skip to Main Content

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.

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.

Read More

On Batteries for Whole Home Backup Power

EcoFlow Ultra BasicIn recent weeks I’ve twice given my presentation on an Affordable Strategy for Whole Home Backup Power. The first time was online using Zoom. The second time was live at the July meeting of the Norhill Neighborhood Association. Both went very well. But as ever, the presentation changed a little from one outing to the next. In particular, a Norhill resident had a comment about battery storage.

This inspired me to show a couple of slides I had originally skipped in the interest of time. Simply put, I’m not a fan of whole house battery backup. And I’d like to explain the logic my position.

For the love of sunshine

Our is a modest home. A hundred+ year old Craftsman Cottage built by William Wilson Realty Company. This kind of home has a roof that’s all angles. There’s just not much contiguous space upon which to locate solar panels.

Further, one of the truly great features of our older neighborhood are all the mature trees. The place is just rich with grand old Maples, Pecans, Oaks and Sycamores. Even the occasional Loblolly pine. Our property has a mature Pecan in the center of the back yard.

All these big ‘ole trees tend to shade single-story homes like ours. Those houses that do have solar installations are mostly two-story homes, that manage to peer out beyond the treetops.

Oaks over the east end of Bayland Ave After Hurricane Beryl

So, we don’t have solar panels on the house. Many companies have tried to sell us on the idea, but in the end, it’s just not practical for this house, at this location. That makes this all about batteries, and batteries alone. Not solar+batteries.

Read More

Webinar: An Affordable Strategy for Whole Home Backup Power

Slide1

As promised some weeks ago, I’ve created a presentation that describes our experience arriving at a strategy for whole home backup power. Since there seems to be some interest in this sort of thing, I’ll be presenting it via Zoom on Thursday, July 25th at 7pm CDT.

The presentation draws upon the experiences from Hurricane Ike in 2008, Winter Storm Uri in 2021, the derecho in and Hurricane Beryl in 2024. It traces our evolution from a wholly ad hoc approach, to running our entire home (including 4T AC) from a portable inverter.

Read More

Central Air Conditioners: Variable-Speed vs Soft Start Kits

Some time ago I detailed our 2021 decision to upgrade to a variable speed central air conditioner, the various features and benefits underlying that decision. That was the same year, after the Great Texas Freeze of 2021, we went about implementing a practical strategy for backup power.

We had been planning for these projects for quite some time, setting aside the necessary funds. Things might have been quite different if the old air conditioner had outright failed unexpectedly, requiring immediate replacement. We probably would have opted for a single-stage replacement purely on the basis of cost. After all, that’s what happened in 2002 when, as new homeowners, we were more-or-less forced into buying the American Standard Allegiance 12 system.

Single-stage systems certainly get the job done. They’re standard, builder-grade equipment. They simply don’t fit into our current strategy for backup power. At least, not without some fiddling. What follows in an exploration of that fiddling.

Read More

Backup Power: 9kW-ish Portable Invertors

Just a few days before Christmas 2021 we bought a Predator 9500 portable invertor generator. Back then, it was one of the first of a new generation of inverters delivering 7,500 watts continuous power, with 9,500 watts peak.

The Predator brand is sold by Harbor Freight. The 9500 model was introduced in 2020 at $1899. Demand was strong, and they were in short supply for a long while. By the time supply was improved the list price had gone up to $2399. It has since gone to $2499, but you can still get them for less during special promotions. We managed to get ours using a last-minute pre-Christmas coupon good for a discount of 25%!

Over time, similar models have emerged from several other companies like Genmax and DuroMax. It’s quite apparent that these are all made by the same manufacturer. They vary only a little in specific features and the color of the plastics.

Three Inverter Generators

Not long ago, Gavin’s Garage offered an unboxing video of the Pulsar PGD95BISCO Super Quite Dual Fuel 9500W Home Use Backup Portable Inverter Generator.

Read More

Decisions: 2021 Household Projects

As we come to the end of the year, I’m looking back across a range of substantial household projects. We rather famously lost power for a few days back in February 2021 during an unusually cold snap. This lead to some additional thinking about household projects, including the new air conditioner. Specifically, how best to adapt our home to operation without utility power? After all, the Great Texas Freeze of 2021 was not the first time we lost power for days. We were without power for several weeks after Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Generac Standby Generator Beauty Shot copy

The most common approach that we see around the neighborhood is the installation of a standby generator. These are permanently installed systems that startup and take over when utility power fails. Generac, Kohler and Cummins are the most common brands. They typically run on natural gas and I’ve seen systems from 14 kW to 32 kW hereabouts.

Standby Generator vs Air Conditioner

Given the position of our home on the lot, and the location of the gas meter and breaker panel, it’s not really practical for us to install a standby generator. It would be prohibitively expensive given the required location of the generator. We’d need to run buried pipe for natural gas, and conduit for electrical cable, a considerable distance. The cost of the installation is much more than the generator itself. The entire project cost is as much as a new air conditioner, for a benefit that that would only occasionally be realized.

Read More
Back To Top