In my first post on finding a generator I wrote about my frozen epiphany of terror. I belong to a family of five, I have three children all under six years old, I live in blizzard-prone New England, and I don’t even have a fireplace to keep my family warm if we suffer a prolonged power outage. In our house we’re entirely dependent on the power grid and the natural gas grid for heat. Yikes. I needed a generator! I weighed everything from diesel to gas and propane, and from instant-on standby generators to portable generators. Because I believe that disaster preparation also has to be affordable I settled on searching for a portable gasoline generator. But which one?

Problem 1: Figure Out What You Really Want to Power.

My goal is to survive a natural disaster, it’s not to have my whole house lit up like a Roman candle and my kids playing Guitar Hero in the other room while the rest of my community is shivering in their Snuggies. In a winter disaster–in any disaster, really–I wanted to have heat, food, and water. I’ve got enough water stored for a, uh, rainy day. To learn about water storage and purification click here. So I needed to focus on heat and food. I’ve got a natural-gas range and unlike some models the gas works without power, so just need a match to get our four burners working. Some gas ranges still need electricity to work, so test yours by flipping off the electric circuit, and turning on the burner, before you plan on it working during a disaster.

I have a relatively new high-efficiency German-engineered Buderus natural-gas boiler, and I’ve got a freezer-fridge combo.

Those two things, fridge and boiler. That’s what I figure I needed to power in an emergency. Done. If I ended up with some surplus energy to power a light or two, great, but I didn’t need it. Continue Reading…