And now this helpful Year 2000 feedback from
my friend in the Heartland (yes! this East
Coast boy has a friend in the Heartland!):
I’m very concerned about Y2K.
On one hand, it seems absurd. On the other, how
many broken down cars does it take to back up the
freeway? And if you went into a gas station and
asked them to manually pump you a gallon of gas
they couldn’t do it. (Some do have backup
electrical generators.)
Last winter a very bad ice storm hit Iowa City.
Branches and power lines crashed by the zillions
and we were without power for 18 hours. That
doesn’t sound like a very long time, but when
it’s still winter outside and you’re sitting
there by candle light, and it’s eerily quiet,
with the only sounds the occasional crash of a
limb off in the distance as the weight of the ice
finally makes it succumb to gravity during hour
number 16, and you see the temperature on the
thermostat dropping roughly 1 degree per hour,
you think, "My God, what if it’s like it was
up there in Canada, where the power was off for
over three weeks after a bad ice storm?"
It’s a miserable, rotten, near panicky feeling.
It doesn’t help that when our power goes out our
well-water goes out, too.
So when summer came around I went out and bought
an electric generator for our home — a deluxe
Honda 5500 watt model. I paid for the generator
and Jack paid to have an electrician wire it
directly into the fuse box of the house. Believe
it or not, we’ve had to use it three times since
then and it’s great peace of mind. Just before
July 4th, when Jack was in Europe, Iowa City
was hit by near-tornadic 80 to 100 mph winds.
Again zillions of branches and power lines went down.
The entire town was without power for at least a
day, and for our house two days/nights. What a
GREAT comfort it was to have power at night (and
it wasn’t even winter, which would have made the
situation far more serious). Ours was the only
house in the area with the lights on, I was watching
satellite TV, the refrigerator was humming away, and
I could check my e-mail. I’m sure the few people
who drove by (not recommended, as roads were blocked
by limbs everywhere) did a double-take.
While I bought the generator for weather/disaster
emergencies, it’s nice to know we have one when
1/1/2000 rolls around — when it could be 30
below zero outside. Assuming that natural gas is
still flowing, we’ll have power for the furnace fan.
Some details: Knowing nothing about generators at
first, I searched the Internet. It worked great.
I decided on a Honda 5500 watt generator and found
places charging from $2600 to $4500 for it. I printed
off the pages of the discount company and took them
in to my local dealer and asked if he could match it.
He said that at $2600 he’d only have $90 profit, and
would have to charge Iowa sales tax. I decided to go
with him anyway since there was some assembly required
and he’d deliver it to the house for free. So I ended
up paying $2,750 plus tax. (You can buy cheaper
generators at hardware stores but this one is a deluxe
model and idiot-proof since I am a mechanical idiot.)
The electrician charged $500 to wire a connection into
the house’s fuse box. It could only be hooked into
4 fuses, either by law or by wattage limitation or
both, so we chose refrigerator, furnace blower, first
floor lights and TV room (of course ). Of
course, 5500 watts can’t power everything in our
entire 4600 sq. foot house all at one time, but our
generator will power every single light and appliance
included in the 4 fuses it’s hooked into — we
checked — and have power left over to run items
off two extension cords, which we can run to specified
extra areas (to open the garage door electrically, for
instance).
The generator requires roughly a gallon of gas per
hour of operation at maximum 5500 watt generation.
Our model has a feature which makes it energy
efficient — it burns gas according to how much
power is being drawn. I keep 20 gallons of gas on
hand (not inside the house) in four 5-gallon plastic
gas cans. When 1/1/2000 rolls around maybe I’ll have
double or triple that on hand just in case (and a
good supply of low-tech fire wood — January can
be COLD in Iowa).
Storing gas: I’ve learned a few things there, too.
Obviously, due to fire hazard, don’t store it in the
house; use a garage or outbuilding. Gas gets old
after about 3 to 5 months so it must be rotated.
I’m told Amoco Ultimate stays good the longest. I
mark on my calendar when to rotate the old gas; every
few months I empty the cans into our cars and fill
them up with fresh Amoco Ultimate. And once a month
I start the generator to make sure it runs. It’s a bit
of a bother, but nothing compared to the awful feeling
of being without electricity.
I hope that Y2K will prove to be less of a nuisance
than an ice or wind storm, but we should all be
prepared for a few weeks or even 3 months of
emergency. And not just for Y2K but for any natural
disaster. It makes our nation stronger to be prepared,
ready and able to take care of ourselves — for
an earthquake, tornado, or war; for Y2K; or for when
some terrorist someday does something really awful.
I don’t want to be paranoid, but we live in a
dangerous world and should be prepared. A lot of
disasters have hit mankind over the course of history
and one may be in store for us.
A.T.:
See? I told you many of your responses are
much more interesting than my columns that provoke
them. (I’d thank Bill more profusely and specifically,
but he’s not too keen on having all the neighbors
know where they can find a three-month store of
emergency goods.)
For more on Y2K, you’ll find a collection of daily
Y2K news articles at
www.year2000.com/articles/articles.html.
Tomorrow: Pedal Your Own Kilowatts
