which is pretty quick). I didn't have a generator (4 weeks without electricity...YUCK!), but noticed that my neighbors only ran their generators for short periods of time (not all day or night). Also, theft was a BIG problem. You have to run the generator outdoors (quite a few people died after Katrina from running the generator inside their house due to theft if they left it outside), and it is a good idea to invest in a really heavy chain to chain it to something to discourage theft. Most people used their generator to keep the fridge/freezer running more than anything else. The ones that most people have at their homes don't keep things running like regular electricity would, not many people could run A/C off of them much. Like someone else posted, you kind of have to choose which item you want to run since you can't usually power everything at once.

I remember a discussion about generators on another board last year. Several said Checker had the best prices but Honda is the quietest. We would like one but I haven't found a $1000+ laying around waiting to be used. Most people use essential items like fridge, freezer, some lights, maybe heat in one room- apparently you can link the items you want to use in one 'zone'. I have never heard of running the a/c on a generator!

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Lyn Clarke

Thank you all for your replies. I will get busy looking around with all your suggestions!

I should clarify the Air Conditioner I spoke of running. I wasn't thinking of running the Central Unit. I was thinking of possibly purchasing a window unit for emergencies like this and running that on occasion. It wouldn't be the same, of course, especially in our heat but it sure would help to sleep in a "semi cool" room.

We are natives of SC and were also here in Charleston through Hurricane Hugo. It's now been almost 18 years, but I will never forget the heat! Almost 4 weeks with no electricity. Couldn't go to the car for relief, because gas was a huge issue so we needed to salvage it. There was also not a hotel within 150 miles that wasn't fully booked.

Never being through anything like this before Hugo, we were no way prepared. We had, I think 2 candles, 1 flashlight with 4 extra batteries, 1 radio with 4 extra batteries and a few canned goods (of course not thinking ahead to get a hand held can opener! lol) We had all kinds of money in the bank, just no way to access it. The 3 places that were open within a 25 mile radius couldn't access their credit card machines so we had no way to get any money.

Since then, we've become much more prepared. We always have a minimum of 15 gallons of bottled water during hurricane season, tons of canned goods, A LOT of batteries and most anything else you can think of. Oh, and we always have a minimum of $1000 cash on hand throughout the season. We don't ever want to get stuck again.

O.k, I got a little off topic here, lol. Thanks again for your help!

Belinda

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~ Wife to my loving husband Brian and Proud mama to Logan!! ~ Aunt B. to my precious nephew and niece Simon and Alicia! ~

we have a generator and use it this way:
first we have 12 big gas can full,we have enough space to store all that safely.
we use the generator at night to run a small AC window,so we are able to sleep(5 people in one room).
we also run it on an off during the day for the fridge and big freezer...
we cook on a gas stove(the small camping one) and we get as much ice we can when they handing them out(we put them in the freezer and in small cooler so we can grab a drink without using the fridge).we do not take the RMI(quite disgusting)
we alos get ready all year around for the season(batteries,water,and can food....) can' stand to see all thos epeople running to the store at the last minute...

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By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends

Hi, thanks for the suggestions!

I'm sorry to sound uninformed, but what do you mean by "We do not take the RMI"?

Belinda

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~ Wife to my loving husband Brian and Proud mama to Logan!! ~ Aunt B. to my precious nephew and niece Simon and Alicia! ~

My neighbor has a propane generator for the whole house. When we lost our power after Rita and Wilma they had everything working in their house. Their sprinklers even worked! But the unit cost over $25K so we are not getting one any time soon.

What we usually do when we are in the cone of the hurricane is freeze some of the water(gallon jugs) so that when the power goes you can put it in the frig to keep it cold. Also make sure you grill is working and have propane for that, because this is the only way you will be cooking for days. Make sure you have gas and money because you cann't get either without power.

I could be wrong, but she is talking about soemthing that is being handed out, I think she may mean MRE (meals ready to eat) which is what our military eats when they are in the field and can't get a cooked meal. They come with heater things and are totally self contained.

I think RMI's are like MRE's (meals ready to eat) that the military gives out. They aren't great, but when you have nothing else......ya know??

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yep meals ready to eat(those are so disgusting..) sorry I translated from french ....

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By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends