BCS/GRILLO Generator attachment use in Ice Storm

[UTCenturion]

I've had the generator a few months now but this was my first serious use. It was so nice knowing it would just attach and start. I emotionally fear engines that get used rarely. I try to keep them maintained and ready but something always seems to be up when you need it most. And when you need a generator you REALLY need one. I had been log splitting with the BCS earlier in the week so I knew it would start right up.

We had big ice accumulations last night that started bringing down trees of all sizes. You could go out on the porch and hear limbs and trees falling about every 15 to 20 seconds. Power finally went out at midnight. I am pretty far towards the end of the line on the grid so I knew it would be a while before we got power up. The neighbors told me they had all been without power for up to 5 days in the not so distant past so i was dreading it.

I have a woodstove to keep my house warm. But it is a 1930's farmhouse built on a log frame with a crawlspace and a detached wellhouse. The crawlspace has a lightbulb in the winter and with the electricity gone needed to be given a little heat to keep the pipes from freezing as needed. We had one burst last year and it was a nightmare. I have a couple houses on my property I rent out and neither of those have a woodstove and one of them had no kerosene heater or anything besides electricity (which was obviously dead). SO the BCS and generator saved me from lots of plumbing headaches in multiple houses.

Power was out for about 16 hours. I ran the generator about 7 hours in rationed intervals at 2 of the 3 properties. I only used the 2 120 volt plugs with extension cords, so it was overkill to say the least, but I didn't have the right wiring available to take advantage of the larger plug, nor the time to get it figured out, while keeping woodstove fed, animals hayed and unfreezing livestock water without power. It used a little over 4 gallons of gas overall. I snapped a pic of it outside my house while I was keeping the fridge cold and heating up the plumbing and charging phone batteries.

 

[farmerboybill]

Thanks for the feedback regarding your generator. I've been considering one for a while, but wouldn't need it in emergency situations like you. I have a 25KW PTO powered generator to power the farm in an outage. My primary use would be to power tools out of extension cord range. I'll bet the portability of it being on a walk-behind came in handy!

 

[UTCenturion]

yeah having its own transport was pretty handy. And the stand on the bottom of it worked surprisingly well in the snow as sled skids. In the past i've tried to keep them off the ground when driving with it, but now i'm thinking they may have been designed with snow skid in mind.