l not -l wrote:
> On 27-Jan-2014, sf > wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 28 Jan 2014 04:36:32 GMT, "l not -l" > wrote:
>>
>>> Worst case, I move in with my son who lives a block away in a house
>>> I inherited when my mother passed. It has a whole-house natural gas
>>> powered
>>> generator. During the last two power outages, my son didn't even
>>> know they
>>> had happened until quite a bit after the fact.
>>
>> Wow! How much did that set her back (ballpark it) and how many years
>> ago was it installed?
>
> ~$9,000 installed, $125/year service contract. It was installed
> nearly 5 years ago.

We've considered doing that but, so far, our situation hasn't warranted
it.

There are also some issues in our part of the world with gas supply,
e.g., someone else in our town was told that there wasn't enough gas
pressure/volume/capacity in his block to support a big generator - it
wouldn't work properly and would cause problems for his neighbors, so he
couldn't do it. Our electrician told us this isn't uncommon and you
have to check with the local utility before you install one of these
things. That was about the quote we got, too, $10k if memory serves.

Our house has gas heat, so we need only a tiny bit of electricity to
power the circuit that works the thermostat and turns the boiler on and
off. Our is actually a construction generator we picked up a hurricane
or two ago - battery-powered starter with pull-cord backup, makes a
racket but it we had it running for 24 hours continuously and it worked
great. It runs about 8 hours on one of its tanks of gasoline (don't
recall how big that is - a few gallones, I think) so we keep a spare can
or two of gasoline plus a hose to siphon from one of the cars if
necessary.

Another fail-safe thing we're going to install is a sump pump driven by
municipal water pressure - since the sumps don't work when the
electricity doesn't, you can end up with a flooded basement, which we
did once. Our plumber recommended a water-powered sump over a battery
backup for the electric kind, so we're going to replace of our electric
pumps with a pressure-driven kind. We have two holes in the lowest
section of basement in our house and what's called a French drain so
only one pump needs to be working at a time, and one powered by
electricity and one powered by water pressure - which, like the gas
supply, rarely goes out of service - seems like a good thing.

-S-