Just make sure you have your "power out drill" well documented and you are fully prepared for a sudden outage in darkness. I forgot where my closest flashlight was and really needed it to shut off breakers and interlock switch in a very dark garage. Finally found it after about 5 minutes of fumbling around in the dark. Since I had a detailed checklist next to breaker box and on generator it was easy to quickly bring power to the house.
The first day is fun on generator pwr and I always feel like I have cheated death by bringing light, etc. to our little compound. However those feelings quickly taper off as you go through the cold frigid weather start, shutdown (at night) and restart in morning procedures a few more times. It seems that on 2nd day the little worries begin to pop up, do I really have enough fuel for a potential extended outage with roads closed due to downed trees and power lines? Fortunately I have 100 hours operation fuel on each trailer. However, my day tank on my #1 generator at house dropped below the 1/2 full mark and I expected the aux switch to activate the transfer of fuel and it didn't. It was on 1/3 and still no transfer of fuel, I'm now getting a bit anxious and this is going to turn into a nail-biter if I get close to empty. So I have all this fuel in the aux tank that I can't seem to access (not easily). I pulled out the TM to see what might be causing the no fuel transfer and as I was reading the switch test procedure, the aux switch energized the transfer relay for aux pump at 1/4 fuel mark and promptly filled the tank up to full. Woo-hoo!
Yes, it is comforting to have all the familiar amenities of home in play on a cold icy night but when hours turn into days and possibly a week that's when it starts to get serious.
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