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What did we learn from Irma?

Three weeks before Irma, I called Generac. They called me back last week and will come to the house on Monday to show me my options. I am not going through this again. I am too old to pull that portable generator around and running around routing the extension cords and such. My wife is on oxygen and that is the main reason for my soon to have Generator.
I learned if the power is out you can use the old phones and they work with no problem. I think I have one of the old pushbutton phones somewhere around here.
The Hurricane lamps worked well using Lamp oil and I have a Coleman stove that uses propane.
 
My little $6 LED Walmart lanterns worked way better than I thought they would. Yhe propane powered generator hadn't been run in 3 years, started on second pull. And my propane conversion for my coleman gas stove worked great, had never used it. (converted all backups to propane for unlimited shelf life on fuel)

I ran extension cords from the generator, had no problems. My neighbor tried backfeeding his breaker panel and did about $800 in damage to his electronics.
I back-fed my house from my 5K generator and have no problems at all.
 
Being a life long hunter/outdoorsman we pretty much had everything to get by on fairly comfortably. I will buy more ice in another situation like this though. I did learn that my wife and I work well together to get things done in adverse conditions. I also learned that my nieghbors were utterly unprepared for even the smallest adversity.
 
I'm still without power to the house. I have a 10kw Generac fed by a 500 gallon propane tank, but since it's cool outside, I just cut it off. It was only powering the fridge, really. I have a 750w inverter and brought a spare battery inside last night and charged the phone and back up phone charger on the inverter. I also hooked up the wifi router since I have DSL and had wifi, but no power.

I was low on groceries anyway, so I boiled the remaining eggs, used my Camp Chef Range that I bought off ODT to cook on. Also the Maglite AA led flashlight works like a candle as the head unscrews and you can put the base in it as a stand. It's very bright and fills the room.
 
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