When you live off grid, it technically means you are not connected to the power grid or any utility companies. That can also take on other meanings though. Like ... when your only source of power breaks down. People tied to the grid tend to panic and worry about everything when they have no power. When living with limited power though ... power "outages" are no big thing ... unless you are supposed to make an announcement on one of your other blogs LOL Well then ... the power outage can cause some problems.
Our generator went out yesterday ... fortunately we purchased it from a good company, that stands behind their merchandise! It's actually the second generator from them. The first one died (motor seized) with in 3 days of buying it. We'd had the second one for just over a month when it seized. The company couldn't replace it this time because they didn't have any more. They did have one from China but said if something broke on it, they couldn't get parts for it. No thanks! So ... they gave us a full refund PLUS the cost of the gas & oil that we had just put in it the night before it seized. That company will have a bulk of our business as far as tools & equipment!!! Anything we can buy from them ... we will!!! There just aren't a whole lot of businesses like that any more!!!
There was very little time left in the business day when the generator died, so we couldn't do much about getting another one. So, that was today's project. We made some calls and did what we could to find a replacement ... we figured that even if we needed to get a smaller one, just to get us back up & running ... the problem was that no one had a smaller one in stock ... and the bigger ones ... well, they were double what we paid for ours. We just couldn't swing that. A neighbor & my husband set out on the town, with a mission to find us some power. It worked ... but came from, what I think is the oddest place ... an auto parts store. Who'da thunk?!
Our new generator is even better than the first. It has all the bells & whistles of the first (and second) ... but it has one thing ours didn't. It has a trickle cell charger. For those who don't know what that is ... it's connectors for battery cables, so we can trickle some of the electricity in to a battery bank ... in order to "store" electricity for when the generator is off. I am soooooooo excited about this!!! I'm sure you can trickle charges with any generator ... but I'm guessing you have to rig something to do so. With this one, no rigging needed!
Now to build our battery bank!
