Not familiar with solar or batteries, but I had a 18kw Generac installed at my house 2 years ago. Whole house, auto transfer switch, 6-8 seconds after the power goes out it comes right back on. SUPER convenient. You wouldn’t know the power was out of you couldn’t hear it running (it isn’t too loud). I piped it myself to cut down on cost, and it was just shy of $9,000 with some extras (first year maintenance, cold start kit, WiFi monitoring). The cost was insane, but when the news was reading potential multi day power outages, the piece of mind it provided was priceless.

I thought the world sort of jumped on him a bit hard -it seemed like the pack of wolves really came out.I"ve been a tourist at several places over the years-I hope the natives didn't automatically hate me the way some posters seem to automatically hate any tourists in our state.

I did retail for over thirty years. I do remember the week after Xmas being it's own kind of hell.Between schools being out and many other businesses closing for the week it was very busy.It was a grind after the craziness .January 2nd was always such a relief.

I bought a 15kW propane Generac a few years ago, and there's a couple things to consider....

I would recommend going with a professional. If your neighbor helps hook it up directly to your power without a transfer switch, you're gonna have a bad time.

That professional can help you size the right generator, and the right fuel amount needed to run it. I use some big electric heat pumps, well water, etc etc for electric and already had propane water and stove and so I ended up upgrading to 300 gallon tanks. Propane lasts a long time so I don't have to refill the tanks more than once a year.

Run time is important. If you're OK having a few day's worth of backup, batteries are fine. We just lost power for 5 days and the propane lasted me the whole time. My neighbor's powerwall made it 3 days.

Price is also important. Batteries will run you less money in the short term, although they may have a shorter life than a generator with the wear if you have multiple outages per year. For my generator setup I paid about $12k for installation, propane work, electrical work, and the generator.

I would say that your septic pump is the highest priority there, aside from heat. You can always dump 2.5gal of water in a toilet to flush it...as long as it has somewhere to go. There are a number of roadside springs all over Vermont, they can be a lifesaver when the power is out.

I have a setup with 8x 150aH deep cycle batteries, which I bought used from a neighbor and refurbished ($350). Also 4x G31 batteries which normally run a schoolbus, and a single LifePO4 pack @ 206aH for redundant redundancy. (Note: I design circuitry for a living, so I have a custom control setup to control charging and draw).

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We had HughesNet before this which was borderline fraud for what we paid and what we got.

We also have a ton of trees (literally live in the woods) including one huge one that obstructs a good portion of dishy to the point where the app says expect an outage every two minutes (during the leafed parts of the year that is) and the only time I ever have issues is quick two seconds lags on Teams or Zoom meetings with a lot of people.

We have a 10Kw solar array integrated with a Tesla Powerwall. We heat our house with a Fujitsu heat pump.

No - we do naked. But you must leave the house naked and not disrobe in public.

Chat with whoever is your go to septic crew. There’s pretty likely a period of time where you’re safe to use your system without power.

In that case all you need is to fill a few buckets (or your tub) with water before a possible power outage. Then you go poop and dump a bunch of water into the toilet and it will flush just like normal.

I absolutely blew my wife’s mind with this tidbit the first time we lost power at our house. Luckily we have a pond so unlimited flush water lol

Thanks, I scanned it (it's a long post). I hadn't seen it before.

Dude sounds like he was being a dick, but he opens with an apology for his rant. He never suggests it's ok to not leave tips for people in Vermont. In fact, he says the opposite at one point. This reinforces my assertion the post we're commenting in is a satire of a straw man who doesn't exist. It's disturbing how so many people found it compelling.

I hear this all the time and I find it to be curious. Just because we are a white state doesn't mean that it makes us a racist state. Correlation does not equal causation.

People in Vermont are slow to warm to newcomers. Doesn't matter who, what, why, where or when. That's just the way it is with most folks here.

Want to be part of the community?

• Show up to local school basketball games, attend town meetings, make friends with your nearest librarian.
• Always be willing to lend a hand and to keep your opinion to yourself unless you really need to share. Ask yourself; Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said by me right now?

Hope you find Vermont to be the wonderful place it can be for you and your SO.

As long as you disrobe at home before going out, it's fine

Bro, smoke some nice homegrown or some shit. You sound both wound up and as sensitive as a porcelain doll. You need better weed, holy shit. The larfy and old dispersary OD isn't doing you any favors.

I made statements and corroborated my point. Now go do some reading, junior.

Propane standby generators are great if the cost doesnt scare you. Since you already burn fuel oil for heat, maybe you can find a diesel standby generator.

Battery banks are expensive. As is solar. This is an investment, and understanding the life span of batteries is also very important before you make a decision. If you go this route do some research on grants related to renewable energy.

The cheapest option is a portable generator, which can also be powered by propane, and a transfer switch.

For the amount of times we lose power a year (in my rural town, i see 2 - 4 per year avg), i would just get a portable generator and be very diligent with fuel treatment, or run it on propane.

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Here is the original post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/icecoast/comments/1001wma/when_did_vt_become_so_inhospitable/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

We're in Washington County. Pooping outside in the snow was rough and we would prefer to poop inside :)

I corroborated the one claim about a specific person which is what I thought you were asking about. 10 thousand apologies for the grand imposition on your precious time. And you know what? It pretty much doesn't get any worse than a former cop driving small farms out of business. Hand wave it away if you feel like it, but IMO that's about as fucked as it gets on the legal side. Let's call that the top of the pyramid and it should be an eye-opener. Ain't nobody got time to ask for a CEO's bio when they go into a store, so navigating which companies should and shouldn't be supported is a bit of a tricky situation.

I don't know anything about people that you mentioned. Hopefully, they're solid folks, but just because weed is legal now I don't go off the blanket assumption that all my dollars- should I choose to spend them- are going to good and moral people.

I have a suitcase sized battery "generator" for short outages, on the order of 12 hours or so. I can run the freezer, fridge, and Internet for about that long before it dies. It weighs about 70-80 pounds and is a beast to haul around. It does not produce the 240 V that I would need to run the well pump, so no one is allowed to flush at the beginning of power failures if we don't have an estimated repair time.

For longer outages, I wheel out a 3500 Watt, 240 V portable gasoline-powered generator. I installed a transfer switch for the well pump only, and use a (now discontinued) APC Power Distribution Unit to split the 240V into a set of 120 V outlets that I can use to recharge the battery, and run the fridge and freezer. This solution used about 5 gallons of gas every 24 hours during the last set of multi-day outages. With this, a wood stove for heat, and a whole bunch of flashlights, we can continue in relative comfort indefinitely, provided we can get out and refill our 5-gallon gas cans.

We have solar, too, and briefly considered a powerwall setup, but we have no place to put it, and it would still end up being useless when the power is out for more than a day or so.

The moral of the story is that our civilization and all its comforts are very brittle. We feel very independent with our setup, but the moment we can't get gasoline, things get medieval in a hurry.

It's incredible. No outages and we have tons of trees. We will eventually have fiber in our area so we will probably switch to that. Works better and fewer outaages than Comcast when we lived in Montpelier.

Wow ya those things are insanely expensive and not very powerful either. Two for the well just for starters as it seems for 240v you need to have two of them sadly.

It’s the American dream.

Yes. I believe there is only one renter in the entire legislature, and about 1/3 of legislators are landlords. We in this sub squabble about people from the other side of an imaginary line while the rich eat our lunch, as usual.

It’s definitely a big change moving from municipal to rural.

If you have any question call out the septic company (the folks who would pump your tank) and they’ll be happy to tell you all about it.

What part of the state are you in now? I highly recommend Working Dog Septic if you’re in Franklin county or norther Chittenden.