Hopefully everyone made it through Sandy safely. A few people I know that were impacted by the storm ‘only’ had varying amounts of property damage, but they and their family were unharmed- and that is the most important thing. Except for a total of maybe 30 hours of no power, the first of which lasted 22 hours I was fortunate enough to come through with no damage.
We did survive it ok – there was a little property damage. The awning off the upstairs terrace tore off and thankfully only fell onto the terrace. A pole that was holding it up bent, danced around a bit and eventually landed in my neighbor’s yard and not on anyone’s head. When you say 30 hours without power, the first of which lasted 22 hours — is that because of your generator? If I was into betting or investing, I’d be putting my $ on generators right now!
Oh, almost forgot, my awning was moving about but all the pieces remained attached.
Actually I didn’t run the generator much. I have 2 deep cycle batteries connected to an inverter. I ran that for light and keeping things charged. The next morning I took the gen out, charged the batteries and used some high power devices the inverter couldn’t handle. The 22/ 30 hours was the time Con Ed wasn’t supplying power. I had electric from the inverter for all but about the 1st 15 minutes of the blackout.
Depending on what you want to keep running an inverter with one or more batteries may suffice. Every solution has it’s limits. For a generator you need fuel to run it but it can supply a lot of power for a fairly long time. Batteries/ inverters are quiet, are safe indoors but don’t hold as much power. They need periodic charging (can be solar but expensive and slow).
As an example, two 12 volt marine deep cycle batteries with an inverter. Combined they hold about 1 Kilowatt hour. Oversimplified you can run 1000 watts for an hour, or 500 watts for 2 hours, or 250 watts for 4 hours, &c.
Hopefully everyone made it through Sandy safely. A few people I know that were impacted by the storm ‘only’ had varying amounts of property damage, but they and their family were unharmed- and that is the most important thing. Except for a total of maybe 30 hours of no power, the first of which lasted 22 hours I was fortunate enough to come through with no damage.
We did survive it ok – there was a little property damage. The awning off the upstairs terrace tore off and thankfully only fell onto the terrace. A pole that was holding it up bent, danced around a bit and eventually landed in my neighbor’s yard and not on anyone’s head. When you say 30 hours without power, the first of which lasted 22 hours — is that because of your generator? If I was into betting or investing, I’d be putting my $ on generators right now!
Oh, almost forgot, my awning was moving about but all the pieces remained attached.
Actually I didn’t run the generator much. I have 2 deep cycle batteries connected to an inverter. I ran that for light and keeping things charged. The next morning I took the gen out, charged the batteries and used some high power devices the inverter couldn’t handle. The 22/ 30 hours was the time Con Ed wasn’t supplying power. I had electric from the inverter for all but about the 1st 15 minutes of the blackout.
Depending on what you want to keep running an inverter with one or more batteries may suffice. Every solution has it’s limits. For a generator you need fuel to run it but it can supply a lot of power for a fairly long time. Batteries/ inverters are quiet, are safe indoors but don’t hold as much power. They need periodic charging (can be solar but expensive and slow).
As an example, two 12 volt marine deep cycle batteries with an inverter. Combined they hold about 1 Kilowatt hour. Oversimplified you can run 1000 watts for an hour, or 500 watts for 2 hours, or 250 watts for 4 hours, &c.