I live in NW Harris Co. I was extremely fortunate in that we didn’t lose power in Beryl but have family that were without for 1-1/2 weeks. It made me think how unprepared I was so changes have been made. I first bought a small 2500w inverter generator to power fridge, lights, and a fan or two. Then I got to thinking how I also have a deep freeze full of deer and other various meats I’d hate to lose and also how miserable it’d be for me and my family to sit for extended days in a 90+ degree house. I decided I needed a generator that can also power the deep freeze and a window AC unit on top of the other items so I snagged a Westinghouse iGen 4500DF inverter generator. I’ve already acquired all necessary extension cords including a 30 amp, a 30 lb propane bottle, and a couple 5 gallon gas cans. In the future, I’ll likely look at ways of connecting it to the house so I can skip the extension cord part. Think I’m prepared now lol.
@@nunya1667 100%! Once it happens, it’s usually hard to find a generator right away. Preparing before a major event makes the panic and stress level go way down. Good job!
Sounds like what I did with my 120v 4500 watt Wen. Installed a 50 amp inlet box on the outside of the house, a 30 amp generator breaker in the main circuit box along with an interlock. Also rearranged some breakers so most of my essentials we're on one leg of the box. Learned most of this from RU-vid channel"everyday home repairs". Search"powering my whole house with a battery 120 volt Ecoflow Delta pro"to learn how to build a simple selector box for using a 120-volt power supply with your 240 volt circuit box. I think it's a safe way to go for those of us that are not professional electricians. Glad to see people thinking small as opposed to big fuel gulping generators. Hope this helps. I love my setup.
@@gangsterofhopsI know people who have the larger home stand-by generators. While I’m sure they’re nice, a person is looking at $12k-$15k to get them installed. That’s serious coin. My house is too small to need such a setup. My generator was under $800 and should provide for all my family would need. I’m also considering buying a kit to convert my generator to tri-fuel. My house has natural gas so just plugging in a hose from the feed line to the generator would likely save additional stress of always making sure I have enough fuel on hand.
Thank you for explaining the difference between a luxury and surviving. Too bad most won't take your advice. I upgraded slightly with a $700.00 Wen 4500w 120v dual fuel inverter generator. Run it off propane for 3150 Watts and live very comfortably during an outage powering most everything in my house. Used an inexpensive watt meter to plug my essential appliances in individually to size my generator. It runs at half draw and never over 3/4 on eco mode. Will be buying a window unit ac for part of the house. Also have a 1500 watt inverter on my 48 volt golf cart for short term outages and quiet generation of electricity. I don't golf but live in the country and that's my "mule". Hope this helps people think about what they actually need.
5000 btu window ac unit, it's as must for emergencies like Beryl. By August, stores will typically be out of window ac units so don't wait till a storm is about to strike to go looking to buy a window ac unit or a generator because EVERYONE will be looking for the same things and nobody will have any left in stock! Just saying.
Don't gamble with stabilizers and unknown amounts of time. Empty the carb it's easy. Just use the left over gas elsewhere it will likely go bad before you use it otherwise. Got my gen used 14 years ago. Never had to work the carb once.
We made it through Beryl with the 2300 AIPower. 7 days on generator power wasn't great but we had a small AC, internet, refrigerator ,lights and phone chargers. I'll probably get another of the same model and parallel them in the near future. The pain points I had this time around were fuel, lack of extension cords and the AC we had. 10 gallons of gas got us through a few days, but we got lucky being able to restock gasoline. NG is the dream, but until I've got that I'll upgrade my gas storage. The AC we had was a portable unit that used a lot of power for minimal cooling. We junked it and got a 6k BTU window unit that uses less than half the power and cools better, go figure.
@@apileofrocks5142 wow! That’s an amazing story. Good job! Very resourceful. The next video I’m working on is “fuel pacing.” Did you run the generator 24/7 or did you run it in intervals?
I had a 6500w unit, 8200w surge gas powered unit running a 5k and 8.5k AC, two full size fridges, lamps, chargers two fans and a pool pump... I would divert juice for appliances like the dishwasher and dryer.. funny enough the Keurig took the most juice it seemed worse than the microwave.. gal/hr is as advertised about so a full tank was 7.7 gallons and lasted 11 hours. I went through 110 gallons in the week without power. Gas bill came out to $316.
@@PracticalPreps We ran ours on intervals, giving the generator a couple hours of a break each day, for fuel and hopefully to not tax the oil as much. I think we did the best we could for fuel pacing, but getting that window unit earlier would've allowed us to stretch the fuel even further than we did. For now I'll probably just get a few more type 1 gas cans for hurricane season. 2 was not enough for a week without power. Just changed the oil and about to change the spark plug this weekend since we ran about 150 hours over the week if not more.
