Wes wrote:

Ignoramus10200 wrote:

Sounds about right. On the other hand, it does not need to run
continuously. In a terrible emergency, I would ration fuel, in a small
emergency, I would just buy more fuel when I run low.

Keeping food cold, water to flush and drink, power to run furnace blower. All those
things can be cycled.

You hook up power to the fridge, wait for the thermostat to kick out, turn off generator.

Pick an interval for powering generator.

Being able to watch tv and other stuff doesn't matter. Light a colemen lantern and read a
book in the mean time.

Okay, charge your laptop, recharge the ups running your dsl router so you can stay
connected between generator starts. Maybe charge the iPhone too.

Power off a bit too long, get your AK out.

Rationing fuel is ok if you have reason to expect a really long outage,
but for the more normal day or so max it's easier to just run the
generator full time and get on with your life as if there was no outage.