Today, I'm so thrilled. My DH and his electrician friend finally got our Guardian whole house generator hooked up and it fired off right away. The way they (are suppose to) work is....when the power goes off for any reason, there is a 30 second delay and this big unit behind the house automatically kicks on and restores everything in the house. It is hard wired into the main panel box and we don't have to be home or anything. It seems as though the power is always going out because of a storm or squirrel getting into something at the main station or most recently from a car accident several blocks away.

Does anyone have one of these units or know anyone that has had any experience with one? All I know is it will be so nice to live life as normal when the rest of the neighborhood/town is in the dark. This particular unit runs off of natural gas.

Our biggest concern has always been the sump pump in the basement and no water when the power is out because we have a well and a pump.

We are in the process of a HUGE renovation and tomorrow the electrician installs a transfer switch for the generator. We lose power also as we are on a co-op in the country and it will be nice, especially in the bitterly cold winter months. I think it's a great idea for those just in case situations.

We have one, but we have to bring it out and connect it to the panel to run it, it's a big gas one. Our power went out one year about 3 or 4 times for a LONG time so we got one, but we really don't get that much use out of it, maybe once a year now since we moved and have a different electric company.

We can run everything in the house except our air conditioners and the stove, it's all hooked up and ready to flip the switch. It's fun being the only light on for miles, makes people wonder.

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"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer

After being without power for 101 hours last year during a HUGE wind storm, DH made sure a generator was on our list of things to buy at yard sales this year.

He found a smaller one for around $120. Used one time - actually purchased by the people during the huge storm.

I think it has enough power to run 2 electrical devices at one time. I don't want to go look at it. LOL.

I would love to have one like the OP spoke of. That would be soooo cool!!! (I live on the coast, and NEVER want to go through what we went through during that storm again!!)

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"Yesterday my life was duller, now everything's technicolor!"

If anyone is considering purchasing a Guardian Generac standby generator, please let me know. They are having a "refer your neighbor" program. The referring person and the referree each get $50 when both buy one. Good deal for both parties!

Our concern with the portable type generators is, if the electrical grid in our area goes down there isn't even anywhere we could purchase gasoline to run the unit. When the power goes out, all of the gas stations can't even pump fuel. But basically our biggest concern was having the power go out on a perfectly beautiful day from something other than a storm and we wouldn't be home to turn on the generator. If we didn't have a finished basement with a sump pump, it wouldn't be such a worry.

How much do those whole house generators cost? $5000? more?? We would love one, too. We always worry about the sump pump. We have been flooded a couple of times. Ohhhh- and the freezers. I would be crazy is I lost the contents of our freezers.

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Lyn Clarke

Our particular one is an 18 KW liquid cooled and it was about $6000. Check it out at Gaurdian Standby Generators, Guardian Elite Generators, Guardian QuietSource Generators, Guardian 3 Phase Generators, Kohler Generators | Zillerelectric.com And they all require a transfer switch which run about $1000. This switch transfers everything over to the generator when the power is out after a 30 sec. delay. In the perfect world, we would never need to use it but with the strains on the electric grid, the odds are we will be.