A first for me - no power

What is the outdoor temp?

I've still got power... but winter outages aren't new to me As for me though, I am a radiant wood stove burner so no power no problem as far as heating goes... the well, well that's another matter! So i also rely on a generator for the longer outages.

BTW I am near Kalamazoo.

We have power, everyone around us does not. Hearing trees fall every so often.

I have heard you folks were hit harder than us here in some places in Upstate New York. In my immediate area we were lucky. We had a good amount of ice, sleet, and snow yesterday, but overnight the temperatures here were colder than they expected so it meant we got more sleet and snow. We did not lose power. I was all set for it with the generator tested, gassed up, and lots of gas in case we did. But I'm glad we were not hit too hard. The stuff we did get created enough work for us.

Hope all you folks that have lost power and are getting this nasty weather make out well and stay safe.

We never lost it up here. All the precipitation was the white stuff not the wet stuff. Probably got 6-8" of new snow. Watching the birds try to dig down through it to get to the feeder.
Hope for the sake of a lot of people that they get their power back soon. Supposed to get below 0 up here overnight.

Kohler came on a couple hours ago.

I was in the process of starting a fire.. hadn't even lit the fan off yet. battery backup ran the boiler for the 10 seconds or so till the power decided it was going to stay off and the generator fired up.

JP

Curious what kind of Gen you were running. My friend is the one that owns the kohler dealership where I got mine. He always told me it made "clean" power.

JP

Usually conventional generators (those that run at 3600rpm-gasoline or 1800rpm-diesel) produce quite clean power. Some of the cheaper inverter generators which govern engine RPM based on load can mess with electronics. Their square waves or so called modified sine waves sometimes are not tolerated well.

TS

I keep saying if money were no object I'd install a NG whole house automatic... maybe someday still.

They work real good. We were constantly in the dark until I installed our standby 2 years ago. Power has only dropped out twice since then but it's still nice to have for peace of mind.

Two different guys I work with had whole house generators installed this year at different times. They are a big chunk of change, but a big piece of mind/relief when the ice storm reports start coming. I don't have one myself, but some day might. For now I have a generator that will do what I need. Wood boiler, well pump, refrigerator......

Glad to hear you got your power back for the Holiday Stee. Much more relaxing!

My dad had a 6500W portable. He then bought a nicer, more expensive 5000W. It kept tripping the breaker and not powering the house. He told me.. It runs great for 10 or 15 minutes then drops off line.

I know dad I said.. It's your well pump. NO he said.. it can't be! Other one ran it fine.

yes dad, it's 220.. every time it kicks on, that draw is too much for the generator. Go turn the water on and I guarantee you'll be in the dark in less than 1 minute.

Well I'll be dammed.

Told ya dad.

He has a 12kw tri fuel portable now. He got it when my grandparents passed. BIG honda.

JP

Yes. I alternate what runs on mine. Works fine. I usually run the refrigerator, some lights, and boiler and circ. pumps, then switch boiler off and let the wife or kids do whatever they want with the water needs. The well pump kicking on does draw some serious juice.

As I said.. I have a friend with a generator business. The one we got for my grandparents was a winco tri fuel. big honda twin on it. It wasn't cheap. I wanna say it was a couple grand. My gramps had a WWII surplus unit forever. Ran on gas, scared the hell out of all of us. It was permanently installed in basement. It had house fire written all over it. When they got really elderly, it was easier to get him a portable that he could just roll out of the garage because he couldn't do the stairs to get at the old beast in the basement.

JP

I see some of you have battery back-up for your boilers , what kinda system are you using.

I have just a 1000W computer UPS. It only needs to hang on for about 10 seconds till the Kohler kicks in. Works well.

JP

64 hours without power here, it went out Sunday at 12:30 am, some in Toronto are still without power. I have a little Honda 3000w that ran all my circ pumps and my boiler, fun times.

Steviep For battery back up I use a Xantrex prowatt 600w inverter (pure sine) and the Xantrex relay. I only turn the inverter on when there's a reasonable chance of losing power since the inverter will draw a little power even in standby. In retrospect I should have gotten the 1000 watt inverter but this one handles the furnace and pumps just fine. On the batteries I went a little nuts. I used to have two deep discharge marine batteries that would run things for about 6 hours. Then I got a line on some big batteries from a UPS system (free!!). I now have six 12 volt banks (3 x 4volts) at 300 amp/hr each, for a total of 1800 amp/hrs. Figure I could go for 3 days on those.
Of course this is just till I get one of the generators running, but I hate getting up in the middle of the night to do that.

I found a new APC 2200 va rack mount ups a couple weeks ago here for a couple hundred bucks. Just got it set up andwired up a couple days ago. Thing weighs a ton. Haven't put it through paces yet but did charge it up. Should give me a few hours with my 60 watt loading unit.