Hurricane preparedness and power outages

Crap, now I have to buy a boat just to ensure fresh gas for the generator.

Even silier and more pig ignorant than you usually manage and that’s saying something.

Bullshit.

The fuel pump in the pickup died last year. Must have been the ethanol. Or maybe it was just tired after pumping gas for 22 years.

Maybe I've been lucky but I haven't had a problem even with the Harley that's old enough to drink.

I do find it interesting that the corn farmers get very irate when they think the mandated demand for ethanol was possibly loosening. I remember when farmers grew stuff to eat or at least make whisky.

When you sell the house do you have plans to warn the new owner or disassemble what you did?

doubel sucide cords mite bee ok if you is sober when the par goze out

You raised the question of why bond the neutral on portable generators. Bonding means the neutral in the generator is bonded to the frame and to the eqpt grounding conductor, yes? OK, again, if the neutral is not bonded then a fault like a piece of eqpt that's plugged in having a hot short to the metal frame will not trip the breaker and will not trip the GFCI. There would be no return path because the eqpt grounding conductor from the drill, through the cord, to the generator, is not bonded to the neutral, so there is no current path. You're left with an undetected, serious fault and the metal of the equipment energized. Would you get a shock, electrocuted? Well, that depends. If the only thing with a fault is the tool you're holding, then no. But if the work light hanging from a pipe on a job site has a similar fault on the opposite hot, then the whole pipe system or whatever metal it's hanging from is energized. Now you're holding the drill and come in contact with the pipe and you complete a 240V circuit. Which is pretty much why we have the neutral bonded to the equipment grounding conductor in buildings too. You could leave that unbonded, turn it into an isolated system, but then faults don't trip breakers or GFCI, faults go undetected, and instead of having behavior with faults being mostly predictable, it becomes very unpredictable.

A room AC was a consideration. I've not tried it but it should handle it. A 6000 BTU is 490 watts running so that is not a problem, start surge unknown but should be ok. The fridge is about 500 watts too so in theory I could run both but would not.

Nameplate says 6A. I imagine that is max with defroster and compressor.

It is anew Samsung 28 cu ft 4 door. This is from the website on the new version ENERGY STAR® Certified Yes

Energy Consumption

Volt/Amps

and no one who might notice the (main) breaker and think it needs resetting...

What causes the defrost to come on? Is it likely to come on during the first 16 hours of operation? What I'm thinking of, is not running the generator at night.

Refrigerators will stay cold for a long time if not opened. I see no reason to run a generator all the time. Not sure what triggers the defrost though.

Full ones stay colder, longer. Fill some milk jugs with water and throw them in if your frig isn't regularly full.

One reason it's OK to shut the generator down at night. It was a little hot in bed, but I used a fan on a USB power bank recharged the next day.

My mother used to do that with a freezer. Also, that meant never having to buy ice to make homemade ice cream.

Who knows? Years ago, it was a mechanical timer, now I have no idea.

Give it a try. I've been through a couple hurricanes with power outages. I run a generator to power the refrigerator, the microwave and a light.

I worry about someone taking the generator, so I do not run it while I'm sleeping. Therefore the refrigerator is off for about 8 hours. The ice has never melted.

I understand the defrost cycle is on a timer. It would be powered-off if it happened to be running when the generator was turned off.

It might use the 8 hours as its defrost cycle, but I doubt it is that sophisticated.

Fred

Inspection went fine. The guy who handles permits for the electrical company showed up at 9 and the inspector about 9:30. Inspector looked at the outside box and said he didn't have to go in the basement, but wanted to see the box connections. Inspector asked if I knew how to operate the interlock, and I said you can't go wrong. The electric company guy couldn't remove the cover plate screws with the dinky screwdriver he had. I told them the electrician had used an impact wrench and I could fetch a good screwdriver or socket and ratchet. Inspector said no, he'll just look at the basement panel - had to do something, right? Went to the basement, looked at the panel. He nodded, said you can't go wrong. Inspector signed off on the permits. The interlock cost $65 from Geninterlock.com. If you don't shop you can pay $145. It's 2 steel plates, each about 3/16" thick. I paid $96 for the GE outlet box. Permitted electrical work was $750. Pulsar 12,000W Dual Fuel Portable with Electric Start, G12KBN cost $850. Generac 50' cable cost $372. All prices include taxes. $2133 total. Was it worth it? Only time will tell.