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Emergency generator and misc. projects

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Eupher:

--- Quote from: fatboy on November 04, 2021, 08:29:51 AM ---Thanks

I'm in NE PA. We have been here for 17 years and only have had maybe 5 or 6 outages, most of them are short a few hours or so. Of course I would like a whole house system but even looking at portables there is a quantum price increase from 8000 to approx 10,000 watts steady power. My humble set up costs $1,000 for the generator and about $200 for the ancillary items plus at some point I want to build a wood enclosure to house this thing so add another $200

A 10,000 watt portable is quite a bit more for just an additional 2000 watts probably more than what I have in my total set up. I can run just about everything but keeping it running and storing gasoline is going to be a challenge.

In my mind I think that this is a good beginning and at some point (hopefully) we can upgrade to something like what you have and hand off our present system to one of my kids. But the problem is the kids will not leave although both of them make decent money LOL.

In some respects it like I recently woke up from a long snooze. 5 years ago my wife and I had a mortgage and a lot of consumer debt. Today no mortgage and no debt, paid off my kids student loans and a decent amount in our retirement funds. I have a jumbo list of things I want to do around the house, the generator is one thing crossed off the list, we put in a new oil fed boiler and water conditioner, next up will be central air I want a mini-split system. Hopefully that will come in next spring.

--- End quote ---

You're doing great! When Mrs. E and I got married 22 years ago, we looked around and decided that we'd always have a mortgage. I bought my first house at age 42. We're now on our 7th house purchased, sold 6 of them over the years. (Lotsa moving around chasing jobs.)

Now we're parked. I'm mostly retired, she's fully retired. I hear you about the house projects, which is why I pulled the trigger on some of the more expensive things when we bought this house 4 years ago and before I retired -- but we just plunked down major $$ for a tiling job in our master bathroom. That was one of those "must do" things because of the shit-hack way the bathroom was built in the first place.

Our savings are somewhat depleted, but the big $$ things are DONE.

Now, on to a brake job for Mrs. E's mini-van. I'll do that myself, though my back complains constantly. Within a few months, we'll build back our savings appreciably.

It sounds to me like you have a great plan. Mrs. E and I don't have children, so we never had that financial obligation to deal with.

BTW, our Kohler generator runs off natural gas. We had installed a 17kW standalone generator in Missouri which ran on propane. Propane is another one of those energy sources that's skyrocketing thanks to Gropey Joe and his deliberate attempts to trash our economy.

fatboy:
My better half's car just got new tires and needs some front end work before the end of Dec. In the past I always did this kind of work but thinking maybe will just open up the wallet this time.

Starting Jan 1, 2022 we are going on a strict Dave Ramsey style budget. One of the items on the budget will be a new car fund. I want to drive the wheels off my wife's car, leaving my PU at home. If we can get her car to last another 3-4 years we will be able to replace it by paying at least 80% cash. We should both be retired or close by that time.

I want to pay cash for all of the proposed home improvements. We usually get about $3500 refund from the IRS, I hope to use that to pay for a good chunk of the proposed central air conditioner. Our house has a fireplace that was converted to use a woodstove before we bought it. The deal I made with Sue is if she allows central air, I will allow making the fireplace a working fireplace. That would be a 2023 project.

Maybe it's my weird way of thinking but when we were deep in debt, doing even simple upgrades or repairs in the house seemed like a chore. Now a days I have my list, I try to tick off or at least start one project every weekend. When we made up our jumbo home wish list, some of the items seemed out of the question, way too ambitious, now they seem reasonable.

fatboy:
OK now I'm officially talking to myself LOL!

I consider myself to be a semi-serious DIYer type. Will try anything, engine swaps in the car, building a shed by hand, that kind of stuff. I had mentioned that I have kerosene heaters, I have (2) of them actually.

One of them needed a wick change, I had heard that it is difficult sometimes to do this but was confident that I would be able to figure it out. So two winters ago 2019 I picked up a replacement wick and jumped right in.

Epic failure, I couldn't get the wick to move up or down. Tried everything several times, still the stupid wick wouldn't crank up or down. So I threw everything in a box and in a heap in the shed. Went all last winter with just (1) kero heater as my sole heat source in an electric outage situation.

Now that I'm in semi-prep mode decided to give it one last try. Unboxed the parts and got it after about 2 hours of futzing around. I have now my two heaters on deck plus my generator. I have never been this prepared for winter.

Rick:
How's your stock of kerosene?

Had stocked up on tike torch juice, but noticed home depot has raw kerosene back in stock.

J P Sousa:
When I lived in an area that was hit by Hurricane Sandy, my power was out for three days and no heat. (SE PA)

I decided to buy a generator with an auto transfer switch and use two hundred gallon tanks of Propane. I decided on propane because a friend used gasoline and when his power went out so did power in all the gas stations.

I now live in an area with natural gas so unless there is a catastrophic event, my power will be good. 

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