It's a neat feeling isn't it!
My foray into backup power was a 3600 Watt Trace inverter and 4 golf cart batteries I got off a guy 20 miles up the coast. Got a good deal and he threw the batteries in for nothing (he'd never have shipped them).
I played with it for a bit and worked out a place for it to live and got another set of 4 Trojan T-125's for it (spent more on those than the inverter) and Hurricane Irene showed up and knocked out power for 3 1/2 days. I ran on the first set of batteries (fridge, freezer, some lights, TV, etc) and that ran out in around a day. The second (new) set lasted 2 days and at which point the house got quiet again. I basically said to the family "don't open the fridge and hope the power comes back on soon" and in about 6 hours it did, so we didn't lose any food.
That started me on my way towards getting a generator too, at first I looked into Listeroids which is why I frequent this fine site, but eventually I decided on an Onan single cylinder 3000w watercooled Diesel (MDJA) and bought that for $200. It was a sad state of affairs but I took it apart and cleaned it all up, etched it and sanded and primed and painted. Replaced the injector pump which I got from a guy on the Onan group over at smokestak (good folks there much like the people here, very helpful). It took me a few months and a lot of garage space to finish the restoration.
I did get the "when are you going to get rid of that thing" (not) "It's smelly" (so?) "we never lose power" (yet) "what are those batteries for? (what happens when they run out) "I might back my car into it" (I wouldn't recommend it, you will smash your car up and won't hurt the generator" so it lived on a dolly between the two car spaces in the garage...
Then Hurricane Sandy hit! after the initial storm hit, the power went off and we went dark (around 7pm at night if I recall) I got the house going on the inverter (had replaced the original battery set by then) and since I have an oil fired hot water heater we could put the kids in the shower etc. Next morning I got up (still no power) got the generator out of the garage and fired it up. While it was warming up I pulled the cord to the house and plugged the inverter into it so now the little Onan was running the house AND recharging the batteries. Brewed up some coffee and then had my nice hot shower. I don't care how rough you're living if you can start your day off with a hot coffee and a nice hot shower, you're not doing too bad.
This went on for a week (we were out of power for 6 1/2 days) and that little Onan never skipped a beat. I ran it out of fuel once and a safety oil pressure sense line fatigued off and that dropped the decomp solenoid. Both of those were easy fixes. I ran a cord to my neighbor the first day to chill his fridge down but said long term he probably ought to take his stuff to his brother in law who still had power.
Once the power came back on and life was good we were at the in-laws and my wife's sister lamented on how bad things were in Jersey and they had no power for 7 days and had to bug out to my inlaws beachfront condo. "what did you guys do?" and my wife said "oh we were fine, we ran our generator and didn't lose anything, still had hot showers and TV (dish network). I gave her a funny look and said "Oh it's OUR generator now??? that stinky thing you wanted me to get rid of is OUR generator???" vindication indeed!
I don't get the entitlement of the other neighbor though, that's damned rude if you ask me. There's nothing fair or not about having some forethought to set yourself up with alternate power.
Robert
