Money Matters
FutureMrsMerati
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
NMMR: Generator Question
Seeking a little insight from those who have generators installed at their homes! Although we live in the greater NYC metro area in CT, our area is focused on "retaining its natural beauty" AKA has tons and tons of trees, is on the coast, and has experienced some pretty severe power outages ranging from several weeks with Sandy to a few days at a clip with various blizzards. We bought our house 2 years ago and fortunately haven't experienced any power outages yet, but know that any day now our luck could run out, especially as we head into winter. We don't have any experience with generators but know that frozen pipes as a result of prolonged winter outages are common in our area for people who don't have generators, which is not something we are looking to experience! Our neighbors are moving and offered us theirs for $250. It is a good quality Generac with 6,250 starting watts and 5,000 rated/running watts, and I've seen similar online for upwards of $8-900.
If any of you have generators at home, I would love to know what wattage you have, what you are able to run on it and what you had to do at your house electrical-wise to prepare to use it. We are primarily concerned with it powering our propane-fueled central heating system to avoid frozen/burst pipes, anything additional we can run on it would be an added benefit. Thanks so much!
If any of you have generators at home, I would love to know what wattage you have, what you are able to run on it and what you had to do at your house electrical-wise to prepare to use it. We are primarily concerned with it powering our propane-fueled central heating system to avoid frozen/burst pipes, anything additional we can run on it would be an added benefit. Thanks so much!
Re: NMMR: Generator Question
One thing to keep in mind is having plenty of gasoline on hand to keep the generator running. Our camper has a built-in gas tank that the generator feeds from, but we still have to fill it up every 1.5-2 days in hot weather. The in laws have 2 non-built in Honda generators and they have to fill them up daily in hot weather.
We have a Honda generator that (I think) is 6,000 running watts. We bought it used for $600 but, after the fact, I think we paid too much considering it was used. We've only used it once, but it was fantastic.
A tropical storm had knocked out power for 6 days in the brutal heat of August. I own a duplex, so that made it a bit more challenging. We were able to run both fridges, one A/C window unit (only the small ones!) for each residence, and tvs/computers/phone chargers/fans. All the items in that last category actually take very little power to run.
It runs on diesel.
My H has a whole set of rituals for its care. If I'm remembering correctly, he drains and flushes the gas out of the system at the end of hurricane season. As hurricane season is coming up again, he runs something through it to prep the engine. Something like that. We partially fill it with fresh gas. Then he runs a test to make sure it is working.
We don't keep much gas in it because we'll have enough notice a storm might be on its way to get more. I don't know how old it was when we bought it, but we've had it now for 5 years. It still works...at least on the tests.
A cheapish, emergency option are very small generators that run off your car's battery. I'm not even sure "generator" is the right term. That gives them too much credit, lol. We used one of those when we rented.
They're about $60. Your car has to be running for them to work. So, you hook them to your car's battery. Run the very long cord into your house. And plug in whatever you want to have power. You can plug in more than one item, but only small stuff. They won't run a fridge. They won't run a window unit. We used them to run one fan, one tv, two computers, and (when needed) our phone charger.
It will run that stuff for about 30 minutes. Then you have to unhook it. Let your car run for 20ish minutes to recharge its battery. Then plug it back in. It does have an automatic shut-off that will (supposedly) turn it off long before your car's battery would die. But we never trusted that, so we did our 30 on/20 off schedule.
If it sounds like a huge PITA, that's because it is. But when it is 100+ degrees and high humidity. You will do ANYTHING just to keep one stupid fan blowing, lol. Or in a cold climate, one stupid space heater going.
Whatever you end up with, be sure any extension cords you use are rated appropriately for the various currents coming from the generator. Some heavy duty extension cords will melt when used with generators and you need to have ones that can handle the load.