Emergency Home Generators for Moments of Crisis

No matter where you live, emergency home generators need to be factored into any emergency plan.

Man has no control over nature and the dynamics that define it.

In an era where every aspect of our daily life depends upon electricity, a moment without it can cause great inconvenience, and if the disruption is prolonged, it may even bring our life to a complete standstill.

Power disruptions can be due to a variety of reasons, from natural calamities like heavy snow, blizzards and thunderstorms. These, and even human error, can cause physical damage to the power supply lines.

Regardless of the reasons and causes, being well prepared to handle the disruption is a necessity.

Your Options and Being Prepared

Getting your family and home ready for a power outage situation, involves choices. You can opt for an installed standby generator or a less costly portable generator.

Standby or Whole House Emergency Generators

These are the large generators, commonly referred to as standby generators or residential.

They are expensive, by most people's standards, but they are worth their weight in gold, when it comes to a power outage.

Standby generators are professionally installed and range in price from $2,000 dollars on up. They typically run on propane or natural gas.

Advantages are:

• They will kick on automatically, when your home loses power
• They can run for longer periods of time (vs smaller portable types)
• They produce enough power to run larger appliances in your home, such as water heaters and air conditioners

Some of the most common producers of home emergency generators are Generac, Kohler and Onan.

Portable Generators for Backup Power

Portable generators have their advantages and disadvantages.

Plan on spending between $500 and $2000 dollars. A portable generator is obviously not going to power all the larger appliances in your home. If it does, that is about all that it will be able to do.

Bottom line, with a portable generator, you are going to have to be selective about what you need to run during a loss of power.

To determine the size of generator that you'll need, first, decide what appliances that you'll need to run, during a power outage.

Once this is decided, add up the total wattage of those items. Then make sure that the emergency generator that you choose is sufficient to handle the job.

Here is some more information on home generator sizing.

For safety's sake, always remember to run all portable generators outside, at least 15 feet (4.7 meters) from your home. Also observe proper generator transfer switch safety.

Advantages and Things to Consider:

• Portable generators are less costly
• No installation required
• Most of these run off of gasoline and gasoline may, or may not, be available in a community emergency situtation...especially if your local gas station has lost power, as well.
• Gas generators will need to be filled up often.
• You'll need to have sufficient lengths of generator cords to run between your generator and your appliances

When it comes to emergency home generators, one key thing to calculate is how long the portable generator will run, between fuel ups.

Afterall, how many times to you want to get up, in the middle of the night, and refuel the thing?

When calculating the run times, remember that manufacturers typically will rate the generator run time on a 50% load.

In emergencies, you will most assuredly be running your machine at a much higher level, than 50%. So your generator will usually need refueling more frequently than the manufacturer's specs will say.