I'm going to respond to you since no one has. I've lived in SW Florida for 20 yrs and have gone thru many hurricanes. This last one, Irene took our power and water out. We get water form the local water co on the island and after a while the water stopped as well. They use brackish well water and do a reverse osmosis. When their power went out, so did our water.

We always packe the refrigerator with food, canned goods anything before the hurricane and cool it a notch or so down. The fuller it is, the longer things stay cool. We run a generator with gasoline. we would run it here and there to keep the freezers going and concerve fuel. Not knowing how long we would be without power and without power the gas pumps don't work. All generators will handle X number of items, if you plug too many things in, they can't handle it. Howevere, as it generates electricity, there could be excess power just being wasted. So you learn what it can handle.

I know a neighbor down the street from us had a propane tank that was connected so when the power went out, it automatically kicked in and in a safe way (it can be unsafe and can kill the electrical workers working on fixing downed lines). Your electrician should know how to wire things up. We hook up our generator and turn the main power off. It's safe for anyone working on restoring the lines but we don't know when the power actually comes back. We listen the the stillness know that the neighbors has automatically shut off:))

A 250 gal propane tank is HUGE. I would guess you could run on that for a very long time. If when it happens, take a reading of the tank, run what you want for a day and take another reading. It should give you a rough idea of the useage per hr or per day. While you may want to run your well pump, it's also a very good idea to have large containers of water handy. We have those large blue plastic containers for water and the red ones for gasoline. Water is the most precious and is missed the most during difficult times.

It's also ideal to have a gas cook top or rangetop that can be lit with a match.

I hope this helps you a bit in planning for the worst. Hurricane season is not far away. Semper Paratus as my latin teacher said. "always ready."

Inga

Thanks so much for the response! Always figured bigger is better, if we putting money into it might as well go as much as we can comfortably afford :) Decided we will do the larger generator.

I don't know any thing about the specific companies. However, assuming the wattages are correct, then either will do everything you want and more. I have a 7000 watt gasoline generator and I can run my house AC if I want to (there are actually two HVAC units so each is small for a whole house). You could easily run little portable AC units with all the TV and lights you want. Did you say your stove is gas??? I think you should expect to be able to keep the generator running but breaks wouldn't hurt.

The real choice is using a Transfer Switch or a Manual Cut Off (may be wrong on the second term. That is what I have and it is Much Cheaper and More Useful. Depending on your current electric panel, your electrician finds a Lockout that will fit next to your Main Circuit Breakers. It may require moving a pair of existing breakers, but you will be adding a sub panel anyway and they can be moved over there.

When this cutoff is engaged, the Mains get manually shut off by this cutoff. Two main like circuit breakers are also hooked into the main panel that get powered by the generator and also can't be activated unless the cutoff is engaged. If a transfer switch is used, the electrician has to rewire all circuits you would expect to use that is far more expensive and only those chosen circuits are available. With the cutoff, ALL circuits are available. Yes, you probably shouldn't run them all at once!