On the night of August 13, 2004 Punta Gorda was eerily quiet. I sat outside on the tailgate of my pickup looking out at the neighborhood and I realized it wasn’t just the quiet that was odd, it was totally dark too.
Hurricane Charley was still tearing a path through the Florida Peninsula but was a couple hundred miles northeast by this time so the wind was calm. The roads weren’t yet passable and the flurry of post-hurricane activity was still a day away. There was no electricity anywhere in the region and the whole city was absent of light.
(see a video recorded in Punta Gorda during the hurricane here.)
Hurricane Charley hit us directly at Category 4 Intensity.
In the house, there was no power for the refrigerator or freezer. Of course there was no air movement, not even from an electric fan. Everything was done in the dark that first night. In a post-hurricane disaster zone, with debris of every shape and size strewn about, a little bit of light would have been a good thing.
A cold drink might have been nice too!
It was weeks before the power was restored.
Generators Change Everything
A 500 gal underground LP tank powers this unit, which is capable of running the entire home and all systems.
Since that time, we’ve seen many clients take the idea of a whole house generator more seriously.
Having a generator already in-place, with an easy (or automatic) switching mechanism to cut your house off from the electric grid, which is a safety measure of critical importance, can make the aftermath of a hurricane much more manageable.
Generator systems are available in a variety of sizes and fuel types. They also are available totally fixed, like you’d see at a hospital, or somewhat mobile, like a construction site generator but more powerful.
The system you see in the photos here is certainly on the larger side. Designed to power the entire 5380sf (under roof) home without missing a beat, this generator is a monster.
Generator Noise
One consideration when planning a whole house generator is the noise level. A good quality generator can run surprisingly quiet, but you still want to try and place it a good distance from bedroom windows, etc.
Portable generators are often much louder than permanently installed systems and since the time-frame that this could be your sole power source could be as much as a couple of weeks, it’s worth thinking about at the planning stage.
Generator Installation
In the event of a power outage, the generator starts up automatically and this transfer switch safely isolates the home from the power grid.
The picture below shows the transfer switch for this large generator. Clearly, this is a complex system that must be installed by an experienced professional who knows these systems inside and out.
An important safety feature is the isolation of your home from the power grid. Electricity, unlike water, runs both ways! Uphill, downhill, sideways, backwards, electricity doesn’t care. So a house under generator power that is still connected to the power grid sends power into the grid. This can be very dangerous in a disaster situation when powerlines are down, and crews are working thinking everything is powered-off.
This is why a licensed electrician is required to do this type of installation.
Consider Valuables
I once built a wine-cellar that cost the customer about $240,000! It was a thing of beauty with solid brick floors and 12′ high wine racks on all walls. Full. Of fine wine. I never found out the total value of that collection, but if the storage room was a quarter million, I figure it was pretty high.
In the event of a long term power loss in the middle of August in Florida, that wine collection would potentially be ruined.
What things of value would an extended power loss endanger in your home? Art, documents, rare books, photographs, etc. These things are all susceptible to damage in the wrong environmental conditions.
The House That Doesn’t Miss A Beat
The idea of a whole house generator becomes even more intriguing when you consider all the rest of the steps we take to prepare a house for a hurricane.
- Flood elevation concerns
- Impact resistant windows
- Hurricane shutters
- Hurricane building codes (tie-downs)
- Hurricane roofing codes (secondary water barriers)
These things combine to make homes very capable of withstanding some extremely harsh conditions. People sometimes think “If a hurricane hits, my house won’t be here anyway.” If your house has been built in the last ten years, that’s probably just not true. Chances are, your house will withstand a hurricane with relatively little damage.
Add a whole house generator to the mix and you could be living in the one house on your block that barely misses a beat. Takes a lickin’ but keeps on tickin’!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This is truely amazing. I think we will see this sort of thing cropping up more and more often.
I just saw an advertisement for a generator that is solar driven! Not sure how much of the house it could power, but what a neat idea for every household to have. We have a whole lotta new ideas for building or remodeling your home….you should give us a call or stop by our offices or the model center located at 5025 Bal Harbor.