Oh, I thought you were talking about a need for a generator as that has happened twice this decade alone for rolling blackouts and plenty more times than that due to actual storm outages. Carry on.
disclaimer I work for Generac, but the newest Generac models shit on the current Kohler models Generac just launched all new stand bys, they are awesome
How are their line of portable dual-fuel? I will be purchasing one this month. I want one large enough for my 1700 sq ft house for cases of Texas fuckery but also able to be taken for trips. For reference my buddy down the road has a 6400 watt but says it is slightly small for his house but knows what he can and can’t use when it is operational.
A cool Generac story. A family friend of mine lives up the McKenzie River in Oregon, which had a 145,000 acre fire this fall. They have a generac installed and all the homes out there run on wells. All power was cut due to the chance of high winds knocking out more power lines and sparking additional fires. Everyone evacuated super quick and my friends had no idea if their house survived (14,000 homes didnt). When they finally returned, their home was left standing, all their neighbors burnt down. Turns out firefighters saw their lights were still on so they used their home as a staging area and fire break due to the fact that they could access the well. That generator saved their home.
So here is my #firstworldproblem, I am looking at the 12000XP which puts out around 9,500 running watts of power. That sounds like its perfect for what I would need for my home. I would also love to take it with me primarily for tailgating and stuff for UNT games with our friends. However the damn thing is 230 lbs. I am a bit concerned about lifting a 230 lb generator to get in the back of my truck.
Ehh, I think it will get more use than we think. With the spring storm season coming, I expect power issues will continue to be a problem down the road. Hopefully never like this again, but my plan is to spend $1500 on the equipment as insurance that we never have a similar problem in the future. That comes to me saving around $120 a month for a year.
my generator is 210 lbs and have no problem getting it in and out of a truck with my sons help. Just don’t tailgate alone
Honda for portable, old Kohler or new Generac for home backup. The Hondas are very quiet on average and can be run in series for greater output. Give you some flexibility, but not cheap.
Not sure if those things can power pool equipment, but I would have paid $1500 to even rent one to keep my stuff alive this week. Probably would have paid that to avoid a few sleepless nights as well. Seems like a good idea to me, even if you never use it.
As a Texan, we were impacted by the storm, thankfully not in a huge way. I'm gonna have a debrief meeting when the dust settles with my siblings/parents (comprising 6 different homes across 4 cities in Texas) and discuss what did/didn't work and general improvements to increase preparedness in the future. My mom sent me a generac meme already.
And to more vague and existential, we humans like to think we are "in control", capable of withstanding and enduring outages, storms, shortages and the like. In the typical American household. that is a myth. How many days of food does the typical household have on hand? How many days of water is on hand? For water, it might be fractions of a day, if we want to be able to flush our toilets. Some of these weather events recently (at least in Texas) have caused almost borderline chaos.
Great discussion. I have an electrician coming over in the next hour to price out transfer switches. I have a nice inverter generator that I store on the side of my home for our RV. To me, there are 4 options and I plan to do 1 in next few months: 1) use existing portable generator with either auto or manual transfer switch if I add electronic starter and controller 2) go with whole home generator 3) add solar and battery storage 4) go with whole home generator and some battery storage (if fuel becomes the issue as well) I was convinced I would do a generator system up until this storm and the limitations on not only power but water and in some areas, natural gas. I’m pretty sure Tesla energy setup will cost me the same as a new Jeep Wrangler. I’m pretty certain a generac system will cost me the same as a used Corolla. I would have easily paid someone $1,000 per day this week for steady power and internet so either can be justified depending on how many drinks I’ve had and how recent the event occurred. Has anyone added battery storage to either a solar system or home generator setup?
I now have as much faith in natural gas staying operational in Texas as I have in power and water after this event. So for me that means portable bi-fuel with a transfer. Solar seems cost prohibitive to me as I am on a 5 year plan to get out of my current house and out of DFW and I am pretty sure I would not see that money back that quickly.
We are on a much longer time horizon where I could see solar being okay. It’s never going to pay for itself but this is a situation where i can buy me some peace of mind.
Good point. So on the portable ones, a lot of them are dual fuel, you can use Liquid Propane (like a gas grill uses) or gasoline. The one I am looking at will run at about 1 gallon an hour. So a 10 gallon tank of gas, gets me 10 hours (at 50% load). Three days worth might have been quite a bit of fuel, but worth it to me.
My brother installed Solar last year, and is looking at buying the Tesla Powerwall now for his home business as he does a ton of IT contract work and only having power during the day is a major issue for him. The powerwall is around $8,000 installed and the payoff if you have solar apparently is under 10 years. I am wondering what this situation will do to solar prices as I anticipate a ton of Texan's will be looking at this as an option as well, and with less supply and increased demand, I expect solar prices will climb. Also both a generac permanent generator and tesla solar wall (with or without solar) will both have a significant impact on the resale value in a positive way. I had a buddy tell me an "Interlock" type switch was a better option than a transfer switch with regards to generators, just FYI so you might look at both and ask your electrician which one he prefers.
If this tells you anything about the industry’s position on Hayward, their pumps and heaters are still in supply with the wholesalers. I should have clarified my statement to say “pool equipment and parts that most companies will install.” Pentair & Jandy are out of stock.
I spoke with a.tramp before shit hit the fan for last minute advice. I had already taken measures to protect the equipment and exposed pipes. He suggested I run my heater on the night of the worst temperature dip and gave me advice on how to do an emergency drain of the equipment if I lost power. I went out after our chat to turn on the pentair heat pump and it failed to start. No way I was going to get an HVAC tech out to look at it before the weather turned. I knew I was in for a long week. However, we never lost power and and my Hayward pumps held up and my pool lives. Lou Gehrig doesn’t have shit on me.
As I have mentioned before, the problem with Hayward equipment is not when it is running, it comes into play whenever something breaks. As for the Pentair heat pump issue, pretty sure I told you when you bought the house that heat pumps on pools are a constant pain in the ass as they neither heat nor cool well (efficiently) and constantly need HVAC support, regardless of brand. Don’t come at me because you know I will spit facts! Glad you got through this ordeal. You were on my list of people to call yesterday but ran out of time.
Oh I was definitely not coming at you, just relieved we made it through and offering my paid endorsement for Hayward products! Spoiler I will be replacing with something other than Hayward as equipment fails.
These kits look like a simple solution if you want all circuits getting power. Not sure this is ideal for me as I want to only power critical systems if using generator power. Will ask electrician about it for sure. found this on interlockkits.com: The Interlock Kit is simple and ingenious; it provides a mechanical Interlock, which acts as a manual transfer switch so that the utility and generator breakers cannot be turned on at the same time. The Kit isolates the two systems so that power from the generator will never back feed into utility lines, and vice-versa. That’s safer for your generator, your electrical system – and utility workers who could be shocked while repairing a nearby line.
I think the benefit for an interlock for me is it allows me to power any of the circuits I want, as opposed to being limited to just those on the transfer switch. With the interlock; I turn all the circuits off and then can turn on the ones I want. But later if I want to switch circuits; I can turn certain ones off and others on which gives me more flexibility. This seems more ideal to me.
Interesting. Now you have me conflicted. I’m guessing interlock is substantially cheaper which may make the decision easy.
My understanding is with interlock, you just flip the switch and have the whole panel on back-up power. Just make sure to shut off unwanted circuits before flipping the switch if your generator is not big enough to power the whole panel load. Start-up power is significantly more than running power and any stress on the system is bad.