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Poll: Emergency power and heating
shardian:
With the current situation in Oklahoma, and with several of our members involved I thought it might be appropriate to bring up the emergency power and heat topic.
I only remember one time that power was out for a considerable amount of time here, and that was during the blizzard of 1993. I had to go to a friends house who had a gas oven for heating.
We also had a kerosene heater in the kitchen when I was little. That is generally not safe though, and I think I'd only go that route in a real pinch.
In my current house, I have all electric heating and appliances. I don't have any source of backup heat or power and think it might be time to invest in an emergency source.
So, I'll start a poll about what you have in your house. Feel free to add suggestions for the poll.
tommy:
Here in South Florida Hurricanes are a very real threat every year and not having a generator is just stupid.
ChadTower:
There in south florida you will not freeze to death. Ever.
I don't have a specific backup source. We have oil heat, though, and I'd bet it could be rigged to run off a backup electrical source somehow. There are small parts of the system that are electric but I'm not sure exactly which ones. I need to have my furnace replaced in the next year or two (24 years old) so you just gave me something to toss into the requirements. Maybe a switchover to backup battery for the ignition or something. I wouldn't care about the rest of the house if we had backup for hot water (also oil) and heat.
How cold does it get in your state? If you had electric heat up here you'd be looking at many hundreds per month all winter long. Maybe a grand in some months.
TOK:
Generator... I'm actually considering one for the first time, since I was without power for nearly 3 days this summer. That has never happened before, and would be an even bigger disaster in the winter.
Ideally, I'd love a whole house generator with a transfer switch but it's a lot of money. A gas generator with enough power to run the fridge, TV and a couple space heaters would probably be enough to get by for a few days.
tommy:
No we have no chance of freezing to death, but having your house roof ripped off in the middle of the night is no picnic. That along with power outages for many weeks after a bad storm is not much better.
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