I stay on top of my generator maintenance. Where I live I want power. Both summer and winter can give us problems. We are somewhat rethinking our need now.
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Last edited by Texas PO; 09-07-2026, 07:59 AM.
"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787 -
Mixed bag on the generator maintenance today. The little inverter one was full of old fuel, but it did have stabilizer in it and I forgot that unit has a run with fuel cutoff setting to burn up everything in the carb so that was fine. Took a good few pulls to get it started, but then it ran fine. Took a shop vac, pulled the hose off, plugged it in and turned it on to put a load on the generator. Let it run 20-30 minutes like that and moved it back to run with fuel cut off to drain the carb again. I put way too much fuel in it last year when I fired it up for the first time. Going to have to run that one more regularly to burn that old stuff up.
The bigger one that I had never started before put up a hell of a fight. My older boy and I could not get it to fire up on gasoline. Even with some carb cleaner squirted right into it couldn't get more than a few chugs. Some notes in the manual about the battery ( stone dead ) needing to be connected for even recoil start on gasoline made me think the electronics were fighting us. Hooked it up on propane and it fired right up. Running it for ten minutes put a bit of charge on the battery - enough the battery tender thinks it's putting some juice in it. I'll check on it later to see how it's doing and if it will electric start on gasoline. I would like to test that out. I plan to haul that generator up to my aunt's place for her to have as a backup to her generator. She is remote enough a generator failure could be a problem.
While I was out there I unboxed the new electric heater for the garage and started figuring out where to mount it. The electrician will be some time next month to do a bunch of things including wiring this heater in. The old heater works fine, but only has a manual rheostat on the back of the unit so to make any temp adjustments ( which you have to do often ) the step ladder has to come out. The new one will give me redundancy, has a thermostat, and a remote control. I'm holding off on mounting it because I still have a giant stack of solar panels in the way in my garage.Comment
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Finally the low lifes in the sticks get power back
"The clever cat eats cheese and breathes down rat holes with baited breath." W. C. FieldsComment
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"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787Comment
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A few years back we had a blizzard on Christmas Eve, yeah a blizzard in southern Oklahoma. Got over a foot of snow with 60-80mph wind. Drifts were over 5' tall. Then, on New Years eve, the ice storm came and dumped an inch of ice on top of the snow.
Power had gone out Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas I was at Tractor Supply buying a generator.
Hundreds, if not thousands of power poles were down all across OK. We had no power for two weeks and had to drive either 10 or 40 miles, depending on which gas station had gas and was functional, to get gas for the gen.
Those two weeks really sucked big time!Comment
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No power was bad enough but us Okies aren't made for that kind of snow shit.Comment
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Storing propane for the generator is the direction I'm headed. My thought is once the new shed is complete and I don't have to store everything in my garage I'm going to start adding some 20# propane tanks. How many will be heavily influenced by where my attempts to get the solar panels approved goes. I will still keep 5-10 gallons of gasoline for the lawn tractor and the shiny new two stage snowblower ( that record blizzard last winter was way too much for my little single stage electric snowblower ).Comment
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At any given time, I have 2 X 100lb. bottles and 5 X 25 lb. bottles of propane, just in case.Comment
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Don't buy and store 20# tanks. That is WAY too expensive and too dangerous! Instead, get a 250 or 500 gallon propane tank and just have the truck come out when it gets low and refill it. The gas for our house is propane so it is easy for me. But even without that, I would still have at least a 250 gallon tank just for the expense. The actual propane to fill a 20# tank costs about $5-$8. Buying it at Walmart is about $20 or maybe more! With savings like that, the big tank pays for itself pretty quick, plus you can usually get a used one pretty cheap - throw a new valve on it for less than $50 and you are golden. Keep a couple 20# tanks on hand just to refill as necessary.Comment
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"I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787Comment
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