Emergency Backup Generators
Perhaps $800 to $1400 USD2024 for 2200 watts peak & 2000 watts nominal
Meg purchased a Honda EU2000 in December of 2017 from Home Depot in Tukwila, WA, USA for $899
I have kept it full of ethanol free gasoline with Sta-Bil fuel stabilizer added
I keep a logbook in the box with the rebuild reference & owner's manual & a pen to record use data
I pull open the box, remove the top box with the paperwork, spare spark plug & tool, then open the top of the giant plastic bag and fold the bag over the open box flaps. Inside the bag the generator is covered by the OEM silver polymer fabric HONDA cover which had a VELCRO flat that I open so that I can grab the top handle to pull the 25kg generator + 1 gallon of fuel in the tank, out of the box, then set it up outside. I close the choke, and turn the bottom handle to on, then turn the top of the fuel cap lever to on, then grip the pull handle and hold the generator with my left hand while I pull the cord with my right hand to start the engine. As soon as the engine runs after pull starting & turn the choke back off & let it warm up for about 30 seconds before plugging in an electrical load, typically a small electric space heater of 500 watts, 750 watts or 1500 watts to low, medium high test the ECO mode once its activated 3 minutes after the engine started. I then run the load and alternate modes and load level for 15 to 30 minutes, recording the data in the logbook with runtime or ODO time the engine had operated in minutes. Every 1400 minutes it gets an oil change with synthetic car oil that I have on hand for automotive oil changes DIY style at home. It holds 13.1 fluid ounces of engine oil and has a small white dip stick in the bottom left corner, once the single easy big black screw loosened to the service door which has insert hinges so it pivots when opening at the top so you can easily lift the door out of the way to service the carburetor or change the oil. Another smaller access door that pops free at the top near the generators handle enables access to the sparkplug.
Recently we had a power & internet outage due to a windstorm that hit the Pacific Northwest, at one point causing a power blackout that affected 3 million people. From Tuesday 11/19/2024 at 5:55 pm until Friday 11/22/2024 at 9:14 pm there was no grid power available at our home. Outside daily temperatures were between 40 and 56 F, right now its 34.5 F and falling outside, Happy Thanksgiving. Internet was out until 3am 11/24/2024 when the WiFi regained an Internet Connection.
We used a 12/3 extension cable to run the power through a gap in the downstairs slider, running the generator at the edge of the patio with exhaust blowing away to vent correctly, then used duct tape to cover the gap on the slider to keep cold air & exhaust smell gases from leaking in. I arranged patio bricks to make a crude exhaust diffuser to further reduce the sound emissions and also to direct the exhaust gas away from the patio. I had to refuel the generator with about 4 gallons of fuel.
I ran the generator from 6pm to 8:30pm 11/19, then 8:30am to 8:30pm 11/20, then 8:45am to 9pm 11/21, then 9am to 9:27pm 11/22. It had 999min ODO when I first started it to make electricity to help with the power outage. At 1400min ODO I did the first oil change, then when the power was restored, it was late, so I turned it off and went to bed. Next morning I woke up and changed the oil, refilled the fuel with stabilizer, then stored it all carefully in the box for active standby, ODO reached 2800 min in the log.
We used the 1600 watts to run our Fridge, electric space heaters, our Blu-ray Player and LED TV, a dehumidifier to dry the bathroom some. We never lost hot water because this home we rent space from has a natural gas water heater that works even when grid power is lost, something we tested on the first evening without power. I took my bicycle for a ride for the first time in a couple of years and Meg & I went and played tennis at the closest public park with tennis courts that were still slightly wet and gladded with tree debris because of the recent windstorm, with winds that peaked at 77 MPH. Without power or internet at home, we went for more walks, spent more time reading the bible, cooking over a tiny butane camping stove on our dinner table.
Normally our indoor home temperature peaks at about 70 during the day and dips to 65 at night, but during the power outage the natural gas furnace was not able to work without the blower motor energized or board logic control powered on, so the inside temperate dipped to 52 at night and with very method plausible including some sun assist on the day we played tennis, we were able to heat to a peak temp of 65. These are in imperial Fahrenheit temps America lol I really like metric too, it's so much easier to think in Metric numbers, especially doing math with metric measurements. Imperial units are bizarre and speak of the random nature of human cultural history or lack of applied international units' standards.
Weird not having internet for the first time since I first went online at 12 years of age in 1995 over a dial up connection to AOL using Netscape navigator in Windows 95 OS on am Intel desktop with AGP dedicated graphics card over the blue VGA cable to a Viewsonic Color CRT monitor that I purchased used from a computer recycling shop. I got the desktop parts, tower, power supply and cable, keyboard wired and wired mouse, from a computer shop in Kent Washington for $480 that I had saved from mowing my neighbors' lawns for a fee since age 10. My adoptive father thought it was a good idea to let my build a computer from parts, since I had a library book about how to home build a computer from parts that I had rented from the closest public library on Newport Way in South Bellevue. At this time a 10-speed white child bicycle was my primary vehicle, so my dad drove me to the computer shop perhaps 25 miles away, to get the computer parts. I build the computer on a Saturday during the school season that year 1995-96. It was a big gray heavy box. The monitor plastic was white, and all the cables were black. The keyboard and mouse were ivory warm white colored plastic. I think it featured a 100mb hard drive where I installed the OS over an IDE CDROM drive that a family friend who worked at Microsoft operating the Microsoft Store on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond gave me as a Christmas Present, both the OS install disk & CDROM drive.
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