living without a fridge/freezer

[Mortblanc]

I have two generators and the ability to rig a third gen-set from any vehicle if necessary.

As I said, I do not use these for all inclusive power to run as if all was well with the world. They are for emergency power for the fridge and freezer with possible use for emergency lighting if necessary. By emergency lighting I am speaking of someone being injured and needing treatment or a mandatory repair with power tools. Your favorite show being on and needing the TV running I do not consider an emergency, or wanting to read a book or charge your phone randomly.

When the common outages occur I just run the generators 2-3 hours daily at spaced intervals to keep everything inside the fridge and freezer cold/frozen.

I have a 1000 watt unit for just the Fridge and freezer. It is a small portable unit that one person can pick up and carry like a picnic basket. It has a 2L fuel tank and will run for 6 hours on 1L of fuel. If I needed too it would run all night on one tank.

This little unit cost me about 75 pounds your money many years ago. Some of the best money I ever spent. I think you can still buy them from the cheap Chinese tool dealers.

I also have a 2500W unit for use with my power tools. They have a heavy surge draw and this set will run anything in my workshop. I built a house using this generator 20 years ago and it still runs like new. The 2500w generator will power the fridge, freezer, charge every gizmo I own and light the house (all LED bulbs) all at the same time.

It has a one gallon tank but uses fuel rapidly at 1L per hour. That is about average unless you have a very fancy, very expensive unit. It uses an old style Briggs and Straton lawn mower type engine of 3hp. Not fancy technology at all and I can salvage an engine from any lawn more I find.

Remember that you are only using this for 2-3 hours daily, so fuel consumption is not a primary concern, unless you have no fuel stored. Remember that you vehicle has a large fuel tank and I consider my vehicle's best use in a lock-down situation as being a fuel storage device. I have put less than 50 miles on my vehicle this month.

Which brings up my third emergency power system, the vehicle. I have both a 500W and a 1000w inverter which can be used directly off the vehicle battery. Just hook the clamps to the battery and you instantly have a 1000w generator. Fire the vehicle up and you have a power gen-set at your disposal.

Even without running it the vehicle makes a better power pack for charging phones and devices that those little 1 amp solar charger panels everyone raves over until they are required to use them long term and discover that they simply can not keep up with the demand of a phone using GPS, Gut-Hook, Google Map or any of the other emergency apps one might need.

Don't worry about sign-wave this or that, it is power when you don't have any and you are not going to be using it with your high priced media center.

Your vehicle, or the average vehicle at any rate, will burn one liter of fuel per hour at idle speed. If you have a 50 liter tank that is enough fuel to keep your fridge/freezer cold for up to 2 weeks if used properly rationed in average English weather.

The main complaint people have with generators is their noise. They are loud because their silencers are crap! Get a good car silencer and use some fittings and clamps and you can quiet one down for the price of a scrap silencer and an hour of work. I have done that with several gen-sets I used while camping. There is no reason in the world why your 50cc gen-set should be louder than your 2.5L Toyota. If you plan on surviving the Apocalypse one should have at least enough sense to quiet down a generator.

There is also the worry about "everyone will see the lights and know I have stuff!" thing I hear so much. The solution to that is simple, don't turn on the lights or play the stereo or TV at full blast. I own a lot of things that no one knows about, and they don't need to know about them. That is why I do not tell everyone everything.

To this day there is still no cure for stupid.

Before there are a rash of "that won't work" deals expressed I can attest that all of them will work because I have used all of them successfully. In fact I used all of them successfully at the same time on a couple of occasions. Once I had 4 families running fridge and freezer off one generator, my 1000w unit being used as workshop power for emergency repair and two or three neighbors running off the inverters hooked to their vehicles. One person using the inverter on his BMW to create a Wi-fi hot spot so we all could communicate. That was a group of close neighbors working together during Hurricane Ike about 11-12 years ago. We operated like that for 5 days with no utility power available.

I use one or the other of these systems 2-3 times each year during our storms. Nothing like waking at 2am in sub zero weather to realize your power has been down for an hour and won't be back for 3-4 more, or possibly ever, due to ice load breaking lines.

And be aware that during these power use intervals you can charge up all your devices as well as cooling things down.

I think that your home wiring is different over there. Over here we can pull the main breaker of our home and cut the connection to the grid supply at will. That means I can use a line with two male plugs and put one into the generator and the other plug into any outside outlet on my house and power directly through my internal wiring. If I unplug the main breaker I am not feeding back into the main grid, so there is no danger to anyone.

I do not have to worry with extension cords or gang plugs or makeshift wiring messes. The generators are no more problem to use than grid power.