@John Brunner Propane would be the lesser fuel of choice because it contains only 30%, roughly, the energy content of gasoline (91,000 vs. 124,000 btu/gal.). Frank
We will have a natural gas Generac plumbed professionally. It will be exercised once a month or whatever we want to use it.
We have a gasoline generator in our motorhome, but the RV is winterized so that the plumbing doesn't freeze. We are able to make do here in the house with the fireplace and gas stove. We had power most of the day yesterday until around midnight; now it's off again. It came on for 40 minutes around 7 a.m.; we turned on the news to hear the Mayor of Houston say "all of Harris County has power." LIAR Still no water, either.
@John Brunner I disfavor liquid propane because of the inherent greater danger difference between it and gasoline in a can. Stored propane experiences swings in tank or container pressure in the hundreds of psi range, while vapor pressure of gasoline is only a few psi at most. Some of the more horrible accidents involving stored fuels involved propane. Pics from the Kingman Doxol disaster, 5 July, 1973: See the white delivery truck above? After the fire: Firefighters killed in the incident: The Santa Fe railroad tracks passing through Kingman run along the main highway, Andy Devine Blvd. A number of RR propane tank cars had been left parked on a siding there. A leaking tank ignited, somehow..... I was living in Vegas, 125 miles away, when this event occurred. We heard news dispatches telling of burn victims being airlifted to Henderson and Vegas, whose treatment facilities were more extensive than sleepy little Kingman's. I will never forget this terrible event, and have felt uncertainty about propane ever since. Frank
I can understand the trepidation. As we all know, gasoline it not that volatile, it's the fumes that will git ya. Let me throw out my concern with gas and maybe you have some advice. If my gas generator is to have any utility, I need to have a reasonable supply of gasoline on hand. But even with a stabilizer, gasoline has a finite shelf life. So now I have a repetitive disposal problem if I am to keep a supply of usable gas on hand "just in case" with no other way to consume it. The fact that my outages are few & far between and are short-lived is a subordinate issue that diminishes the benefit of messing with it. So how do folks keep sufficient gas on hand yet overcome the whole storage/spoilage thing?
The other option I've considered is to buy a generator I can run off my diesel tractor's PTO system. But as I said, I've only had one or two multi-day outages since moving here in 2010, and one wasn't foreseeable...a transformer suddenly went out at a station where power was transferred from another utility company to mine. It took several days for the new one to arrive.
We live on a 6 acre stretch, so I stock up on ethanol free gasoline during the summer months for my small generator in case of the possibility of a hurricane. . I use it in my garden tractor. If my stash gets older than a month I use it in my pickup. (I swear that it get's better gas mileage when I do.)
I might add that the ethanol thing is the phoniest thing of the 21st century. It takes more energy to create a gallon of ethanol than is contained therein.
Yeh, my tractor is diesel, so I have nothing to rotate the supply through. And I've heard a large number of people say that ethanol-free gets better mileage. I would imagine that there's more energy in petroleum than there is in corn alcohol.
I have had a 350 gallon propane tank for thirty years, I have four or five 20# bottles around for whatever and two on the camper that are full. I have never given it a second thought. Those pictures you show are transportation problems. A static tank, probably the safest storage there is.
I used to get a station named RFD TV. When Ted Cruz was seeking the party's nomination, he made the obligatory run through Idaho. I was somewhat shocked that the defense of subsidies I saw on display there, although I guess that Federal subsidies are as routine a factor in farming as water and fertilizer are (for better or for worse.)
The old Ford station wagon that we had would not even start in cold weather, and barely start in almost cold weather. I read that using the ethanol-free would help, so I started using that at least every other time I put in gas and every time in the coldest part of winter. I don’t know if we got better gas mileage because i only ever drove to the grocery store and the fitness center; but it definitely ran a lot better and would at least start during the cold days as long as i did that.
It looks like @John Brunner will be in for a rough go of it tonight and tomorrow. We are forecast to get some of it but not like Virginia. My son said that he saw 3/4 of an inch of ice predicted for some parts of Virginia. That much ice will be catastrophic.