I just wanted to bring some closure to the great generator colloquium. Well, sort of closure because we haven’t actually used it yet – but it’s ready when we do.

After much agitated thought over which solution to choose, we finally purchased a portable unit capable of keeping the house more or less running in the event of an outage. It’s not the super clean power, or the propane fueled unit I had eyes for, but it’ll do pig. So when we last left our heroes, we had the power source but no way to really use it. I had a guy come out to look us over and then we received the quote ($700). Then my job started and it sat on the back burner for a little while. About a month or so ago I finally had them come out and add a transfer switch to the main power supply to the house. The kid came and had everything he needed except the super duty locking style cable to actually plug the generator into the whole affair. It was on the work order, but…

Then I guess they decided that they’d order a nice weather sealed cord rather than fabricate one, so we waited another few weeks for that. A perfect opportunity for us to loose power, but we somehow escaped unscathed. At least, while we were home to notice. It did go out at least once while we were away for the day. We now have this cable though, and despite the awful wind we’ve had for what seems like decades the power remains constant. I believe I said earlier that I had now ensured a continuous flow from the power company by virtue of the time and money we’ve spent to protect ourselves.

So now we lay in wait.

I have to say that the switch is far more elegant than I had imagined. The purpose is to provide a means to plug the generator effectively into the main breaker panel, but also to keep generator power from going back to the street. In my electrically impaired brain I had imagined a two step process where you disconnected yourself from the street and then engaged the generator when in reality the switch does it all at once. The generator never has a path back to the street. Simple and smart.

At some point I need to fabricate a little hut for the generator to live in out by the pole during winter so it’s ready to go at all times. There’ll be no dragging this thing across the back yard with two feet of snow when we need it.