How many have standby generators?

[adamgoldberg]

I'm curious how people deal with power outage situations, losing electricity can be fatal (and wet!).

I have an automatic standby backup generator connected to natural gas ... I am NOT without power for more than about 30 seconds. Bridging those 30 seconds isn't too hard.

What do you do?

 

[Nina51]

i have a portable generator on my deck. learned the hard way after being w/o power/heat/water for 6 days after the ice storm in '07. thankfully, i didn't have tanks at that time.

i've only had to use it once in the last year but my tank were the first things i plugged in!

 

[DavidinGA]

I need to buy one...

 

[scottwhitson]

I am debating getting one at the moment. We are away from home alot and are setting up a 600 gallon tank so we are really considering one.

 

[Neogenocide]

I've got a large enough portable to run the house. Monitoring systems let me know when the power is out, I live 5 minutes from work....so plenty of time to run home and get the generator online.

 

[BoxesOfTheSea]

I have one. It isn't a whole-house generator, but it will run my refrigerator, my freezer, and my tanks. I have had to use it once so far, and I am glad I have it.

 

[adamgoldberg]

FWIW, my planning was done before thinking about reef tanks, but when I built my house we put in the automatic standby generator because in our old house we frequently would lose power for 1-4 hours.

With the new system, about 10 seconds after mains power goes down, the generator automatically fires up, and if the power is still out when it comes up to speed (15 seconds), it throws the (two) automatic transfer switches (we have 2, 200A panels) and I have power to everything again. It will shed the high-draw loads (in my case, two AC compressors) if it's approaching capacity. Then, when the utility power comes back on, it switches back to utility power and turns off the generator without any interruption in power to anything.

I caution, however, that it wasn't a small operation to install this stuff, but I travel quite a bit and there's no way my wife would be able to do things like drag the portable generator outside, plug it in, start it up, etc...

 

[Baiggann]

I have a whole house generator. Switches on after power is out for 10 seconds. Powered by natural gas.

 

[Rancherlee]

8000w generator that's manual for running the whole house, more than enough power if I don't use the oven or drier. Also keep a minimum of 20 gallons of fresh gas around for ~2 days of use.

 

[88rxna]

7500 watt in the shed. Simply open the window and door to the shed ( storage shed ONLY), run the cable to the plug outside of the house, hit the transfer switch, turn the key on the geberator and BAM!
The whole house has power again.
With all the money invested in food,heat and our reef...it really is a cheap investment if all is lost.

 

[sn4265]

I don't have one but would really like to get a whole house emergency generator. Not sure if that's going to happen in this house or if that is simply going to have to wait until we get another house in like 7 to 10 years. I definitely should look into a portable to handle the fish tank in the event of an emergency though.

 

[Paul B]

I also have one that runs on natural gas and gasoline. I connect it to my house gas if the power goes out

 

[Sethjamto]

I have a generator, but not on automatic standby. I have to drag it out of the shed and plug it in. Most of my power outages here last less than 30 minutes, so I've never had to worry about it for the most part. I mainly have the generator for hurricane season when I could go without power for days.

 

[mfinn]

I have a 6500 watt electric start gen and have it wired to it's own circuit box.
While it's not a stand by ( I wish), all I have to do is flip over the dog house style cover, turn the gas on and hit the ignition switch. Go in the garage and flip 6 circuit switches and 3/4 of my house has power, which includes my hot water heater.
Before this generator setup I had a 5500 watt gen that I ran extention cords through out the house. Lost power for 5 days and had no way to take a shower. That was a bummer.

 

[Jodah]

I always recommend a generator. Considering we can have thousands of dollars invested in them with corals, fish, etc. It seems less expensive to spend 500 bucks on a decent generator than to completely restock the tank.

Granted, I don't have one. But I also only have a fowlr setup and two fish. XD

 

[pacu mom]

Generac 20 KW generator. Unfortunately, I should have consulted with an electrician before I bought it. It is too small to fully power the whole house. However, it will be business as usual in the new fish equipment room that has yet to be set up. The transfer switch is a work of art

Outlets connected to the generator are marked, so we can run extension cords to the old part of the house not on the generator. Had a planned outage last week that lasted nearly seven hours. Had to run extension cords to the current equipment room.

 

[adamgoldberg]

Generac 20 KW generator. Unfortunately, I should have consulted with an electrician before I bought it. It is too small to fully power the whole house. However, it will be business as usual in the new fish equipment room that has yet to be set up.

I'm confused. I have a Generac 20kW generator, which produces 17kW when fed natural gas (as I do). I have 400A service to my house, in two 200A panels. Each time it's come on I haven't had any issue running whatever I wanted to in the house -- but I haven't tried to stress it (I'm sure that if I tried to turn on both ovens, the electric dryer and both AC zones it'd run out of juice).

When I was planning, the consensus among the electricians was that the 20kW unit would be sufficient for all but those three items (and would probably work with one or two of them going).

Do you have a problem with the unit powering your whole house?

 

[pacu mom]

Yes. I read the part "whole house generator" and assumed the 20KW would power the whole house. I was wrong. That's where I made the mistake. In building our fishroom, we ended up adding over 2,000 sq. The equipment room has a lot of dedicated lines for high wattage use. There are five duplex outlets and four 2 duplex outlets in the equipment room. Here's part of the back wall.

Since the generator is primarily for the equipment room and new master bedroom, it's OK. I had to pick and choose what else I wanted on the generator...as in one garage door, the gate, the septic pump and lines for the kitchen after that is remodeled. Plus we do have outlets we can plug in extension cords. When our build is complete, we will primarily be spending most of our time in the new part of the house. The old master bedroom will become my exercise room. It won't be bad at all if I can't turn the treadmill on We heat the house with two wood stoves and don't need AC, so heating and AC were nonissues.

 

[ggsteve]

If I had NG i would definitely have a whole house generator. As it is, I have a 5500w portable standby gen. That runs the furnace, well, fridge, one upstairs circuit and one downstairs circuit. All aquariums except the 65 gal reef are on those two circuits. I run an extension cord to the reef (and another to the cable modem!)

How long do you all run your portable gens for multi-day outages? The one time I've needed it I ran it for a few hours in the morning, then again at night. I don't think you're supposed to run them for 24 hours straight.

 

[LefkoNJ]

We have a 20kw whole house unit. Thing is a tank. With sandy and Irene the last two years we can't risk it anymore.