Our feelings about whole house generators are purely based on our own experience, as well as experiences of those in Louisiana who lived off generator power for weeks after Hurricane Laura, and our level of preparedness.
Anywhere we’ve lived recently, our source of fuel for a generator was propane or gasoline. The only time we’ve had a whole house generator was when we were connected to natural gas.
Take this for what it’s worth – my opinion.
If I have a whole house generator, my thought is . . I never miss a beat. Life goes on as normal and I don’t even realize the power is out. Running a generator like that for several weeks . . we’d go broke with propane. More importantly, if there is a natural disaster (hurricane, ice, roads not cleared) the propane company can’t get here to fill up the tanks plus everyone is going to be needing propane. In Louisiana after the hurricane and in Texas where Vince was after the cold snap, the propane companies ran out of propane.
We are prepared and we wouldn’t miss a beat and other than the food in the freezers, which I would try my best to get canned but that also uses propane, we’d hardly miss electricity. Don’t get me wrong – I do not want to live without electricity but it wouldn’t be totally inconvenient if we had to.
Everyone is different. For those who don’t have all the “preps” we have, it’s probably way less expensive to pay for the fuel to run the generator than to buy the things needed to live without power.
Most importantly Vince has a battery that he can charge that runs his CPAP machine. We have solar ovens to bake outside and even if it’s 20 degrees outside, so long as the sun is shining the solar oven will bake. We have solar powered “banks”, some of which can be charged by plugging them in when there’s power or otherwise, leaving them in the sun if the power is off. These would be used for charging the phone, Kindles or tablets, though we wouldn’t have internet because of the router. We have the gas stove and we can use the burners without electricity. We have propane powered generators. We traded out our 350 gallon propane tank for a 500 gallon propane tank and we watch it to make sure it doesn’t get low, especially during snow/ice season and the time of year we would expect tornadoes. With the basement, it stays comfortable in the winter without heat and comfortable in the summer without a/c. We have a gizmo that you stick in a 5 gallon bucket and it’s kinda like a plunger that you use for washing clothes. There are several more advanced type non-electric gizmos for washing clothes but I’ve used the plunger thing I have and I’m fine with it. I have a clothes line for drying clothes. We also have a rocket stove and backpacking stoves with plenty of fuel. Eating is high up on our priority list. 🙂
We keep a good supply of food that can be consumed without cooking or that can be cooked quickly. We have plenty of homemade canned soups, roast, veggies, plus freeze dried foods that I’ve done and some we’ve purchased. I can make bread in the solar oven if it’s a sunny day or make fry bread or tortillas on the stove. We keep home canned and storebought canned chicken, canned tuna and sardines, which we happen to like. We always have cereal and shelf stable milk.
There are things I would miss if we didn’t have power. I would miss my magnifying lamp. I can sit in front of the window and use just the magnifier without the lamp. In fact, some sunny days I don’t even turn it on and then it starts getting dusk and I feel like I’m going blind and realize the lamp isn’t on. I would terribly miss the internet. We have no cell service out here without our phones being on wifi. I would miss ice! If it was summer and I couldn’t have ice water or cold Dr. Pepper . . but I would survive without those things. I would miss being able to open the garage door with the button but I’m betting Vince could do something to make that work off a battery. I’m not going to ask though.
In Texas, with no basement and the heat in the summer, I’m not real sure how comfortable we could have made ourselves without electricity. Vince struggled to stay warm in the winter with the fireplace going non-stop without heat. Here, with the basement, I don’t even worry about staying cool or warm. It was in August I think when our a/c went out on a Friday and we didn’t have a/c for three days. We slept in the basement and we were fine.
When the solar panel man was here a couple of weeks ago to work on our setup, Vince talked to him about building a separate small array of panels and having batteries that we could hook up to some things. They talked about it all and then Vince and I were talking and we decided, we just don’t need it.
Everyone has to think about their own needs, comfort level and what you’re willing to spend to to meet those needs. For us, we’re as comfortable with what we have, maybe more so, than we would be if we had none of the above items but did have a whole house generator.
Finally, IF the propane ran out, all bets would be off. I hope it never happens but honestly, I’m not nearly as confident as I once was that it will never happen. If we didn’t have propane, we’d lose the stove and the backup heater. We could cook on the rocket stove, grill, backpack stoves, solar oven – we’d be fine but it would be less convenient.
I think you’ll agree that we don’t need a whole house generator and if it weren’t for the cost of the food in the freezers, we probably wouldn’t worry about keeping them running but, especially during the winter, the generators wouldn’t have to run long to keep the food frozen.
Again, everyone decide on your own what you need or want. What works for us most certainly won’t work for many others.
Dorothy Matheson says
I am in central Texas and during the ice storm my soda was plenty cold. We ate peanut butter and had plenty of flashlights. We also had protine drinks for my husband and he shared. All electric houses. We have long underware. And warm sweat clothes. Plenty of throws and quilts.
I did sit in the car to charge the phone. Full tank.
I avoided opening the door of the refrig or the freezer and all was fine.
Well I did throw out the food in the refrig. Freezer was still frozen solid.
Had a propane tank and sold it after the freeze to a rancher who has one tank but it ran out and they needed to melt water for live stock as well as warming the house. So they were glad to get the one empty one that has to have a conversion kit to use.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Sometimes there are disasters that happen and it isn’t always cold. When we lived in MO the first time, there was a storm that hit the Springfield area and they lost power for days. Almost as soon as the power went out, it warmed up to the point they were needing air conditioning so leaving the freezer doors closed then without power would have been a mess. When I lived in Louisiana in 1997, we had an ice storm and the power was out for 7 days but as soon as the storm went through, it warmed up. Chad was outside playing in short sleeves.
Vince had to go out in the weather because the freezers were in the shop and the generator had to be turned on and off, plus he had to go out because he had to use a generator for the well pump since that’s the only water we had.
Val says
Good Morning Judy, you are right of course that everyone needs to do what is good for them. We hae a whole house generator and haven’t found it to be expensive to run but so far the longest the power has been out is 3 weeks.
Your garage door opener should have a manual rope release for when the opener doesn’t work.
I am curious about the router tho, does it not get plugged in? Or is it because generator power fluctuates? I don’t use my Bernina sewing machine off the generator but my older non electronic machine is fine to use.
We are well prepared here and i have plenty of yarn and lots of crosstitch.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
You’re lucky on the cost of running a generator. Most everyone has theirs hooked up to propane, which has doubled in cost this year.
Yes, I have never seen a garage door without a rope release but I was just saying I would miss having the button to open the door and being able to use the remote to close the door as we’re leaving. We have a walk thru door in the garage so that’s what we use anyway unless we’re taking out a vehicle.
Since we only use small generators and not a whole house generator, we pick and choose what we want to run and the router/internet is not at the top of our priority list. For us, it’s the stove, fridge, freezers. We don’t even have the washer/dryer set up to run off generators because we have other means to wash and dry clothes.
I would never run out of things to do with knitting cross stitching, reading, etc.
Cheryl L says
We are in North Ga and a year ago we installed a whole house generator with a 500 gal propane tank dedicated solely to it. We have another 500 gal underground tank that powers our furnace, fireplaces and cook stove. The guy who installed the generator told us it takes the same amount of propane to run the generator regardless of how many things in the house are operating at any given time. We still have our gasoline powered generator that we can use if we should run out of propane, but if things get really bad we will also eventually run out of gasoline as well. If that happens we will be camping out in my husband’s workshop that has a wood stove. Fortunately, we have an endless supply of firewood.
When we lived in Ohio, we had an ice storm that had power losses in some areas for over two weeks. Our power was only off for three days but by the time it came back on the water coming out of our faucets was down to a trickle….because the pumping station was also without power. We did have the foresight to fill our bathtubs beforehand so we could continue to flush toilets and such. We now are on a well and the pump will run as long as our fuel holds out and then we have a hand pump we can use if all else fails. I just pray our fuel sources will continue to hold out, without bankrupting us, for a mild winter and for some common sense to take up residence in the minds of our country’s “leaders”. May God help and protect us!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
We had two 250 gallon tanks and one 500 gallon tank in MO so I didn’t worry about running out of propane. You understand that you can run out and be back in the same boat with others who have no power. Just about everyone I’ve known who intalled a whole house generator, many whole house generators running off one 250 gallon tank, had absolutely no idea that wasn’t enough fuel to run the whole house for weeks, nor had they thought about how hard it might be to get more after an emergency situation.
In Texas, where it didn’t matter so much how things looked, we kept lots of 5 gallon buckets outside with water for flushing toilets. We would use the water to water plants, then refill them so the water was always fresh enough for toilets. The first thing I always did when storms were predicted was to put three five gallon buckets in our extra tub and fill them with water and fill about 6 half gallon jars with water for us to drink, brush our teeth, etc.
I think those of us who have lived without power for over a week learn all kinds of things that mostly only come from experience. The first time it happened to me was in 1997, living in an all electric house with NOTHING as far as preparations. I didn’t even have enough food in the house for a week, nor did I have a single way to heat food or to heat the house. Then in Kentucky probably in about 2,000 we were without power for a week in January because of a tornado. The house had a whole house generator but I learned a lot then too.
Yes, it takes the same amount of fuel to run the generator whether everything is on or not but when buying the generator, if you want EVERYTHING to run, you need a larger generator, which takes more fuel.
I think you’re right . . we’re to the point with an intervention by God is about our only hope. Things seem to get worse by the day.