My friend just moved to Indiana and is buying a Generator

[luvnwdwgal]

Always a good thing to have a generator no matter where you live.

 

[kymom99]

No hate.

Yes, it is common in Midwest.

I live in an area with underground power lines, and although we do lose it on occasion when a substation goes out, there isn't a dire need for one. However, many cities in the midwest do not have underground and the need is there when weather strikes. Downed lines happen with every season here.

Same here with the underground lines. We rarely lose power. But where we are building our new house, the power gets knocked out regularly. Lots of trees fall in the lines.

Indiana is prone to tornados too.

 

[barkley]

we have a whole house. without power we also don't have water (well). in the event of fire it's dangerous, in the event of freezing temps you risk your plumbing and well pump being destroyed when power is restored. my brother in california (also on a well) got his after he found that when pg&e took down the power in a wind storm they also took down the cell towers so in the event of fire or medical emergency he had no way to access water or emergency services.

 

[momz]

Indiana gets hit by snow and ice in the winter. When it’s bitter cold and you have no electricity, be thankful for the generator.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

We do not have one, but I would definitely like to have one. Thankfully we have never been w/o power ourselves for more than several hours *knock on wood*, but the potential is always there. It could be tornadoes, severe storms, or ice. It is a good idea to be prepared!

 

[DisneyOma]

I'm always trying to get my husband to find us a generator, but he's a procrastinator and if I get one it won't be the "right" one. I think they are very important to have, no matter where you live! (Well, except anywhere that doesn't have the right set up and proper ventilation)

 

[bluezy]

We're in PA and we have a generator. It seems like we don't use it for a few years and then other times we use it multiple times in a year. Up until July of this year, we hadn't used our generator in over 3 years, but now we've used it twice in the last month -- both times for several hours. I like knowing that if our power goes out, we can have the generator up and running in a few minutes.

 

[slo]

I’m in Indiana and we have a whole house generator.
Generators are common around here - especially depending on where your electrical wires are. If they are above ground then it‘s good to have one. Our wires are below ground, so we don’t lose power very often. Our parents are above ground and they do lose power often with storms.

 

[holden]

We live in a suburb of Philadelphia. In our old house we had a generator to power the refrigerator if we lost power. In our current home the previous owners installed a whole house generator. It was a godsend two years ago when tornados came directly through our area. One missed our house by a mile.

 

[jimmymc]

Older areas up north tend to have their power lines above ground, and snow storms can knock those down.

 

[tvguy]

Older areas up north tend to have their power lines above ground, and snow storms can knock those down.

My subdivision was built in 1976 and the utilities are all under ground. Transformers still blow, wires burn out, electrical vaults get flooded, so we still have a power outage once in a while, and with that all buried it takes LONGER to fix since they have to dig to get to the equipment. The main powerline failed and the electric company dug up my driveway to get to it.....and paid to put in a new driveway.

 

[HeatherC]

I’m in Massachusetts and we have one. It is truly one of the best purchases we have made. We are on a septic and well so if power goes out, which it does quite frequently, we have no water as well as power. We went through a two year period where we had tornadoes and ice storms and lost power for well over a week at a time and one day I decided enough was enough and went to Tractor Supply and bought one large enough to run our house. We have used it to run our well and septic as well as heat and hot water heater along with fridge, freezer and lights. It has really been a lifesaver and was money well spent.

With the way weather has changed and storms have become more dangerous and unpredictable, I think it is a smart purchase for most homeowners.

 

[PezRuth]

We live in New Hampshire and it is very common. I grew up in the Midwest and it would have been helpful to have had one. Power outages happen often.

 

[Stratman50th]

We have one mounted in the RV. I could wire the house to take input from the RV but if the outage lasts a long time we just move into the bus. I run an extension cord to the fridge in the house. That's about all I care about running in there.
During Irma our power was out for eight days. We lived in the bus, had AC, water, cell service. I didn't miss a day of work.

 

[Jsharp13]

We live in Michigan and just had 6 tornadoes by us. Our power was out for 5 days. Thankfully we have a generator. I would never be without it these days.

 

[_19disnA]

Generators come in many sizes, smaller ones only operate a few basic needs like your refrigerator/freezer while the largest ones can operate your whole house. Clearly a big range of prices for something as an insurance policy against any outage that may never (or rarely) occur. Having underground power lines in your development is no guarantee power won't go out. The power is transmitted along overhead power lines somewhere else and those can certainly be impacted by falling trees/limbs in any type of large storm. The issues vary by season but you still can be at risk for losing power. In the summer you can have large storms/tornadoes while in the winter it could be an ice storm. All of those can damage overhead power lines and cause an outage.

 

[GAN]

There are also some other options like Portable Power Stations that can power a good part of a home for a day or longer. Expensive, but much less than a typical total installed cost of a gas/propane generator.

https://www.ecoflow.com/us/delta-pro-portable-power-station

 

[JulieBeeRN]

We don't have one but we also don't have a problem with long power outages in our neighborhood.

 

[mmbrad02]

Kentucky here - we went 18 days without power in 2008/09 (I can't remember) due to an ice storm. That is when we bought our generator because who wants sewer backing up in their house. Gross!
But we have used it numerous times since - either short power outages or my husband has used it for projects away from the house. It's been very useful.
Ours is not large enough to run our heat or our hot water tank - but it does get us through gross events like above, or runs our fridge/microwave to eat, etc. Our power lines are not underground and we are on a RECC system and we tend to lose power easily.

 

[nene0182]

We live in North Dakota and while we don’t personally have one (we’ve talked about it for years but haven’t done it yet) a lot of people we know do have one especially for winter.