A full day of generator power
We
had hoped to visit my mom for Christmas, but I awoke to rain. The
water melted the top layer of snow, and by mid afternoon the creek was
over its banks. This has really been a crazy month
for floods!
Instead of going visiting, we celebrated Christmas with a full day of generator power. It felt as sinful as living in a mansion, running a hot water heater 24/7, or buying an SUV --- a guilty pleasure. All day long, I was able to peruse the internet, try (in vain) to get our new camcorder working, and fill up drinking water jugs in anticipation of colder weather. The trailer got so warm from all of that fan action that I stripped down to my t-shirt and even managed to wash up for the first time in far too many days!
Over the course of the day, we discovered that the generator runs much longer on a tank of gas than I'd previously reckoned. The tank holds four gallons and the generator runs for about twelve hours on a full tank, so electricity by generator costs about a dollar per hour. Definitely not an every day splurge, but feasible on a special occasion.
Instead of going visiting, we celebrated Christmas with a full day of generator power. It felt as sinful as living in a mansion, running a hot water heater 24/7, or buying an SUV --- a guilty pleasure. All day long, I was able to peruse the internet, try (in vain) to get our new camcorder working, and fill up drinking water jugs in anticipation of colder weather. The trailer got so warm from all of that fan action that I stripped down to my t-shirt and even managed to wash up for the first time in far too many days!
Over the course of the day, we discovered that the generator runs much longer on a tank of gas than I'd previously reckoned. The tank holds four gallons and the generator runs for about twelve hours on a full tank, so electricity by generator costs about a dollar per hour. Definitely not an every day splurge, but feasible on a special occasion.
Want to splurge? Check out our microbusiness ebook
which you can download for just $4.
This post is part of our Two Weeks Without Electricity series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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