On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 18:07:45 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman wrote:

Yes, but I live in Central London. If I lived where you do, I'd
probably have a full blown standby diesel genny by now ...

It was high up the list when we moved in. A couple of the poles
supporting our (we are the only people on it) 1/2mile single phase
11kV spur are at rather odd angles and apart from the odd bit at
substations I suspect our supply is overhead from the power station to
the house wall. This includes both feeds (33kV and 11kV backup) to the
local 33kV substation that pass over Hartside (1900') enroute to the
125Kv substation to the north of Penrith.

As it happens the supply is pretty stable and I can cope with an
average of one 6hr outage a year. This is *much* better than some
people living in urban areas near major cities. Of course having said
that we'll get a big storm this winter that brings down our spur and
half the other lines in Cumbria/Northumberland/Durham and we'll be
without a mains supply for 5 days...

- you've presumably not got a space or noise with neighbours
problem?

No plenty of space and nearest neighbours would be well out of earshot
of any half decently silenced genset.

Large non portable gennies can be very cheap - relatively - second
hand.

Thats probably what I'd go for, preferably able to run on 28sec
heating oil as we have a good supply of that. Cheaper than red diesel
as well...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail