we have a possible ice event comming christmas day north DE and up and i fear powerouttages, does anyone have a generator i could use/rent in case?
dude its supposed to be in the 40’s and raining on christmas day. i think youll be fine
cant be too prepared, but newcastle county is in “short term” and anything below middletown is out of sight.
yea there is a blizzard coming from the northwest and a large low from the texas area up the northeast, if that system goes further east that as the blizzard system collides with it the ice will be more in our area and south.
i really need to get a generator some time heh, you only need a few hours in the cold to trash your tank 
i read a story about a guy in the midwest who lost power for 3 days in an icestorm and lost his entire 240g tanks livestock, not fun :-("
i know someone here mentioned that they bought an auto switching propane generator for less than a $1000 installed. I remember i couldnt find anything even close to the price they mentioned but it might be worth reaching out to them for more info. From the little bit ive read an 7-8 kw generator is just about the smallest you can get away with if you want to run the essentials plus power a tank during an outage and they are goin to run between $2000-$3000 without installation for a reputable brand. Luckily i keep a 20 amp generator on my work truck 24/7.
screw the fridge im just running a few koralias n a 300 watt heater 
a ups should e sufficient
a ups should e sufficient
dont we all wish! a typical UPS(read affordable!) wont even power a 300watt heater and could possibly nuke your powerheads because they dont generate a true sine wave.
i have a Champion 4k peak and 3500 running watt generator from tractor supply… 299.99
Ran the heaters for the 220 and 55 a HOB filter, power head and the Mag 18 for the 220
also had a few lights on, fridge and tv/sat box. haha was sweet… the one thing i wish i did get around to doing was put a Circuit in so i could just back feed what important stuff i wanted.
if you have nat gas to the house, you can buy a fuel conversion kit to modify any portable generator for a couple hundred dollars.
or go whole hog for a home sized unit.
i have a Champion 4k peak and 3500 running watt generator from tractor supply.. 299.99 ran the heaters for the 220 and 55 a HOB filter, power head and the Mag 18 for the 220 also had a few lights on, fridge and tv/sat box. haha was sweetim impressed that you can run that much on it! is it auto-switching or do you have to manually turn it on? if its auto-switching did it come with the electronics or did you have to buy them seperately?
ive noticed with smaller units that the auto-switching can cost as much as the generator sometimes. coupled with the installation labor they can get pricey real fast!! definitley a worthwhile investment though since many of us have at least several thousand invested in our systems not to mention the priceless value associated with fish/coals we have had for years.
its a portable generator and can be mounted on some wheels… everything is plug and play… IE plug in the extension cords and play heck running them thru the house.
ah, gotcha. i didnt think the made stand-by generators that small.
plug in the extension cordsjust a quick heads up in case you dont already know, your going to need a industrial grade extension cord if you run that thing anywhere close to capacity. That much amperage over your typical "orange heavy duty" extension cord is a fire waiting to happen. I would guess that it has 30amp breaker and you standard heavy duty extension cord is not rated anything close to that, typically 15amp depending on the length of the coard. Thirty amp extension cords are EXPENSIVE, the smart thing to do would be run two cheaper 15amp outdoor extension cords and balance the load between the two.
A lot of times with a generator of that capacity the only way to even get the full power is through a 240v line. I know that my generator has the same capacity as yours but the 120v has a 15a breaker and the 240v has the 30a breaker which means that my 120v outlet will only produce about 1/2 the power that its rated for. Its for safety reasons like i mentioned above. Because a 240v has two conductors for each hot you can use the same guage extension cord for 30a as you would for a 120v 15a.
Portable generators shouldnt be plugged directly into a house circuit. just extension corded to selected loads. the main house breaker should be tripped first, in case the power comes back on. even with a whole house standby generator, the auto switch panel will first open the main breaker, and then shed load to only power the selected circuit breakers its sized and wired to handle. half a day without power is usually not a problem. you have time to get home and start a portable genset. Even the small ones will burn 15 t0 24 gallons of gas a day. so its expensive too.
I still think a couple deep cycle boat or bus batteries and an inverter would do for a while. when the batteries run down, recharge them with jumper cables from your car. that could keep tanks going for many days on minimum light, flow and heating.
thats a fantastic idea Ken, hadn’t thought about batteries with an inverter
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I thawt about it in 2003, right after hurricane Isabelle came through and knocked the power out for 5 days. Unfortunately, by the time i got to the stores, all the inverters were sold out already. lots of other people thinking the same thing for home use. so my tanks died over the next month. I should still get an inverter or two. and a deep cycle battery to keep on charge. in times of stress, a little flow and circulation through the sump and filter , plus a couple 32 watt strip lamps and a heater would keep things alive and healthy. as it was, with not circ, and waste processeing, the tanks polluted, used up all the oxygen and then things started dying in the cold and dark. and that was summer.
for an emergency circulating sump pump, they have those 12 volt DC baitwell pumps that will do 350 gph from sump to tank on a couple amps per hour. and unlike the inverter, they dont stop when the battery voltage drops below 10.2 volts, they just keep pumping but slower. you can run them till the battery is completely dead. and then they stop, several days later. so maby one battery for DC emergency pumps to keep the filter working. and another battery and inverter for minimal heaters and lights. I think something like that would be an affordable backu system that could keep our tanks going for a long time. with jumper cable recharges from the car for the batteries in between.
What else can we do when the lights go out.?
my generator puts out a pretty consistant sine wave and as long as the load isnt at its starting capacity does well. what i use is a Dual RV plug that goes from the RV 220 to Dual 120v outlets. Then the tanks run off of one cord and the fridge-etc on another. I use a contractor grade Ext cord not those flimsy ones even though i have plenty of those…
What im talking about in a Gen box is something that has a RV plug on it so i can just run from the Generator straight to the box with a heavy duty cable and back feed the circuits connected to it. I would shut the main feed to said box so no power could go back to the rest of the house nor would their be an issue if the power came back on. you really need to disconnect the main if you back feed into the panel at all since you dont want to fry the Lineman down the road trying to get your power back on.