I made it! / Power restored

[Brisc0]

I live up in the Ozarks and the ice storm last Friday took out my power until 9:00 p.m. last night. I have a heavy SPS reef and am happy to report 0 losses. Lots of brown out, but no loss. I know a lot of people in my area lost everything and I thought I would drop in here and plug my generator because without it I would have lost it all as well.
I used a Troy Bilt 5500 watt generator with a Briggs and Straton 10HP engine. It ran 7 days, 24/7 and never so much as sputtered. I had to shut it down about 20 times to fuel it and it cranked up on the first pull every time. It was an absolute steal at $650.00 considering that a 7 day black out would have cost me the entire system.

Anyhow, I feel very fortunate and just thought I would pass this along. Best wishes to anyone still battling the power outages from last weeks ice.

 

[purza_00]

What components did you run off the generator? Just pumps and heaters, or lights etc...? Did you also run any household items like an electric heater? Just curious as I want to get one also.

 

[Brisc0]

I ran the following:

1XSequence Hammerhead (5800GPH 3.5 amps, approx 300W)
1X500W Heater
1X100W Heater
1X300W Heater (it got REALLY cold, -3 degrees one night, needed extra juice)
1XMaxi 400
2XMaxi 1200
1XMag 18 (Skimmer)
1XMag 12 (Chiller pump, chiller was off)
CA Reactor
1X13" LCD TV
PS2
2X13W Spiral Compact Lamps
A partraige in a pear tree
2X36W T5 Actinics

Coffee in the A.M.
Charge Cell Phones
Power my gas furnace


With all of this on I was at 1/2 load giving me about 10 hours of run time on 5 gallons of gas. I did not run my halides to conserve gas usage.

 

[davidh202]

Really Happy For You!!!!
I purchased a small 1800W Coleman Generator last summer (just in case) and only for the tank stuff.. We rarely have any outages here but a few months ago we had a very bad wind storm. At 1:00 AM we lost power for 8 hours. I cranked it up and saved the tank (no losses). A back up is a small investment considering what we stand to loose !