In article , Gunner says...

In a larger disaster, I would find loud gas generators something
of an advertisement that you might not want to make. A small steam
plant would quietly let you continue without irking neighbors. That
might sound minor, but believe me, it’s not. In our typical housing
development, those who ran gas generators got shunned.

Hmm. Brings up a good point. Truism: quiet generators are
more expensive. But the noisy ones give you more watts/dollar.

I would like to be able to run the oil-fired boiler in my house
during a winter-time power outage (which runs off a 15 amp
ckt, not counting the surge loads), and possibly a refrigerator
during a summertime outage.

I had helped a friend resurrect an old Onan generator,
opposed twin that needed an unstuck valve, and also needed
to be re-wired a bit and have the field windings flashed
to get it to start. That generator runs at 1800 rpm
and is amazingly quite for 3 kw. Does *anyone* still
make 1800 rpm generators?

Next idea, buy a less expensive, noisy generator and
not worry about the noise because a) even though it
will be large enough to run the heating system in the
house, this will be done during the winter when
the garage is packed in snow. Maybe some foam insulation
as a sound barrier around the unit to help. Even
then it will only be run periodically to keep the
house from freezing. It's a detached garage btw,
so I could banish the unit away from the house.

During the summer such a generator would be well oversize
for running a light or two and the refrigerator, again
every few hours. I suspect that the noiser generators
are not too bad if just idling.

Something I used a whole lot: an inverter for the car that let us
have two 500 watt ac outlets for the computer and the gas fired water
heater.

Hmm. An inverter large enough to run the refrigerator. Intersting
idea. Must look into that, thanks. The 'internet as news'
concept makes perfect sense as well.

Jim

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