With the East Coast gripped in fear from Hurricane Sandy AKA Frankenstorm, I thought I’d share some of my personal observations and experiences as an East-Coaster as we brace for the storm of the century (of the year; ya know, cause each year there’s a storm of the century).
- People Wait Until the Day Before a Storm to Buy a Generator. And then Curse the Stores that are Sold Out – This is the same absurd dark comedy that plays out each and every storm. People that somehow escaped prior storms unscathed (or didn’t) decide that 1 day prior to landfall is the optimal time to finally buy a generator. I happened to have a completely non-storm related issue going on with my dishwasher today. I was in search of discharge hoses for a Bosch dishwasher and to my chagrin, learned that there’s nothing “standard” about those German bastards. Everything is custom… even though Lowes sells Bosch and told me over the phone they had what I needed in stock. So, while I was in Lowe’s I couldn’t help but notice the frenzied look of fear in peoples’ eyes running around the store stocking up on flashlights and batteries. I saw 2 different people hoarding 5 Gallon gas cans. They had 2 in each hand for a grand total of 20 gallons of gas storage. When Lowe’s didn’t have what I needed, I tried calling an ACE Hardware since they sometimes have a more eclectic mix of hardware. After several attempts due to busy signals, I finally got a fanatical pickup where she literally yelled into the phone, “Ace, We’re Out of Generators!”. She then paused, presumably waiting for me to hang up. I said, “That’s how you answer the phone?”. She repeated that they’re out of generators. It’s all about generators these days even though there was ample supply a week ago. Incidentally, I bought one a few years ago out of season on a 40% off sale at Lowes. So, if you somehow make it through this storm and missed out, keep your eye on sales in the Spring!
- Gas Stations Out of Gas – This is another one that confounds me.
Continue Reading About Frankenstorm Bringing Out the Best, the Worst and the Dumbest in People
@Yo, Darwin:
It is beyond ironic that you are posting an article proving Darwin’s Law of Survival of The Fittest when your own moniker is Darwin, just sayin’.
A great culling seems imminent or mebbe this is Mother Earth’s dry run for 12/21/2012.
Al Sharpton and Chris Matthews have declared that Hurricane Sandy is a Republican attempt to suppress minority, poor people, and old people votes.
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Nice article.
Also liked a lot your contention that price gouging is a good thing. Your reasoning makes a lot of sense.
Darwin
I had to go to Lowes to buy a goddamn lawnmower on Saturday. My piece of shit Toro mower gave out after 5 years. What a disgrace. The panic hadn’t set in yet at 9:00 am on Saturday. Both of our cars were filled. We have enough food and water to last weeks or months.
I also bought a generator at Lowes about a month after Irene. It is ready to go.
I wonder how many other people in our neighborhood besides us have gas powered generators?
Thanks for making my article your must read.
Generator upkeep is important too.
Oil on most small units should be changed every 100 hours (hemorrhoid), good to keep it (the correct oil and synthetic I’d say is better) on-hand because the fuckers turn off when the level gets too low.
I don’t like using fossil fuel-powered generators in a city apt, so I’m looking to purchase a Xantrex battery powered 1500 watt generator, comes on a wheeled trolley, and you can get a solar panel to charge it, or charge it by plugging it in. Have any of you used this generator, and if so, what was your experience with it.
I keep 25 gallons of tap water in one gallon milk jugs that I washed and sterilized, and am looking to acquire a Berkey water filter, very useful when you live a block from 5% of the world’s fresh water supply and have only so much space to stash jugs of water.
The apt is high enough to escape flooding from the lake, which could occur. Some people are predicting waves up to 20′ along the Cook County shoreline.
Admin, I polled some neighbors and surprisingly, very few have generators. I would have thought after the last one where we went a few days without power, people would have gone out and taken advantage of the off-season sales, but no… they all have iPad though LOL.
Stucky, glad you enjoyed my price gouging post. I was flayed in the blogosphere for proposing such cold-hearted economic sense, but hey, someone’s gotta say it!
Davos – so true; I actually haven’t maintained my generator properly I fear. I only used it once to test it out and ran the gas out, but if I recall, I’m supposed to either leave it full with some stabilizer or run if every few months or something. I just have fresh gas and an assumption it will work tonight LOL!
One thing you need to be careful of on small gas engines that have not been started in months is to turn them over slowly, preferably with the spark plug removed from it’s hole. A dry cylinder can cause the piston to seize in the bore if you just start turning it over like it was running yesterday. Small engines have a little metal tab on the bottom of the connecting rod that sort of slings oil around in the block which keeps things lubed up so crank them easy after they have sat for a while.
Darwin, if you ran it dry and left it that way, the carburetor will likely be gummed up and it may not start or keep running. Usually it will be the float that gets stuck or on a siphon style carb, the pick up tubes get gummed up. Fortunately, these things are not jet fighters and are fairly simple to fix but you will need a diagram and instructions for your model which you should be able to find online. Put some fresh gas it in and crank it over slowly several times. The fresh gas alone might free things up. If not, remove the air cleaner and completely cover the carb intake with your hand while cranking it over slowly. This will cause engine vacuum to force fuel into areas of the carb and may help free it up. If not, you’ll need to turn a few wrenches.
If you don’t know how to do these kinds of things, add them to your prepper to do list.
I_S
Admin – buy a Honda. Toros eat shit.
Llpoh
You are a smart man. I bought a Honda.
One other thing for all you people using generators out there, make sure you know how to calculate the load rating of the appliances you will be plugging in. You will not be able to run your fridge, freezer, washer, dryer, TV and all the other crap in your house at once. Things that heat up like blow dryers, toasters, coffee makers, stove etc will draw large amounts of power. Even if your generator is rated at 5000 watts this does not necessarily mean it will deliver 5000 watts continuously. Understand how your generator is rated, how to convert amps to watts and how to calculate total load. As an example, my wife has a blow dryer that draws 1875 watts so a 1500 watt generator (common size) will not cut it.
Also, use heavy duty, outdoor rated extension cords and never exceed the wattage rating for the cord itself. You might have a 5000 watt generator but I can almost guarantee you DO NOT have a cord rated for 5000 watts! Keep cords as short as possible as well and do not use pigtails to increase the number of items you can plug into a cord. Drawing high current loads through a thin cord is a good way to start a fire or damage or destroy the appliance/s you are trying to run.
I_S
Chicago999444,
I know nothing about these “battery powered generators”. I would start by making a list of what things you *need* to power during an emergency. Write down the wattage or amperage ratings of each appliance you will *need* and compare that to the specs listed for this battery thing you want to get. My suspicion is that it will not power very much for very long at all even with a solar panel.
An alternative is to get a small, quiet gas generator that can go on a balcony. I have two small Honda generators that are so quiet you can carry on a casual conversation while they are running. They can also be connected together with a special cord to deliver more power and even 220 volts. They are about the size of a small pet carrier. They are not cheap either but maintain a very high resale value as evidenced by prices on Craigslist.
I_S
I have (among others) a tiny Honda gas generator-like 550 watts. I’ve had it for over 15 years, have let it sit unused for years at a time, and it always starts right up when I need it. Last winter I hauled it to the doomstead and left it in a sealed 55 gallon barrel, which floated last spring during breakup flooding.
I needed to use a jigsaw yesterday, so I dug out the genset. Hadn’t run it for over a year. I pulled on the cord a few times-nothing. Checked the gas-bone dry-it must have tipped over while floating around the yard. And all the stickers peeled off, plastic parts fell off from the sealed-in gas fumes-made me wonder if the booger would still run at all. Put in some (nearly year old) gas (w/ Stabil). 2 pulls & she was running like a champ. I may get another Honda.
Admin says: “I had to go to Lowes to buy a goddamn lawnmower on Saturday. My piece of shit Toro mower gave out after 5 years.”
I’d tell you to get a Snapper, but they can cost $100 per hour or more depending on how much lawn you want to mow.
I see the subject of Honda has come up whilst I was writing. Good to know I’m in the company of greatness. BTW, the generator I referred to above is like what IS talks about-very quiet, the size of an over-wide briefcase, and (apparently) trouble free.
Re electric powered generators-I believe the word for that is “battery”. How can you run a generator on electricity?
“Xantrex battery powered 1500 watt generator, comes on a wheeled trolley, and you can get a solar panel to charge it”
What IS said. Those “generators” are in fact battery power supplies with an inverter. They might be practical for someone like Chicago who lives in a city apartment and can’t realistically use a gas generator. Check the watt-hour ratings (like IS said) because they just don’t store much power. If you want to charge a cell phone and use a laptop or radio, it will probably work. For anything like cooking or a fridge, no dice.
So, just for the hell of it, I went out and started up our generator; good news is, after several tries, it finally started. Not so good news is it only runs with full choke (start mode) and when I switch to run mode, it sputters out. I’m guessing by letting it run long enough it would eventually run with the choke off OR that I could actually generator some electricity with it choked? Anyway, all I really need to run is a fridge and a sump pump in an emergency, possibly a TV now and then. So, I should have more than enough juice; just not a ton of gas. But out here in PA, we shouldn’t have it nearly as bad as NJ…
Darwin
I’ll sell you some of my gas for $300 per gallon.
I’m taking your advice and gouging you. 🙂
It looks like we may get through this without losing power.
AKA – Honda is the go for small gas motor goods – generators, lawn mowers, trimmers, etc. One pull usually does the trick. Briggs motors? Bwahahahahaha! Kawasaki motors are pretty good, too – especially in the larger sizes, say 15hp up. Kohler third best, but not in same league as Honda and Kawasaki.
Admin and others.
That fuel you put in the genny will not last long. I mean it will not last long as gas in the tank. When you put it up for the next hundred year storm make sure you prep the fuel. I recommend stabil. It can be had at almost any auto parts stores. Put it in and run the damn thung to get the fuel in the bowl full of stabilized gas. With e15 lots of water can bein gas with little short term effects but after 6 months or so the fuel tank can rust and the needle and seat in the carb can rust together.
In any event use even stabilized fuel up within 2 years.
jimski
That is why I haven’t put the oil or gas in the generator yet. They are sitting next to it in the garage. The gas I have in containers has Stabil in it. I learned that on TBP last year.
Just imagine how many electoral votes in the northeast will have been decided by the few thousand minorities and old people that voted, early and nobody else gets to vote because there’s no electricity..
After working Sandy, I gotta say, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could or should have been. Clearly I’m not in NJ or NY, who’ve gotten blasted and who I hope get all the help they need and more. But here? As weather related problems went, people actually heeded warnings, stayed inside, businesses shut down and it really created a response that I’ve never seen before, because if it had been what usually happens where it is business as usual plus emergency weather situations it would have been a total disaster, but it really panned out to equating to significantly less business because people weren’t out doing stupid things. Not a singlee moron got their car stuck in high water, minimal auto accidents, minimal fights from being cooped up inside. It was pretty amazing.
Admin – too funny; that’s the way the free market should work! But if we were really in a pinch, since I’d filled up both cars already and my tractor is full, across all of them, I could probably siphon out 35 more gallons no problem which would have been several days of cycling the generator on and off. But looking ahead, yes, I’ll actually buy an extra couple 5 gal containers. I can just cycle through them each summer and winter with the tractor/snow blower anyway stabil aside.
So, we lost power only a couple hours last night, had the generator all set up and running with sump and fridge and by 230AM boom! lights a blazing, TV blasting, everything popped back on. A bunch of surrounding areas near us have no power though. We checked in with some friends if they need our generator and they’re either borrowing off their neighbor’s line or don’t have a finished basement and not much water to worry about, etc.
I’ll just say the peace of mind in being prepared and knowing our basement wouldn’t flood and we could last several days without issue was worth the investment…
Hey, question for the TBP forum though – What is the best way to store my generator long-term now following this event? Run it out empty? Put some stabil in gas and fill it to the top? I heard you want to keep oxygen out of the system by displacing; just wondering what the general best practice is….
My opinion on the generator..run it dry.(If it’s gas)
Reason: Alcohol in today’s gas creates problems with storage thar stabil won’t fix. And air in the system is no big problem for a gravity fed, caburetor type engine.
If it’sa diesel generator with mechanical fuel injection (old school only) then store it with stabilzed fuel.
I’ve read that letting it run dry and storing like that can allow the gaskets to dry rot or something; then I watched a YouTube video on long term storage where entitled “Simple Steps” and it was like 20 steps including changing out all the oil, disconnecting and storing battery and all kinds of other crap. Much more work than I would have thought to simply have a working generator ready when I need it.
Darwin
Lots of trees down in our neighborhood. My neighbor across the street lost some siding.