A little over 2 years ago, we moved from a major city in Western Canada, to a rural area of Nova Scotia, which means we have a well for our water, and a septic system. Since this is on the Atlantic coast, where we get some strong storms, so I was recommended to get a good sized back up generator. Luckily, our house was built with a seperate circuit breaker box, that has an outside plug, so I was able to buy a cable that has a twist lock end to match the generator feed connection on the outside of the house, and the other end plugs into the generator. I bought a 10,000 Watt Firman generator, which runs on gasoline, or propane. It is fairly big and heavy, but is on wheels , so it can sit in the basement, and when needed, be rolled out the door, and the cable is long enough to position the generator away from the house. It is fairly noisy, but with the doors and windows closed, not objectionable. Our generator has electric start, but also has a back up pull line. The generator backup system in the house won`t operate everything, but it does run most of the lights, the refrigerator/freezer, microwave, the heat pumps, well pump, etc. I also have a small 2000 Watt quiet generator , like used for camping, but it is too small to run all that stuff. As for fuel, I keep the tank on the generator full (8 gallons), and keep 4 5 gallon "jerry cans" full in the garden shed, I use ethanol free premium gas, with some Stabil added. I start the generator for 5 or 10 minutes every 5 or 6 months, and also drain out the old gas, and replace it with fresh fuel at the same time. Same with the gas in the shed, burn that in our daily drivers, and put fresh gas in the jugs. In the bit over 2 years here, we have only used the generator twice, and the longest was 5 hours, but having the security of a back up system is re assuring.A racing budy that has lived in the area all his life, spent almost $20,000 on a Cummins diesel 20,000 Watt system, that runs of propane. He said after being without power for a week after a hurricane, that he was not going to go through that ordeal again. His system is fully automated, it starts itself up every month for 10 minutes, and does a system self check, and if the power goes out, the generator starts itself up and is setup to switch the circuit breaker box automatically, so he needs to do nothing. Overkill for most, but he told the generator company that he wanted enough power to operate everything like normal. If you are on city water, you can get by with less power, but to me, more is better.
