Value of Alternative Heat

[scfa99]

Not sure if you all heard about the storm that hit parts of the Northeast. If anyone posted, I apologize if its been discussed but I've been offline. Well Tuesday NJ was hit with a wicked storm that dumped 10" of snow (in my area), 50 mph winds and took down trees all over the place. Here's an article http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/thousands_still_without_power.html

Well being without power was bad but fortunately we were able to ride out the 2 days in relative warmth because of our Quad 7100 kept us toasty warm even without the ability to run the fan. Now I just need to get a generator for the well pump and we will be all set in the future.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Yes, we heard about the storm. Glad you got through it in good shape. As for the generator, we have one and rarely use it, but when it is needed it is worth a lot. The best time to buy one is when the new year's models come out. Then you pick up one of last year's models they want to get rid of for a nice discount.

 

[Highbeam]

Be sure to regularly run that genset to keep it ready for action. Some huge percentage, like 90%, of genset failures are due to lack of use.

 

[FireWalker]

I service mine in June every year. Fresh gas w/ stabil and oil change and a 1 hour run under load. I ran my table saw with it this summer while woodworking just to run it. Some day that thing will be worth it's weight in gold but most of the time it is just good peace of mind with the occasional oh boy this is nice.

 

[cmonSTART]

I worked on generators for a living recently and that's very very true. Folks don't understand why their $3,000 generator with zero hours is now no good.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Just bought an inverter for the stove blower. That's a stop-gap measure between nothing and a generator.

 

[burntime]

Adios, save me the math, which inverter did you buy? I have the same unit as you (both of us have good taste or bad???)

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Ummm- I dunno- it was a 700Wdeal at VIP Auto parts. I think that most run about 200W, but I wanted extra juice to run important stuff during extended outage.

 

[burntime]

Like a popcorn popper? It seems to me that the fan was like 60 watts or less? How long do you figure a deep cycle battery will run the fan? Will the fan be damaged if you went to bed and let the battery discharge?

 

[Adios Pantalones]

I dunno- you could be right. I saw a thread her where someone said their blower was like 204 W. Fans are pretty dumb tech- low power won't hurt them. The inverter just auto shuts off if the power gets too low- supposed to leave you enough to start a caar I think. I might even run it directly from the car battery and leave it out there- recharge it every time I drive.

 

[burntime]

I think a 100 ft cord thru the house would not be a big winner with my wife! Heck, I could run it off my garden tractor in the front yard of bad comes to worse, just fire it up every few hours...I put a car battery in it after replacing 3 lawn and garden batteries

 

[scfa99]

Yes, we heard about the storm. Glad you got through it in good shape. As for the generator, we have one and rarely use it, but when it is needed it is worth a lot. The best time to buy one is when the new year's models come out. Then you pick up one of last year's models they want to get rid of for a nice discount.

Thanks for the tip. What time of year do the new inventory hit stores?