A few nice accessories for your backup generator
I’m told that accessories are the key to great fashion. I can’t remember where I heard this, but it certainly rings true. I have discovered a few accessories that make life a little better with respect to the use of our backup generator.
Battery Operated Liquid Transfer Pump
It always seems that utility power is restored just after I refilled the generator. I tend to put stabilizer in the gasoline I use. Even so, I don’t like to leave the generator fueled while in storage. I prefer to empty the tank and let the carburetor run dry.
Further, I have never acquired the skills involved in siphoning liquids using suction and gravity. I tried, but quickly gave up. I think this only works in movies. So, after Winter Storm Uri, I ran up the street to the local O’Reilly Auto Parts where I procured a cheap liquid transfer pump.
You can get these on Amazon as well. For under $20 these little devices make it very safe & easy to pump the fuel back into the same containers I used to purchase it. Thereafter, I typically just pour it into our cars.
After several days of listening to generators drone on endlessly, silence is most welcome. Nothing is quite so annoying as a neighbor, with an especially noisy generator, attempting to “burn off” the fuel in the tank by letting their generator run for hours and hours with very little load.
Dust Cover
Genny should be pretty. Well, maybe that’s overstating it. It should be kept relatively clean. As our garage is not a laboratory environment, that means it’s kept under a nice dust cover when not in use.
Foul Weather Protection
There will be times when Genny is working out in the weather. It just won’t do to have it suffering the elements directly. Some protection is required.
Some people build little generator sheds to provide a semi-permanent home in the yard. This seems to me a little obsessive, but perhaps it’s warranted for a very noisy generator.
Another option is a severe weather cover. These are designed to provide protection while operating. Some claim to be universal.
GenTent makes some designed to fit specific most open frame generators. They also have a variant designed to fit Super Quiet enclosed inverters like our Predator 9500.
Their web site has a tool that lets you pick the make & model of your generator from a list, taking you right to the suitable severe weather cover. It eliminates any guess work. Very handy.
An Alternative: A Pet Shade
If a close fitting GenTent doesn’t seem appropriate, there are other alternatives.
I think that this pet shade could be a good solution, providing you can anchor it down to keep a big wind from blowing it away.
Recent experience with Beryl was that the wind wasn’t too bad. The storm was basically on its way past when the power finally went out.
I think that the shade could be screwed down to a couple of 2×6”. Some weights put on the boards to hold it down. Or, if it was in the yard, on the grass, secured with dog stakes screwed into the ground.
It happens that I have a set of light aircraft tie-down screws. These are like oversized dog stakes, a heavy wire spiral that gets screwed into the ground. They’d surely hold it down. In the past, I used them to secure very large kites.