We live in a similar situation - propane for heating, electricity for everything
else including well. Average power out situations more than 15 minutes maybe
once a year. Longest power outage in the past 8 years has been 24 hours, with a
few that were 1-6 hours.

We keep a 50 gallon potable water storage tank in the garage along with a couple
of filled 8 gallon jerry cans. Add a small amount of chlorine per EPA guidelines
and storage isn't an issue. The storage tank and jerry cans have faucet valves
on them, so taking smaller amounts isn't an issue. That more than covers
drinking water, flushing toilets and the occasional navy shower.

We have an advanced septic system with pumps and an air compressor. That has a
certain amount of buffer (maybe a few hundred gallons max) before it needs power
to process, so more storage water isn't a good solution.

An inverter/battery/charger based system is going to be expensive to get any
kind of wattage/duration. I think a portable generator is really the correct
answer. Costco has a nice dual fuel (gas / propane) portable genset for around
$700 last time I looked. You can't run it off a BBQ grill tank for a long time,
but if you have larger tanks for your house it should work quite well. They
don't show it at Costco.com, but it looks like this one:

http://www.generatorsales.com/order/...sp?page=P03888

Make sure you get a transfer switch wired into your house. Cheap manual ones
work just fine. Running a suicide cord to a dryer outlet (or worse) is not a
good idea. Maintenance isn't that big a deal. Run it for 15 minutes every month.
If you use gasoline, add Stabil and replace or burn it dry once a year.

I've seen no reports for how well these work, but if you can get by with 900W,
they look interesting:

http://www.generatorsales.com/order/...1000iS_Bi_Fuel

Keep in mind that well motors (or any motor) have a significant surge/startup
draw that can overload your generator if not sized properly. And if you do an
inverter, make sure it's a true sine wave inverter. They are more expensive than
the square wave inverters, but a lot easier on your devices (if they work at
all).

Or just go to Costco and buy a 100 cases of water in 1/2 liter bottles.


HerHusband wrote:

We had a couple of major power outages this year and ran out of water, so
it has renewed my interest in finding a backup when the power goes out.
We live in Washington state and everything here is powered by
electricity.

We have a woodstove for backup heat, and battery powered LED lights and
radio that can last for days. Power failures almost always occur during
cold winter storms, so we can just stick our perishible foods outside if
the power goes out for more than a few hours. As long as we have water,
we can cook on the woodstove or heat water in a pan for washing up.

We have a large pressure tank (80 gallon I believe). If the power goes
out when the tank is full, we're fine. 80 gallons will flush a lot of
toilets. Unfortunately, the tank is rarely completely full when the power
goes out and this last time it was nearly empty when we lost power.

I've thought about adding a second pressure tank, but there's no way I
can think of to ensure one is always fully pressurized (short of filling
it up and shutting the valve off. I am trying to avoid stagnant water).
Odds are both tanks would be just about empty when the power goes out.

The cheap solution is just to store containers of water somewhere. But,
that takes space and isn't very convenient. I don't know that my daughter
would be able or willing to lift a 5 gallon container of water to refill
a toilet tank if I'm not around.

A generator is an obvious option, but power outages are rather rare. I
don't want one more engine to have to maintain, worry about gas getting
stale and gumming up, etc. Propane generators might overcome the long
term storage issue, but they still take up space and require maintenance.
Not to mention, I don't really want to go out in cold wind storms to
start up a generator. Call me lazy.

An inverter/charger system with batteries would be a good solution.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen an affordable system that can power my 1/2
HP 240V well pump. The ones I have seen cost more than a generator, or I
would have to cobble together multiple devices (inverters, chargers, auto
transformers, etc.) to make everything work.

One final option I've thought of would be to store a water tank in our
heated attic space. I figured I could plumb the inlet at the top and the
outlet at the bottom so it is flushed regularly. With only a 9' rise it
would offer very little pressure, but I would think it would still refill
the toilets. We wouldn't be taking showers or washing laundry during a
power outage anyway. The major downside to this option is getting the
tank into the attic space and modifying all the plumbing. Doable, just
not my ideal option.

I'm curious what backup systems other water well users have come up with.

I am only looking for a backup for a day, not outages lasting a week or
more.

Thanks,

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com