We have been reasonably lucky over the last couple of years and not had any serious weather. That can change! And, while Duke Energy prides itself on its service, our neighborhood has had periods of up to ten days for some of us to be without commercial power during and after some storms.
As New Orleans is learning, a hurricane can come almost come out of nowhere and be on you in less than four days. And, for everyone, that isn’t much time to take care of everything that you need to do in preparation for the storm.
So, lets talk about some things that you can do now, before a storm is on the horizon, to get ready for that storm that we hope never comes.
Lets talk about generators. There are two kinds. One is the Portable generator and the other is the “fixed” or “whole house” generator. I will not spend any time on the “whole house” generators, as their owners usually have maintenance done throughout the year. And, now a third source is “solar batteries” that have come on the scene. Those owners need to refer to their manual as to how long their system can stay up without commercial power but it’s too complicated to address here.
Do you have a portable generator? If the answer is yes, there are a few things that you may want to think about. When was the last time that you used it? Was it more than 6 months ago? Does it have gas in the tank? Uh-Oh. How old is the gas? Gasoline begins to separate and in some cases solidify after about a year or less. Here are some tips for right now:
1. Check to make certain that you have a couple of “gas cans” (usually 5 gallon containers) with FRESH gas. If your generator uses regular gas, and your lawn mower does, too, then you have an excellent way to keep gas on hand and still use it before it gets stale.
2, Run your generator to test it. Don’t fill its tank but put more than enough to cover the bottom of the tank, then move it well away from the house and start it up. Let it run until it runs out of gas. This does two things – it empties the tank of gas AND it insures that it will run for more than a minute or two. BE CAREFUL and keep everyone away from it! It will get very HOT! After it runs out of gas, let it cool off before you put it away. Now, you know it will run should you need it and you also know that there is NO STALE GASOLINE in it.
NEVER NEVER EVER RUN THE GENERATOR INSIDE THE GARAGE OR NEXT TO A DOOR OR WINDOW!!!
NOTE: If there was already some gasoline in the tank, you can mix it with fresh and then run it until the tank is empty. This will take longer than step #2 above, but will clean out the tank so that you no longer have to worry about stale gasoline or it not running when you need it.
Remember to “cycle” your gasoline and that is easy if you also use it in the lawn mower. STALE gasoline is no fun when you need the generator to run for hours to keep your freezer or refrigerator running in a power outage.