if you are somewhere where it freezes every year, maybe you should look into a fireplace, pellet stove, or stand-alone woodburning stove
good for emergency heat, but also just a nice thing to have around. Who doesn't enjoy sitting by a fire on a cold day?
Yes, I have a fireplace mostly for "mood" purposes
but it would indeed serve well if we were to have a short outage. I probably only have enough firewood for few days. Also, as far as I'm concerned even in a fireplace a fire should never be left unobserved so to use that exclusively for an outage of any length I would think get tiring. Still, it would work for a short outage and come to think of it, firewood for just a few days is dumb, I should stack some more up.
I also have three of those old style oil filled electric radiators in the extremely strange event that we lost our gas utility but not our electrical utility. I can't think of time when gas went out. But if I needed those they would work well and could also go unobserved due to their design.
I also have one of those old style kerosun heaters which is what i use in the garage from time to time. I always thought that those were forbidden for use inside a tightly sealed structure (I open the garage door a slight amount when I run the kerosun there) but this thread has helped me understand that they are allowed inside as long as some air infiltration occurs. I should probably purchase another one of those and again they would work for a short outage but there's a limit to how long the fuel lasts and to how long you can sit around and observe them. Again, as far as I'm concerned these things should never be left unobserved.
This thread has helped me see that the ideal machine for my purposes is a tri-fuel generator of smallish size. I've done lots and lots of reading and think that the Honda Powered generators are super sweet. What I'd want to do then is have an outdoor option for gas from my utility company so I'd simply hook up the generator and let er run as long as necessary off of the gas utility. Then if that failed for whatever reason I could switch to kerosene or gasoline as needed with the thought that there's a limit to how much of those things I can realistically store. Attached to that through the simplest of transfer switches would be my furnace, my fridge, my stove and perhaps one or two 15 amp circuits that have a combination of lights and outlets on them. I don't need or want a generator that can continue operating everything in the house but I do need one that will operate outside unobserved for extended periods of time just to keep the house warm, and the food refrigerated or cooked as much as we want. I've noticed that Honda doesn't have their own trifuel offering but there are alot of "Honda Powered" trifuels. So I'm searching for that at the moment.
Since this thread started I have installed a replacement furnace with the cord capability to attach to either transfer switch or generator so that part is already accomplished. Now its just to get a generator that meets the needs I listed above. Thanks for reviving the thread! Any suggestions on good places to get good generators nowadays?
Did you end up wearing hot oil?
