Back up power trouble notes
The Champion
generator started on the
second pull Monday night when the power
first failed here.
Tuesday rolled around and I
made a big mistake by topping it off with some old gas. I thought the
fuel was fine due to just using some in the lawnmower, but I guess this
generator is more sensitive.
My first solution was limited
by our local hardware store and the Dollar shop. They only had STP and
Gumout, which I think is the same thing. I added both with very little
results to show for it. It would start up...but putter and stall due to
what I assume was the bad gas or water in there somewhere? My second
mistake was not deleting as much of the old gas as I could before
adding the supplements.
The next round of repairs
involved a longer trip where one can find a proper auto parts store. I
went right for the Seafoam and after a short consult with
one of the clerks was off to the gas station for some premium grade
petrol.
Dumping out the old gas and
adding the Seafoam helped, but it continued to putter and eventually
stalled due to what I'm guessing is some sort of blockage. I think it's
going to take running it a while for it to smooth out.
Luckily the electric guy
showed up with a chainsaw and a smile and cut down the offending tree
that was hanging on one of our power lines. It was touch and go for a
while as I watched the line hold the entire weight of the tree and
finally allow it to fall without breaking. I let out a loud
enough cheer so he could hear me and we had power restored within the
hour.
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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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