Thanks for the help. I’ll call them.
I have a Yamaha 2000W generator and one of the Champion dual-fuel 7500W units; if there’s an outage, I run an extension cord from the former into the furnace closet, because the blower and control box have a power cord plugged into an outlet in there. Transfer the cord to the extension, and presto - heat for the house with the natural gas furnace. The bigger unit is for the well pumps, and I run it for the 10-15 minutes at a time needed to top off the cistern and fill up whatever in the house, and I use a outdoor grill propane tank for that. The rest of my power needs can be juggled as necessary - heat and running water really are all I need for the duration. It’s worked well the two or three times I’ve needed it so far.
All I will be running is my well, hot water tank, AC, fridge, a couple of tvs, dish receiver and my sons tv and Xbox. Oh and my router. But I won’t run the AC with all that other stuff. I’m the winter I don’t need to run my heat because I have a fireplace to heat with. Most of my rooms will get cold but my living room
And kitchen will be nice and warm. I can always use some space heaters. My power usually only goes out in the spring, summer and fall.
Is your water tank electric? It can be 10kw alone if both heating elements are on. When we replaced our water tank, we switched from electric to propane, mainly for this reason.
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My 5500 watt geny will run "240" volts. And run my entire house.
I dont use a transfer switch either. I wired a welder plug into the breaker box and isolated it on its own breaker. Kill the main breaker switch and open the geny breaker and use a suicide cord. I dont like that name because only an idiot would get killed using it.
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Remember that if you and your dad both have power go out internet is down unless he has a generator as well.
Thanks man, I wasn’t even thinking about my dad. He is too cheap to get a generator so we will be without internet. Lol. My son will just have to deal with it. He likes to write and draw so he can do that if the power goes out.
It is but I know many folks that run theirs with portable generators. I won’t be running it all the time. Just when I want to get cleaned up. And I will have most everything off when I do.
Well you could always get a small one to run just that stuff. That or grab a large battery backup just for the modem, router and AP. A 1500 like this one should be able to keep everything going for at least a couple hours. It will keep my monster server up and running for about 15 minutes and at 50 watts it should run about 180 minutes. If you look at the wall wart's they are plugged in to you can figure the approx wattage but I know it's not a lot. Worked for a WISP at one point and we had some high power 802.11B stuff that ran off a couple batteries and were charged with a solar panel, over a year of working for the guy I never once had to hike out there and lug a battery along or worry about it.
It doesn't sound like much but in a storm where the threat of tornado's and such are out there 3 hours of internet access gives you a good sized window to be able to check weather and such where the TV may not be showing what is happening. Once it does finally die you could grab it and plug it in at your place on the generator for a few hours to charge it back up.
And I shy away from APC, they cook batteries. I have 4 small APC units that all have dead batteries which are now basically just really expensive surge protectors. Have replaced batteries and I am lucky to have them last a year. The Cyberpower that I have has been in use for at least 4 years and still works just fine.
If you wanted to go the REALLY cheap route find one at a Goodwill and pick up a deep cycle battery even the crappy APC one should have a problem causing the battery any issues. Just don't load it up with other stuff and it will probably keep the internet on for a day or so though you will probably want to set it in the garage and run a cord through to run the modem, router and AP.
Man I hate to hear this, I've been a longtime fan of APC's stuff. My X-S 1500 is still rocking along and I don't even remember how long I've had it, probably 10 years. I've replaced the battery once and it's probably not long before needing it again.
And a general FYI. During the last big tornado that came through Moore I was in the cellar when I lost my router due to the power going out. The next day they choked off all of us from cell towers and limited them to fire, police and EMS. IDK how they do that but they do! And we had more storms forecasted.
So it's a really good idea to have an inverter generator to run your router, computer, flat screen TV's etc. even if it's just a small one dedicated for that alone. Otherwise you are totally cutoff from info. Of course the whole house generator models are inverter and that's one reason they are more expensive, so if you go that route you are already good.
