Several years ago I purchase a medium size portable generator(7000watt-6000watt cont.) to provide back up power in the event of an emergency. My idea at the time was that it could power our well and with a long cord, could power the freezer in the garage. To get power to the house, the generator would have to be relocated closer. This was a stop gap plan with the idea of having a transfer switch installed someday.
Our power company began telling us a couple of years ago of their plans to shut down the grid during fire season when in became windy
When the power goes out I'll have to manually throw the main and the heat pump to off and the auxiliary power breaker to on and then so I made up my mind that I couldn't wait any longer so last month I had it done. My meter base was around 40 yrs old so the whole box had to be changed out. It only took the electricians about 6 hrs to get it all swapped. I also had a whole house surge protector installed and a soft start on the heat pump. From the meter base there are 4 branch circuits for the heat pump, of course the house, the garage/shop and the pump house.start and connect the genny.
Before doing that, using the breakers in the house, I'll have to turn the dryer, A/C, and water heater to off. I'm not trying to live off of the generator, just to get by for from 1 day to a couple of weeks. I figure to just run the genny a couple of hours in the morning and in the evening. That should keep the food in the freezer frozen and the reefers cold. During those periods we would fill both bathtubs with water to use for washing and flushing the toilets and fill some jugs for cooking and drinking. We'll have lights, microwave, coffee maker, toaster oven and can charge phones. For heat we can use a couple of portable heaters to take the chill off. I also have an indoor safe propane heater.
I've only tested this out once so far about 20 minutes and it worked fine. We can also use 1 to 2 stove top burners depending on what other items we're powering. We just can't run it all at once. I always make it a point to run the generator at least once a month, under load, for about 15-20 minutes.
I generally have 20 to 30 gallons of treated gas on hand and rotate my supply. I also consider our two gas vehicles as rolling fuel tanks but I intend to purchase a few more gas cans for additional storage.
I've got forms in place to pour a foundation for a 5X5 generator shed to park the genny in with a nice embed to chain it to.
We also have a 32 ft RV that gets it's power from the garage that we have used as our "lifeboat" a couple of times when the powers been out and we also have a 3100 watt peak inverter for charging the RV batteries when we're dry camping. The batteries alone last 3-4 days before needing to be charged. Next thing on my list is solar for the RV.
