Gosh, sure seems like are a lot of "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" kinds of posts on this thread. Also several alternatives that haven't been discussed yet.

Here's my take: Just in the USA alone there are so many diverse climates, built environments (rural, semi-rural, town, major urban area, etc), personal circumstances (age, condition, equipment, ability, etc.), varieties of potential (even probable) "disasters", etc. etc. that it's nonsense to argue about this sort of thing or claim some kind of superior idea, attitude, philosphy, etc.

Most people most places in most situations would get along without a generator. Let's suppose that all the big tough guys (and gals) here would get along in the Backpacker Magazine vague situation with just a knife or just a lighter or just a sleeping bag or... But that's not what this forum is about. "EQUIPPED" to survive, not Tom Brown's naked scout survival school - which is a really cool thing, but not the topic here in general or the original thread in particular.

Got little kids? Live in a cold climate (as opposed to someplace that gets freezing temperatures a few times a year)? Not a real experienced outdoorsman? MacGuyver seems like a genius to you? A little skinny on the equipment for the whole family? - Toss very many of those things together and asking about a genset is a VERY smart question.

Our homes, even if damaged, are a cornucopia of useful items for even the more inept of us, offer great emotional aid to kids (and even adults), even damaged are darned good shelters, etc. Like I said, most people don't need a genset, but that doesn't mean it would hurt to have one. Evaluation of the desirability should be a personal discovery and decision, period.

I am neither endorsing nor naysaying a genset, but I will add some information based on my experiences here and abroad.

Most climates, running a genset for 1 hour out of 4 is quite frequent enough to keep freezer contents safely frozen.

Household refers aren't worth the genset time - eat it, toss it, transfer contents to coolers and rotate gallon jugs of ice from the freezer to the coolers, whatever - be sure to prop the door of the empty refer open, of course.

Need the furnace to run? Same cycle as the freezer will do unless it is below zero F or very windy. In those conditions, there are other decisions to make. Examples: Run 15 minutes every hour (PITN), drain water lines and run furnace on freezer cycle (doable), drain water lines, close down house to interior core (fireplace room?), and only run genset once or twice a day for an hour, etc.

Want to run power tools for interim or permanent damage repairs if the utility lines are down for for extended period of time? Genset... you might as well; an inverter big enough to run a circular saw is expensive and kicks the heck out of your automotive battery and alternator (yes, I am well aware of exceptions) plus usually needs to be hard-wired into your vehicle on the DC side. (and there's a whole grounding issue with power tools that everyone casually forgets to mention or do). I like inverters a lot; I have them in two of my vehicles. But not for household emergency use as a primary backup.

Maintenance? Fuel Storage? Repairs? yadayada - not really problems. What maintenance and repairs? There's very little to do with an infrequently used genset; that's a fact. Store no fuel in it (get a siphon hose for your vehicle - it will have fresh fuel in it), check the hoses and fuel lines annually (more of an "after 5 or more years" thing in most climates), and run it for a half-hour or so once a year if you think of it - use it to power some tools or something cyclical like that to exercise the rpm controls and variably load the generator and engine. Run it bone dry. That's about it, really, even with a "cheap" genset. Sure, you COULD do more if you want to squeeze several thousand hours runtime out of the genset - but that's not the point here; there simply is no need.

There are plenty of downsides to storing and using a genset. It's an expensive thing to sit there waiting to (hopefully) never be used. They seem to always be in the way when you need to get to something else. The noise may attract undesired attention of various sorts - including the sudden silence that happens when it is stolen. If you don't attach it to a good ground, you're gonna get some unpleasant surprises sometime when you're running a power tool. People who know you have a genset will want to borrow it for non-emergency situations. Etc.

We each have to evaluate our own situation and make our own decisions about this, just like anything else. There certainly is no hard-and-fast answer. Arguing that someone else doesn't need a genset is silly and really misses several reality checks. Ditto for arguing that someone else needs a genset.

This isn't after all, as serious and cut-and-dried a decision as which knife is best or which caliber is best - y'all are wrong about those! <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

(No animals were harmed, no wait, wrong disclaimer - YMMV and hope no toes got stepped on - isn't my intention).

Regards,

Tom