"Frank" wrote

I also suffered for years with outages but finally went the
generator/transfer panel route. Neighbor with a small generator and DYI
barely gets by and wishes he had done it right. You don't need to power
everything in the house but well, furnace, and refrigerators and freezers
are a must.

We've been looking at small units, portable types, for a back porch that
would run a freezer and say 2-3 lights. Porch BTW is huge so we could get
the unit 10 feet from the house with ease. Probably put a fan on it blowing
outwards to be sure. Consider it the same as outdoors but raised up out of
the rain.