I remember you - we were going through builds at the same time. I concur with your post. We live in a rural area too and are last on the list when big storms knock out power. The main lines to our house are above ground so falling trees and ice are common causes of outages.

I installed a Kohler standby generator myself which I purchased on-line at www.ziller electric.com. The entire package was around $4500 but then I spent another $1000 for the propane hook up and materials/parts. I am handy with eletcrical.

Here are a few items I would add to your list:

1) When you are planning oout your electrical (assuming a new build) have them install a sub-panel with the circuits you want backed up. This sub-panel should be located as close to the location of the generator as possible to avoid a long run of cable from the generator to the transfer switch which can be either automatic or manual. This step will reduce costs later when you insert the generator into your system. Also - if you plan on having a propane tank buried, plan out the location the tank and the location of the generator. There are maximum distances for propane gas lines that need to be considered.

2) I agree completely with the wood burning fieplace IF your heat source is electric (mine is geothermal with electric heat pumps). If you are on propane or NG heat, you can easily run that type of heating system with a small generator since very little electricity is required to run the HVAC fans and controls. If you want to run your AC in the summer - then you may need a beefy generator to start the compressors.

3) If you are on electric only heat, then I suggest a wood buring insert (direct vent with blower fan) instead of a masonry fireplace because you want a heat source not a heat sink. Most masonry fireplaces remove heat from the house - you really want something that pumps heated fresh air in. Make sure that the unit you buy is rated as a heater and make sure the BTU output is enough to keep you space as warm as you need it. These type of fireplace units require a small amount of electricity to run the blower fans and controls so make sure that the circuit that powers this unit is on your backup generator sub-panel.

4) I also suggest getting some plug in fans so that you can circulate the hot air coming out of the woodburner to to the other areas of your house that you want warmed (or even just to make the room with the fireplace comfortable). I found that my family room (where the wood burner is located) even on a low burn will generate too much heat while other rooms on the main floor get cold. I recently purchased 2 Vornado fans that I use to pull hot air out of the family room and push over to the other side of the main floor and a second fan that takes that air and sends it back to equalize the temperature acrosss the main floor. Make sure that you have outlets backed up on the generator to run the fans.

We moved from the burbs to a rural area and had some adjusting to do. Having an emergency backup plan for extended outages makes a lot of sense. You don't need to spend a lot of money to make sure you and the family have the basic necessities to make it through comfortably - just plan it out.

Those are some great tips Sniff.

We are going to put a wood burning insert in our basement when we finish it. Probably before.

One other tip, have an emergency food/water supply. Just a small one will save your sanity. We were trapped up here for a little bit. Dh and neighbors had to chainsaw the trees to make the roads passable. Then once we could get through, the local stores were closed because of no electric. The hardware store was open, accepting cash only. (I also have emergency cash)

The water had to be boiled because the pumping stations failed.

The stores were closed a few days so our emergency supply really helped us out.

We lose power every now and again and plan for a generator, we even have the subpanel that runs the well pump, kitchen, and bedrooms. We are not there yet, but when we know the forecast calls for big storms, we fill the bathtub with water so we always have some for washing up or flushing.

I agree!

We had the house wired for the generator and I'm so glad we did. We just had a major tornado hit our town and although our house was spared we've been out of electricity since. We opted for a propane fireplace, so that has been our heating source. Having that generator has been wonderful. It also allowed us to offer a warm place and water to those without.

We built about the same time you all did. We're suburban, not rural, not that it matters. We didn't put in a whole house generator, but made sure it was large enough to hook up certain crucial things to it:

--the fridge, a microwave, kitchen light, the switch for the gas fireplace on the first floor, foyer and mudroom lights, light in each bath room, outside lights,
--computer & office light, a light or outlet in each bedroom,
--the lower level lights since that's where the wood stove, TV, and 2nd fridge are (daughter & young grandkids live with us half of the time), guest bedroom, ejector pump, the well pump system, outlet closest to lowest part of our property in case we should ever have to hook up a pump (1000 year flood?)
--not sure if we should have done the HRV and garage doors; don't know if we'd reached our max and there wasn't room for these, or if we just forgot them.

We have geothermal heat, so that would have been expensive to have hooked up to the generator, which is why we put in the gas FP and wood stove as back up.

One reason (among many) that we decided to build with ICFs (insulated concrete forms) was that they retain the heat (winter) or coolness (summer) inside the house, and pretty much hold their own in the spring and fall. They're great during a power outage! They're also supposed to be great in tornadoes, although I read somewhere that Michigan is one of the 2 states that gets the fewest.

Our generator comes on automatically when the electricity goes off. Today when we got home, there was a phone message from a neighbor asking if we'd lost power today. We had--only for a few hours--but it was a very secure feeling to know all was well while we were gone. Come to think of it, the other time we lost power since we moved in, we were gone when it went out. It ended up being out for 18 hours, and when we got home a few hours into the outage, we were able to run some electric cords to our neighbor's so he wouldn't lose the food in his fridge and freezer that he'd just loaded up on.

Be sure you have list at the outset and make it clear to your electrician that you want this done. It takes some planning on his part.

Anne

We are in a rural area and when the ice storm of '05 hit the SE, we were without power for days. We do have propane fireplaces so that was our heat.
We have since purchased a portable generator and fortunately have not had to use it.

yep. we're getting a generator here as well. i was just talking to my dh about it the other day. we have a gas line but i'm wondering if we should opt to fuel it with propane in case the gas line ever goes. any advice?

and thanks for reminding me! we're in central NJ but get enough ice and wind storms so that we lose power 3 to 4x a year. a few years back the whole town was down for over a week in february. most left to stay in hotels in other areas.

Kate, If we had that option we would go with natural gas hook-up. I looked at several and there were a couple that could operate on either or. So maybe hook up to natural gas but have the attachments needed to hook up propane if needed.

There were not any problems with natural gas during the ice storm or wind storm outages around here.

We also live at the end of the line. Water behind us and across the street, and the road ends just a few houses down at the end of the peninsula so we know all about being the first without power and the last to get it back!

We have a whole house generator and love it. We are one of only a few on our street and everytime the power goes out, which is frequently, our neighbors all say with envy, I saw you had lights on!! We always say, why didn't you come over?!

We didn't build our house (I just like to lurk and dream of building) but our house isn't very old either and we have a propane generator. We are doing some remodeling and while we had the electrician out we had him add the microwave and gas stove to the generator (they were never online...go figure!). My son is the only room without electricity and he LOVES to remind us of that every time the power is out!

After living through hurricanes, tropical storms and ice storms (I'm in Maryland) we would never own another home without one, especially in our rural area.

Kat :)

We're in an isolated area and we decided to go with a small generator and sub panel. So far we haven't used it but it's comforting knowing it's there. In 2003 we lost power for a week at our old house and a generator would have been nice.

We have wood heat and passive solar design as well as our basement insulated on the outside. All of those mean we don't lose heat when the power goes out.

We also keep a stash of emergency cash and a pantry full of food. We also have our own chickens and goats which will eventually feed us if we ever have a sustained power outage or other natural disaster.

My husband would say his tractor is essential too. It is pretty helpful with our half km driveway in the winter.

we live in a rural area as well. i have a small genny, 5kw, but it is meant to be hard wired as it has the autotransfer switch. i jsut put some quad boes on it for now and run cords to what i need. so far i have only used it a couple times, but if necessary it will run a LONG time off my 200+ gallons of LP. heck, i ran it for over 3 hours on a half full 20# bottle, and it still ahd some left when done.

in the event the local water association is out of service for an extended period, we have a deep well that is currently supplying only the garden and horse pasture. but i can have it hooked up to supply the house with limited water in under 5 minutes jsut by hooking together a couple garden hoses. showers have low pressure in this use, but it got us by during a test run.

we have a wood burning FP with a blower insert. teh little blower motor hardly uses any power at all and i just run a cord to it if needed. but so far the only outages we have had the weather was warm enough we did not need the FP.

funny thing is we are on a rural COOP. my parents live less than 1 mile away as the crow flies and in town so they are on Entergy the major provider for the area. their power goes out all the time, sometimes for 6-8 hours at a whack! all their service is underground, but ours is overhead. the reason they lose power is the feed to their neighborhood is above ground from teh next subdivision over and tree limbs are constantly taking out lines there. this kills the feed to the whole neighborhood.

We've built a couple of rural houses (hubby falls in love with a new piece of land) in steep, heavily wooded terrains with snow and large storms. Our first house had solar panels tied to the grid and a whole-house furnace. Not good, we had six separate incidents of no heat or electricity, each time lasting about a week. We had a double solar array of 48 panels, it was a big house.
The next house, smaller with 24 panels generating around 12 KW hours was off-grid solar with a back-up diesel generator. Much better, although our house filled up with cold, waterless, shower-needy neighbors when their power was out for 3 weeks. I didn't mind that, I just set visiting hours and a shower schedule.
Our next house (building now, and the land is much flatter, hurray!) has an off-grid solar system, diesel generator, and a century fireplace. That century stove is classified as a furnace...it's the only heat we'll use or need. The wood smoke smell is absent, and it uses very little wood. We're hoping to get hydroelectric power set up in a few years, so the winter stream run-off generates extra power when we need it.
I'll tell you the big number one item you want for an off-grid system is a great battery. We lucked into some giant batteries from a failed dot-com, what a difference that extra power storage made!
We're renting a regular house in town while we build. We've had 4 power outages, without heat, this winter. My goodness, the power bill is so high! I hadn't paid an electric bill in 7 years, I had no idea the rates had grown so high.

I remember building at the same time as many of you.
We're also in a rural area. Our last house had a wood stove and since our new home is on propane it made sense to put one in here. So glad we did. We put in a Vermont Casting catalytic and it works beautifully (doesn't even bother my asthma).
We also live in an extreme fire danger area (hasn't burned in recorded history) so in addition to our well we had to put in a 5000gal holding tank for the fire dept. I think that was a very good idea too. DH has set that tank up for irrigation so the tank is constantly refreshing itself with clean water instead of sitting stagnant.
We're also wired for a Honda 6500 generator which allows for every comfort including a bowl of popcorn while not missing my favorite reality show, Survivor (much to DH's dismay). LOL ;)

Kats, Could you expand on the holding tank install? Underground? Thanks, Gary

garymunson,

I know nothing of plumbing or irrigation but will give you my understanding of what DH did.
The 5000gal fire tank is above ground and connected to our actual well pump house. Per county code we had the option of a sprinkling system inside the home or this emergency tank. We also had to install a fire hydrant on our property (it's about 100 feet from the fire tank). We have to maintain the tank and guarantee 5000 gallon are available to the FD at all times.
After building it though we found as a holding tank the water was just sitting stagnating and algae began growing. A neighbor first told DH about hooking his irrigation system to the holding tank (instead of the well pump) which gave a constant circulation of the water so it didn't build up algae. I'm sorry I don't know enough about it to explain how the plumbing connections were done but hope my lame explaination helps...