Our power went out Thursday night and came back on Sunday at 12:10pm. My wife and I had just sat down to eat grilled hamburgers when we heard the whirr of the A/C and heard people in the neighborhood hollering. We had started to get miserable we had nothing: no power, phones, running water, etc. Our kind neighbors across the street let us shower at their house because they had a generator.
I wish I could say that I made good use of the down time, but I ended up doing little reading and praying because I was busy feeling sorry for myself. So there's my confession for the day.
Congrats. We were without water and power for most of three days, from Thursday night until Saturday night. I've never had the water go out, and I'm curious to know why Fairfax County doesn't have a generator backup on its water purification equipment. Too busy spending hundreds of millions of dollars on its precious schools, I guess.
Well, in the Great Ice Storm of 1978, my (military) family was out of power for a fortnight. We cooked on a Coleman stove and used candles for light.
Not showering for a fortnight was a problem, but we made do with cold water. Brrr!
Maybe I am too into the creature comforts, but I'm seriously thinking about rewiring my home essential systems and getting a generator. It was a big help to have some people in the neighborhood who still had freezers, running water, etc.
The Fairfax County water issue was pretty silly - I would think each water plant would have its own back-up generators.
Our water is a different story - we're on a well, so no power means no pump. We had stores in pitchers and didn't get into the bottled water until Sat. night.
One thing to consider: if you don't use your generator regularly, the gas will start to jell, and will gum up the inner workings. At least that's what happened to our lawn equipment since I hired a lawn service to take care of the homestead; I'm assuming a generator will do the same thing. Also, those babies are LOUD, unless somebody has figured out how to put a muffler on them.
There's a product called STA-BIL that will keep your gas from lacquering up the insides of your equipment (and we all know how painful THAT is).
The guy that fixed my lawnmower and weed-whacker told me that if you don't use this product or something similar, you can kiss the carburetor goodbye.
Fuel for thought!