Hurricane Irene

One word folks. Generac. :-) My neighbors thought I was crazy when I installed a transfer switch and generator 10 years ago at a cost of around $3000. Now, almost every house has one. It doesn't solve everything but at least I can shower with hot water, keep food cold, and watch 150 channels on DirecTv. Here in New Hampshire it pays for itself quickly.

The track is truly the worst case scenario forecasters have warned about. Fortunately, Irene was not able to strengthen as it moved up the coast toward N.C. If this was even a cat 3, on the path it is slowly moving on, things would me much, much worse and we might be left talking about the east coast's Katrina.

But for shear, destructive power. I'd take sitting through Irene than the Joplin tornado anytime.

Thanks for chiming in Slipknot and Chadnliz. Chad has a nice setup. That functionality used to cost closer to $10K. I stayed with an 8 kW portable generator that runs on gas. It has electric start (you do need this!) and feeds a 10-circuit manual trans-switch. We don't have the stove, A/C, and washer/dryer in the circuits but the well and pretty much everything else is. Things are pretty "rural" around here so any propane use takes the large tank in the yard. Our neighbor has one for their gas appliances. We do use heating oil so I suppose that could be used as a source, but then you would be working against yourself in the winter when most of our outages occur. But if you're going for the Full Monty generac putting in a tank shouldn't be that big of a deal.

I can even listen to my stereo on the generator. YOu can hear it running in the background when the music is quiet but it definitely sounds great, better than the power company sounds. :-)

Well, thanks for that! A mental image I didn't need! :-) Glad you came through ok, Swampwalker. Haven't heard from Doug and Paul. We did get some water blowing in the entrance door that faces east, but no real damage. We're still on the generator, though, since about 10:30 Sunday. That's a good $40 per day in gas, but I'll take that over the flooding in Vermont any time.

I think that winter storm we got year before last was much worse in our area. But nothing like Andrew was down in Fla. ;-)