@kilogulf59
I'm curious is your well pump 120, or 240V?
And you need electric for your septic system?
Master thread for disasters and generators.
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I'm curious is your well pump 120, or 240V?
And you need electric for your septic system?
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..and having a combination of different resources for power is even better.
Keep thinking of Europe 5 years ago,
negative interest rates, money was flowing and natural gas from Russia was flowing even better.
Then the bottom drops out, many countries had little to nothing for a backup plan for energy.
We're far from perfect in the States, but how embarrassing is that - EU
Energy security, even on the smallest scale, is having backups to a backup plan.
kilogulf59
Enlightened
That's a VERY good electric bill. As I mentioned earlier, our house is all electric except the furnace. That's LP BUT it still used electricity. Even out pellet stove does. Our bills run currently about $130 low and upper $200's for a high. If the summer's very hot and sunny, a little more. I don't consider that very extreme, all things considered. It's very humid here so there's also a dehumidifier running in our basement six months a year. That's like the second floor of most homes and is where the bedrooms are. I/we do everything we can to conserve, as well.
OK, now THAT was off topic. My apologies.
kilogulf59
Enlightened
Honestly, I don't know what the voltage is on the well pump. Considering how heavy-duty it is, I'd guess 240.
The septic system is a field, not just a holding tank. There's all kinds of crap in there
ROFLMAO, pumps, filters, et cetera.
For years. We try to use energy in tune to how much sun we get but now that we have more capability, there is more wiggle room. Thing about off grid is that often we could be sending electricity back to a grid when the batteries are tanked up.
Lead acid certainly has its place but LiFePo has much lower resistance, lighter weight, as well as longevity going for it.
kaichu dento
Flashaholic
There's a lot of great information here for varying needs and levels of seriousness and I've had my share of watching my friends run their house on a little Honda 2k generator simply back-fed into a house outlet, which they still do during power outages.
A couple years ago I got my first experience of doing it myself when my mom had her power out for a couple of weeks. First we used a borrowed 2k generator that, on top of being really hard to start, every time, was also incredibly noisy and ran out of fuel every two hours.
Stores were out of everything affordable and I ended up finally finding a used Champion 2k inverter generator that was quiet, starts on first or second pull every time and ran for about 10 hours between fills.
None of 240v items could be used, but I powered all the outlets by supplying both legs of the panel through a pair of breakers and was able to keep the house warm, lights on (thanks to LEDs), freezer and fridge cold. Not ideal, and it took a lot of juggling to allot hours to the fridge, then the freezer, but it was much better than waiting for two weeks and not having any power.
I've still got that little generator and just wanted everyone to know that lots of houses and boats in Alaska get by in emergencies with these little 2k wonders.
A couple years ago I got my first experience of doing it myself when my mom had her power out for a couple of weeks. First we used a borrowed 2k generator that, on top of being really hard to start, every time, was also incredibly noisy and ran out of fuel every two hours.
Stores were out of everything affordable and I ended up finally finding a used Champion 2k inverter generator that was quiet, starts on first or second pull every time and ran for about 10 hours between fills.
None of 240v items could be used, but I powered all the outlets by supplying both legs of the panel through a pair of breakers and was able to keep the house warm, lights on (thanks to LEDs), freezer and fridge cold. Not ideal, and it took a lot of juggling to allot hours to the fridge, then the freezer, but it was much better than waiting for two weeks and not having any power.
I've still got that little generator and just wanted everyone to know that lots of houses and boats in Alaska get by in emergencies with these little 2k wonders.
turbodog
Flashaholic
Reminder that you can make/buy an extended run fuel cap w/ siphon hose for the honda 2k units. Drop into a 5 gallon tank and come back 24+ hours later.
Edit: pasting on the 'new' forum is TONS easier.
This used to be (and might still be) back in this thread, but probably got lost due to 3rd party hosting shutting down.
Anyway... here it is again. I used a combination of fans, adjustable heat guns, and hair dryers to load an eu2k. Disconnected the fuel line and placed into a graduated cylinder for precise fuel usage measurement.
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kaichu dento
Flashaholic
It's an aftermarket cap specifically for Honda, or will it work with other brands as well? Definitely sounds interesting, but at least 10 hour intervals was way better than 2 hours! Once a day sounds great.
The Honda 2000/2200 is one of the only small generators that has a fuel pump. Almost all the rest of them are gravity fed with the tank placed above the carburetor to gravity feed. Because the Honda has a fuel pump, it is able to take advantage of a special cap with an extended run time boat tank, if you want. The extended runtime tanks do not work on gravity fed systems (all the others) as I understand it.
You could probably make an extended run time system work somehow on a gravity fed system, but it would probably be a very delicate balancing act as the tank would have to just right, not too high, not too low, etc. And the gravity fed system would probably need to have the outlet at the bottom of the fuel tank, not a siphon system like a boat tank.
kilogulf59
Enlightened
@kaichu dento How did you learn how to do this? Do you shut off any 240v breakers?
Regarding the remote fuel tank, there's a bunch of Youtube videos on doing this. I'm sure it can be done to just about any generator as there's videos with non-Honda units as well.
@turbodog thanks for the chart. That was probably a lot of work for you and I, for one, much appreciate it.
Fuel storage/rotation:
I have not read all 65-pages of this thread. If this has been addressed already, please forgive me.
Awhile back, I saw a video about generator fuel storage that I thought was pretty good. The method assumes you have a vehicle that uses that same fuel as your generator. Basically it's this; in a well ventilated out building, like a tool shed, he built shelves. Then assembled 24, 5-gallon gas cans (all modified so they'd actually function). The cans were numbered in pairs, two number ones, two number twos, and so on. The numbers represented months of the year. Each month he'd dump those two cans in his vehicle and refill them. This way he had 120-gallons of fuel on hand, which he said was a week or two worth depending upon usage. None of the fuel would be older than a year, therefore he used no additives, i.e. STA-BIL. You can use this system with any multiple of 12 as long as you can burn up a month in your vehicles. Oh and he built up to this over a period of years. He didn't run our and buy 24 cans.
Any-who, I thought it was a pretty simple yet practical system the man came up with.
Regarding the remote fuel tank, there's a bunch of Youtube videos on doing this. I'm sure it can be done to just about any generator as there's videos with non-Honda units as well.
@turbodog thanks for the chart. That was probably a lot of work for you and I, for one, much appreciate it.
Fuel storage/rotation:
I have not read all 65-pages of this thread. If this has been addressed already, please forgive me.
Awhile back, I saw a video about generator fuel storage that I thought was pretty good. The method assumes you have a vehicle that uses that same fuel as your generator. Basically it's this; in a well ventilated out building, like a tool shed, he built shelves. Then assembled 24, 5-gallon gas cans (all modified so they'd actually function). The cans were numbered in pairs, two number ones, two number twos, and so on. The numbers represented months of the year. Each month he'd dump those two cans in his vehicle and refill them. This way he had 120-gallons of fuel on hand, which he said was a week or two worth depending upon usage. None of the fuel would be older than a year, therefore he used no additives, i.e. STA-BIL. You can use this system with any multiple of 12 as long as you can burn up a month in your vehicles. Oh and he built up to this over a period of years. He didn't run our and buy 24 cans.
Any-who, I thought it was a pretty simple yet practical system the man came up with.
kilogulf59
Enlightened
Just as an example; you can skip to see it complete and running @ 08:20.
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turbodog
Flashaholic
I can tell you from living through Katrina... if you are using _that_ much fuel... you're gonna attract attention, and not in a good way.
Keeping loads down, and using a genset that's fuel-efficient like the eu2k... a household can do pretty well on 3 gallons a day. And that's allowing for a small window a/c to keep one room comfortable.
turbodog
Flashaholic
99% of those are natural gas units... so I can't be forced/asked/guilted into giving you some natural gas.
And like I posted ~18 years ago, small 'disasters'/outages/etc... you can clearly see that those w/ last 1-2 days. Most of town still has power. You can get gasoline, but might have to drive a little farther for it. You could stay w/ friends who have power or even get a hotel.
Larger disasters... if you're in the middle of one that is (see post 1291) lasting 2 weeks... those type can easily last another week, with NOBODY having utility power and gasoline being unavailable. In those instances, even neighboring towns get sucked dry due to people traveling there for fuel.
When Katrina hit the COAST it cratered Jackson, MS. The closest place you could get fuel was MEMPHIS, 3 hours away.
So kids, remember that w/o conservation, no amount of preparation will suffice if things are bad enough.
Also... handy tip. You will need oil for the genset every 100 hours or so.
A friend just finished this book and briefed me on it:
It details what 3 hospitals went through during Katrina.
Well funded one: heli evacs for all patients
Middle funded: lost a LOT of patients
Charity funded: did extremely well, losing practically no patients
The charity hospital had a few (probably eu2k units). They siphoned gas from cars to supply them. They knew conservation and resource mgmt were key to pulling through as help was NOT coming.
idleprocess
Flashaholic
I'm comfortable keeping jerry cans around, but 24 jerry cans is a lot of fuel.
Small carbureted engines that are considerably more tolerant of bad fuel than fuel-injected vehicle engines thus I'd be hesitant to dispose of un-stabilized ~year old gasoline in such a fashion. I performed a bit of a natural experiment with this in the past: allowing fuel to sit within a vehicle for about a year and was lucky to be able to revive it - pumping out most of the old gas and adding fresh gasoline (plus several subsequent techron treatments) - thus my hesitance.
120 gallons / 14 = ~8.5 gallons per day, suggesting a jobsite-style generator. Upside can probably run HVAC during the day, downside it's surely quite loud and likely has pretty flat fuel consumption regardless of load.
During a power outage, nothing is louder than a HVAC unit cranking up. While this isn't literally true - whole-house and especially open-frame jobsite generators are louder - the point is that the modern neighborhood is eerily quiet during a power outage and what would ordinarily be background noise carries. On a similar note, the neighbor with the automatic unit literally lights up the neighborhood at night during a blackout.
These aren't important factors in localized or short blackouts but can be in longer blackouts. In my region enough of the population has lived with continuous climate control for long enough that I imagine a prolonged regional blackout during the summer months has the potential to result in disorder; lack of mobility may have prevented similar disorder during the multi-day winter blackouts of 2021.
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Yes, some generators/inverters can be paralleled for more load there 120v outlets can not be series connected for 240v. The key fact is some generators w/o a 240v outlet will in fact produce 240v using both 120v outlets (dual windings)!!
kaichu dento
Flashaholic
Been doing electrical work all my life and already had seen plenty of people doing the double-plug romex to back feed through an outlet, and figured I'd just start at the source.
Started by shutting off all the breakers, ran a line of 12/3 back to the panel, feeding an adjacent pair of breakers, turned on lights, furnace, then slowly experimented with how much more could be run at a time.
Ended up figuring out that only the freezer, microwave, washing machine or fridge could be run at a time.
Being warm inside the house, clothes drying racks and the outside line worked for getting the clothes dry again.
At the moment, I'm planning on buying a couple of 240v output generators, hopefully in either dual or triple fuel configuration.
turbodog
Flashaholic
Before I went whole house, I had a dryer plug that I used. Unplug dryer. Insert a dryer cord that was shorted across the 2 hots. Nice way to access some 8 gauge wiring.
turbodog
Flashaholic
Yeah. That's a LOT of fuel, especially in portable cans. If it were metal drums I'd feel somewhat better. In a perfect world, they would be explosion proof, in an open-air room.
I'd be willing to bet two people would like to talk w/ him regardless 1) local fire chief 2) his insurance carrier.
