Whole house generator

[garyland]

Just curious how many of you have whole house generators that automatically come on during a power failure.

[BlackSpinner]

It is hard to put one on a second floor apartment. Though if we have another ice storm like they did here in 98 I am in deep trouble.

[jazzer4]

$4,000 for my house...Don't have it but would love to!!!

[The Texan]

8Kw Onan quiet diesel.

[chunkyfrog]

I put 'no' for whole house; but we have a portable power plant that could be dragged out of storage.
We used it several years ago to run the electric part of the gas furnace.
Our house is all electric now--In case of a future lengthy outage, I fully intend to stage a 'hose-in' at their offices.

[jdm2857]

Fortunately, I live in an area with pretty reliable power. Fewer than one outage longer than 15 minutes per year, and in 19 years have never had an outage longer than 6 hours.

[elena88]

my neighbor has one..

We lose power a lot here, just lost power the entire night last month, and I got to sleep all night without my cpap without guilt.

woke up feeling like a million bucks

The longest we have been without power is five days.. they usually get it fixed in 24 to 48 hours.

[chunkyfrog]

We were without juice for 8 days due to a devastating ice storm--right in town.
We bought low-temp sleeping bags and used the fireplace--we ate a lot of weiners.
The cat was so funny--at first, he was warning us there was a FIRE! Later, he was sleeping on the hearth.

[Emilia]

I've lived in FL for 36 yrs, and not until '04 did I ever have a sustained power failure. That was the year of multiple hurricanes and tropical storms, and I was without power for 3 days due to a large transformer station being fried by lightning. Generally, I lose power off and on during the thunder stormy summers, but not more than an hour or so at most. So... I do not have a whole house generator, and I only have a couple of UPS's to protect electronic devices (one for my auto cpap). For any sustained power loss, I will have to make due or move to a relative's house that has power.

[sister]

I have a portable generator that we can use for the c-pap, frig,and maybe a couple of lights.

[bearded_two]

No generator but several UPSs for computers and networking equipment, and I have two batteries for my CPAP. We have a portable gas stove and several battery operated LED lights. We have a copper pair wired telephone line that is powered by the telco central office (with wired phones). Cordless phones don't work when the power goes out, cell tower batteries only last a few hours, and the standby batteries in Fios or cable company provided Internet phones don't last long after the power goes out. We also have two Kindles with lighted cases and some small gelcell batteries with necessary cabling and power supplies to keep them charged (they provide rudimentary internet service, including email -- as long as the AT&T cell tower still works). My car's battery is an Optima battery that will work fine as a deep cell battery that I can take into the house and use as a tertiary CPAP battery.

[jdm2857]

the standby batteries in Fios or cable company provided Internet phones don't last long after the power goes out

The ONT (optical network terminal) that Verizon installed in my basement for FiOS uses a small 12 v lead-acid battery (of the type used in emergency exit signs and available at the big home stores) to maintain phone service only (no internet or TV) for about 8 hours. However, there's no reason a larger external lead-acid battery (a motorcycle battery, for example) could not be substituted (with a little creative cabling) to keep the phones running much longer. As mentioned, at least one hard-wired phone is necessary. (I'm parenthesis obsessed this morning.)

DSL service, which is provided over copper like POTS (plain old telephone service) works during a most power outages. And, believe it or not, POTS is an industry term.

[nanwilson]

I don't have a whole house generator unless you count my motorhome. I do have battery backup for my cpap, and I could move into my rig if need be for a long outage. I keep my motorhome propane and gas tanks full just in case we do have a biggy here.
Nan

[bearded_two]

I am old fashioned (I used to be a Bell System Communications Technician and I have worked for Bell Labs), I prefer to let the telco provide dial tone and power my phone line rather than having to worry about a rechargeable CPE battery. I don't know how often Verizon or the cable company replace the CPE batteries -- and their capacity degrades over time.

Our power routinely goes out for several hours at a time and we have had the power go out for up to three days. During a power failure we are one of the only condos in our building who has a working telephone. Some of our neighbors have copper pair phone lines, but they only have cordless phones (this is probably also a problem with the Fios and cable VOIP users). The local Sprint PCS, Verizon, and AT&T cell phone towers die after several hours. The cable TV goes out when the power fails, and the cable broadband works for six hours or less (this would also affect the cable VOIP users). City water goes out after about 24 hours, so we also stock bottled drinking water and a few 5 gallon jugs of water.

[jdm2857]

I don't know how often Verizon or the cable company replace the CPE batteries -- and their capacity degrades over time.

The FiOS agreement makes battery replacement the customer's responsibility. And for you non-communications people out there, CPE stands for customer premises equipment.