Heh - I don’t even know what they’d call it if they did one here. ‘Real Hasidic Caribbean Gangsta Snowbirds of SoFLuh’? Sooo much to choose from!
Yes. Yes, you are.
'sides, it’s fun chasing proseltisers away. Just gotta get your psycho on, but in an overly-friendly way. (They want to prove their faith - and you’re just helping out, lol.)
We tried that. Originally, it was a “No solicitors” sign. People kept ignoring it. When we pointed it out, they claimed that they were SPECIAL, that it didn;t apply to THEM. . .
So I got creative. . . after a weekend where ALL the use cases mentioned happened. . .
I have an idea that would work anywhere that’s densely populated. Gain ownership of the sidewalk in front of your home, build a funneling fence with a turnstile at the center, with a small turbine hooked up to it!
Voila!
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Shouldn’t that be “fuck off”? Or slightly longer “Fuck you if you don’t fuck off”.
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I have a basement that’s only kept dry in excessively wet conditions by a pair of sump pumps.
Fortunately, I’ve never had the power go down for more than a few hours during those wet times (a 4-hour outage got half the basement wet, but not deep). I’d love to have a solar panel and some offline batteries. Expensive? yes. Cost-effective as far as my utility bill? No. Cost-effective as far as not floating everything in my basement and destroying my furnace? YES.
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Offtopic but useful: If you have municipal water, you may want to investigate backup sump-pumps powered by water pressure. Even more inefficient, but makes maintaining the power someone else’s problem.
(Should look into that myself. I only need the pump during major events, but that’s exactly when you don’t want to have to go shopping…)
Got a well; another reason to be off-grid.
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Granted; you definitely have reason to want some local power storage and/or generation. (Of course the power storage could be kept topped up by the power line – basic UPS setup – whether or not you’ve got solar.)
I’d watch that.
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Then the answer is a generator. That should give you some peace of mind. (And that is not a thing you want to try to buy following a natural weather occurrence. The gouging is just…ouch!)
Edit to add: Generators do require routine maintenance, though, even when you aren’t using them.
Heh - come to think…I may get annoyed, at times, but I could never get bored people-watching around here, lol.
But hey. FL is the Sunshine State. We put the ‘rayz’ in ‘crazay’, and even that gets done sideways!
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Make sure you use generators safely. The CPSC recommends that they be kept outside and at least 20 feet away from windows. Carbon monoxide monitors should be checked to make sure that they are working properly. Eight people died during the recent ice storms because of carbon monoxide poisoning, including a person who had the generator outside.
I remember when the university where I went to grad school bought a huge backup generator (I think it was for a new supercomputer). They tested it during the day and you could smell the exhaust throughout the building. Our lab was especially bad because we were right next to the generator and had our own AC system on the roof.
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Not only yes, but hell yes.
(My neighbor build an outdoor generator shed adjacent to his house. It’s very well ventilated, so theoretically it should be no worse than running the generator without the shed – but I’m still hoping they never have reason to use it, because I really don’t want to find out how badly it leaks into the house.)
If they’re maintaining it properly, they’re going to put some hours on it anyway. You have to run them every so often - that’s part of the maintenance routine. It’s a good idea to sit down and read the manual thoroughly before getting started. These things aren’t like lawnmower engines. That’s not something you want to have to learn the expensive way. When I was full-timing in my RV, I almost trashed my generator because I was a newb at dealing with a generator - not a good idea while living off the grid!
Thankfully, I don’t have to maintain one any more. I moved to a high rise, where the staff has to do it. But, I found out they were adding the wrong fluids to the cooling system, and almost wrecked it. That one would have cost 6 figures to replace!
And, I suspect the problem with the people who got nailed by the carbon monoxide were probably trying to deal with cold and had sealed their houses up tight. Typically, though RV’s are poorly sealed, at best. Whatever is around you, you are going to smell - but that generator and the one I bought for my house were no problem that way - and that one was a larger commercial type (the kind that look like a gas tank for your house).
Thing is, you’ve got to locate it near enough to your power lines to hook up, whether or not you have a permanent connection installed. But, you could build a sealed storage for it that vents only to the outside, if you needed to keep it in an attached garage.
Getting it all going is neither hassle- nor expense-free, but it sure feels good to know you can run independently for a while if you need to!
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