Snowed In - Thank god for the wood stove!

Yeah I was in a similar situation a couple years back. 24 inches of snow over night. Power was out when we woke up, so we had no heat. A car was stuck at one end of our street, so the plows never came. We ended up shoveling about 100 yards of our street so we could get the car out and go to a relative's house. I swore I would never let myself be in a situation like that again.

If you are interested in emergency preparedness at all, check out The Survival Podcast by Jack Spirko. It is a very educational show. www.thesurvivalpodcast.com

Waulie said:

Yeah keeping enough gas around is one thing that deters me from the generator. Without one, we'd be fine for a few days. With one, we'd have to have tons of gas laying around. I guess with a wood stove, winter is actually easier to be without power than summer since you can easily keep perishables cold enough and there is (usually) an endless supply of water in the form of snow.

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I'm with you Waulie. Winter without power is easier than summer so long as one does not have to be concerned about frozen water pipes. We do tend to keep a full tank of gas in the generator and usually have other gas on hand.

good points on the burden a generator brings to the party.
They are mostly...
1.) Fuel
2.) Need to change the oil every 50-75hrs.

For fuel, like someone else said, even after 6 days, they were still rationing gas at the gas stations around here.

So I learned very quickly that I only ran my generator at NIGHT ONLY for a few hours. During the day, its dumb to run a 5kW genny for powering a fridge and the well from time to time. Unless of course you need to keep medicine cool, run special medical equipment, etc...then your needs are much more critical.

At night, we took showers, filled the tub (used the water for flushing during the day), ran the fridge and deep freezer to cool them off, ran the dishwashers, did some laundry, heck the kids even watched some movies, etc... Like I said, we were living "like kings".

My neighbor, on the other hand, heats his house with a pellet stove. He had to run his 8kW generator just to heat his house. What a waste of precious fuel. He was gone all the time looking for gas!

As for fuel sources, I keep the genny full, and 2x 5 gal gas cans..all with stabilizer. See pic.

Don't forget most people have 2 cars, a lawnmower, snowblower, splitter, etc.... You've got a couple of of gallons there as well.

To get to gas in your car, you need min 8 feet of 3/8" tubing to get past the rollover preventer valve. Garden hose will not work in most cars today! It has to be 3/8"! It takes a long time to get 5 gal out of your tank this way, but if you need fuel....don't forget you can always sacrifice a car.

My feeling is that I need to be able to hunker down for a minimum of 3 days without having to drive to town, etc.... After that, unless its REALLY major stuff, resources start to come back on line slowly.

Stay safe, and as I learned in the Boy Scouts..."Be Prepared".

DJ

We keep multiple 4 gal. kitty litter jugs full of water (with a capful of bleach) on hand at all times. When the power goes out, Heidi has been trained to turn off the water supply to the toilets to preserve water pressure for drinking. The jugs are used for flushing. I have 2 generators, one 3000 watt, 120v. Honda that is quiet, economical and electric start, but it won't run the well. The other is 5000 watt, 240v, noisy, thirsty and, with a 10hp pull-start B&S, a pain to start. During extended outages, I run the Honda for about an hour in the morning and at lunch, and in the evening for a couple of hours. I run it long enough for the fridge and freezer to cool until they cycle off. This allows us to function fairly normally, brew coffee in the morning, make lunch, make dinner and watch a little TV in the evening. I run the big gen whenever we lose water pressure. We also put a large pot of water on the wood stove as soon as power goes out so we have hot water for dishwashing, etc.

good points on the burden a generator brings to the party.
They are mostly…
1.) Fuel
2.) Need to change the oil every 50-75hrs.

For fuel, like someone else said, even after 6 days, they were still rationing gas at the gas stations around here.

So I learned very quickly that I only ran my generator at NIGHT ONLY for a few hours. During the day, its dumb to run a 5kW genny for powering a fridge and the well from time to time. Unless of course you need to keep medicine cool, run special medical equipment, etc…then your needs are much more critical.

At night, we took showers, filled the tub (used the water for flushing during the day), ran the fridge and deep freezer to cool them off, ran the dishwashers, did some laundry, heck the kids even watched some movies, etc… Like I said, we were living “like kingsâ€.

My neighbor, on the other hand, heats his house with a pellet stove. He had to run his 8kW generator just to heat his house. What a waste of precious fuel. He was gone all the time looking for gas!

As for fuel sources, I keep the genny full, and 2x 5 gal gas cans..all with stabilizer. See pic.

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How long does the gas last with stabilizer? Also, what octane gas do you use in your generators. Thanks for the info, this is a good information thread.

Someone mentioned an 8kW generator to run a pellet stove - that must've been all he had, cause they don't take much juice. A well, yes-that's what I need.

I'm wondering what's the shelf life on bottled water (bought from a store)? We're breaking out the ones we purchased for Irene to use them up.

We are set up to power up our house with a dedicated circuit which isolates the power source and prevents any power from entering the electrical grid . Our oldest son is an electrician and stresses the importance of not feeding power back into the lines and endangering the repair crews. We have not needed to use a generator in the last six years but in an extended power outage a generator will certainly allow a family to maintain some semblance of normality. Actually we know two families who have been off the grid for more than 30 years and live quite comfortably even raising families without all the frills of electrification. A couple of hours without power really makes one realize how hobbled we are without it...almost scary. At this stage in our lives a solar grid system wouldn't be a economical investment but if we youngsters.....it would be tempting especially in any new construction.

For stabilizer you can use the red or the blue stuff. I use the red stuff. Gas is good for a year. This summer, I will use the gas in the cans for my lawn tractor.

My rule is that when put the tractor away for the year, usually around oct, I fill it with gas and stabilizer, and fill all the cans with fuel and stabilizer to have them ready for the genny and snowblower.

I run standard octane, but check you owners manual!

If you don't need to run a well, one of those 2 or 3 kw honda or yamaha gennys are great. Super quiet and they sip gas....like 9hrs on ONE gallon. You would be surprised how far you can get with just 2kW.

Yes, 8kw genny is all my neighbor had. I told him to get a 2kw Honda to run his pellet stove and fridge. He is seriously thinking about it!