The Dilemma. Go Cheap? Or Go With Quality and Pay a Little More.
Let’s start with a conversation I had with my really big and handy contractor-friend Pete about backup generators. On a side note, one of Pete’s favorite phrases is: you can’t fix stupid. You probably know the type.
Pete: Do you ever go camping?
Me: Yeah, you mean, like, in a tent, out in the wilderness, right?
Pete: No, real camping, like at a Nascar race with an RV or trailer and a flat screen television. My brother-in-law is always going up to the races in Loudon, New Hampshire, and he’s got this 2,000-watt Honda. It’s all you need. It’s quiet. They banned those Chinese things they’re so noisy.
Me: Yeah, but the Chinese things are only $350. They’re almost disposable.
Pete: You get what you pay for.
Pete, who helped us carve a bedroom out of our attic, was pushing for a Honda, which kind of surprised me since he’s a buy-American kind of guy. I already knew that no matter how cool it would have been to have a propane-fueled instant-on standby generator, I wasn’t going to shell out the cash for it. And even before Pete delivered the wisdom of the race-track-parking-lot, I pretty much knew that the money I would save buying a $350 cheapo would cost me later in frustration and hearing loss.
Let’s face it, there’s something to be said for brand names. Honda (and, let’s be honest, most big-name companies) are in it for the long haul, so if their products don’t work it’s going to hurt their business. Plus, I drive a Honda, and the last two cars we had were Hondas. What can I say, they’re great vehicles. I went on an assignment once, driving four-wheelers through Baja California with Chris Haines, a 13-time Baja 1000 winner. We rode 4-wheelers from all the top manufactures and the Hondas were, flat out, more comfortable, more in-control, less noisy rides. I wrote another story a few years ago about a guy who has devoted his life to picking up trash on the Mississippi River, and the only outboard engine he’d swear by was Honda. Both these guys were merciless with their equipment so I took their sentiments to heart.
I, for one, am sold on the company—and I’ve never been paid to say so. That’s just me, of course. I also pay a premium for Bayer aspirin instead of buying the off-label stuff at CVS. I could keep going, because there are undoubtedly other very-good-quality portable generators (Yamaha and Generac both make them), but my mind was made up.
The Honda I ended up with is a 2,000-watt EU200ia. It retails for $1,149.95, but I know from personal experience you can get it cheaper for that, especially if you aren’t trying to buy it right after a National Weather Service ice-storm watch. I went to my local power-equipment store and without even really asking they offered to knock $150 off the price. You can also go on the web and find deals. As of press time, SteadyPower.com was selling them for $899 and that includes shipping and insurance.
Let’s Fire This Baby Up.
If I needed to I could have hooked up my fridge and my laptop, and maybe even a television, directly to my generator, but not my boiler which is hard-wired to my home’s electrical system. Anybody new to the generator world needs to know this: Don’t plug your portable generator into a wall socket! It’s called “back feeding” and not only can it shock the hell out of you, it can burn your house down since back feeding bypasses your home’s circuit breakers. It can also electrocute power-company employees trying to fix the circuit, not to mention your neighbors if they’re served by the same utility transformer.
To get around that problem you need to have an electrician install a transfer switch which simply switches your home’s power from the utility wires to your generator. I bought switch at SteadyPower.com for $86, and I chose it because, well, it’s the one my electrician told me to get.
NEMA-15 Male, NEMA-20 Female…Huh!?
Once I had my generator and my transfer switch, and my electrician in my basement, I pretty much thought I was home free. Bill the electrician installed the transfer switch, hooked up the boiler and fridge to the right circuits, and we were done. That part took about an hour. One thing we didn’t think of was that my 12-gauge extension cord that I would use to connect the generator to the transfer switch had the standard 3-prong male and female ends. This standard configuration is called a NEMA 5-15 (it’s the kind you’ve got all over your house).
Nema 5-20 Female
No problem for plugging the extension cord into the generator, but the transfer switch has a different configuration, with one of the prongs running perpendicular, not parallel, to the other. This is called a NEMA 5-20. That meant that my extension cord wouldn’t work as is. It also meant that I’d either have to find an extension cord with a male 5-15 and a female 5-20, or Bill would have to build one with the existing extension cord. While he rooted through his utility van looking for a 5-20 female I called Home Depot to see if they had any in stock.
Oh yeah, they sure did, said the really helpful clerk I talked to. In fact, he hadn’t seen anybody asking about them since the 2008 ice storm that knocked out power. Seems everybody had the same problem at once. There’s a reason planning can pay off! So I went to Home Depot, Bill went to lunch, and we met back at my house in about an hour. He reconfigured the extension cord, and then we went outside to fire up the generator.
Jury-Rigged Extension Cord
I will admit that it took me about 15 minutes, maybe 25, to get the Honda started the first time. I pulled the starter. I choked it, I didn’t choke it, used the little pump device to circulate fuel. It just didn’t work. My neighbor came over and he yanked on it a couple of times because he was pretty sure my technique must have been off. Nothing. Then I called Honda and I walked through the whole problem over the phone, and again, nothing. Then, I don’t know, I tried it one last time, and it started up. Never had the problem again.
That was back in November, and just as I hoped it would, my generator put some kind of hex on Mother Nature and we probably had no more than 12 inches of snow at my house this winter. My uncle in DC, though, he got close to 45 inches of the white stuff during their so-called snowpocalypse and was stuck in his house for nearly a week.
Don’t Kill Yourself Surviving a Disaster.
Death and illness from CO (carbon monoxide) poisoning are almost a guarantee in the wake of natural disasters. I got a backup generator because I thought it was the responsible thing to do for my family, but they come with their own deadly risks. Yes, you can burn your house down, or electrocute yourself, your neighbors, and your friendly neighborhood wire-repair man, but that’s just the start of it.
When hurricanes knock out power in the U.S. the portable generators come out in force. In some communities it’s almost a ritual of summer. Another ritual is the self-poisoning from CO that happens next. Depending on the generator, they can admit 100 times the CO as a car, so now think about backing, say, ten cars right up to your bedroom window and you start to get the picture. According to a Center for Disease Control analysis after Hurricane Ike hit Texas on September 13, 2008, 54 people become sick from CO poisoning, and another 7 people died. Almost all of them from generator-produced CO. Another CDC study in the wake of the 2005 Hurricane season in Florida concluded that at least half of the CO poisonings came from generators placed less than seven feet from the home.
Classic Fatal Mistakes.
- Don’t place portable generators next to open windows. That means your neighbors’ open windows too. Aim for at least 15 feet from your house (and their house), but keep in mind that might not even be far enough. Light-wind or no wind outside means the CO can pool around your house.
- Don’t place generators near your air conditioning unit. This is a classic ER-visit creator in Florida. People lose power, they pull out their portable generators to power their a/c, they go to bed nice and comfortable and the air-conditioning unit sucks in CO from the generator and poisons everybody inside.
- Don’t fire up your generator in your garage. Sounds obvious, I know, but people do it, and die from it all the time.
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