On Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 10:31:28 AM UTC-4, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 5/25/2019 1:29 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 24 May 2019 23:44:36 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I have to do some more checking, but mostly the fridge is the big value
thing to keep going. Gas range and grill takes care of cooking, city
water.

A natural gas house should run fine on a little 2kw inverter. Look at
any 240v (2 pole) breakers in the panel because those pieces of
equipment are not going to work. The other issue is trying to put
transfer equipment on your panel will be tough too since you will only
be able to feed one phase. You also would have to be sure all 240v
breakers were tripped
I'm going to use cords for now. I don't know how often the power may go
out but if only a day or two a year, no big deal. If for a week at a
time, you can be sure I'll do more.

I was never able to justify a generator for 53 years but here, I may.

I've used cords and I've used the inlet and panel approach. Once you
do the inlet and panel way, you forget about cords. Huge difference.
You just open the large breakers on things you either don't need to run
at all or will selectively manage. Then the rest of the house is
powered and it's like living normally. TVs work, radios work all the
light switches around the house work, bathroom fans, fridge, freezer
you need something from another room, want to check on something in
the basement, turn on the light switch, it's lit. Want to go out in
the car, garage is powered, it's lit and the automatic door opens.
You don't have much need for heat down there, probably don't have
a furnace, but if you did, that's powered and so is a gas water heater
if it's a newer one that needs AC to ignite, etc. It's close to having
the whole house powered like normal, like what you'd have with a
standby generator. Actually it's BETTER than most of those, because
typically they use a separate panel that they rewire whatever circuits
that you decide at installation need to be powered. With the panel
interlock approach, you can power ANYTHING, as long as you have
sufficient capacity. You choose which breakers to turn on during
the power outage.

The inlet/panel approach is probably ~$200 if you do it yourself.