Fixing a Diesel Generator and Making My Own Power For The First Time

We've had a hell of a windstorm over night. We lost our power at 2:30 AM.

About a quarter of our town - a quarter of the whole region, actually - are without mains power now. Because we're in such an isolated location, the five houses at the end of our street (including ours) are usually the last to have power restored. It's so frustrating to look at the outage report for your area and see that you're the last one waiting for electricity. Again.

Among the junk, machines, and rusted hulks my grandfather left behind on this place was this ancient diesel generator.

We hadn't been expecting to stay here this long, but we've been through two winters and several of these outages by now. Over the summer I finally had a go at getting it running again.

My expectations were low. Grandfather took terrible care of his things, and once he got his hands on a tool, it didn't work for long. But since I had a bit of free time and patience, it seemed worth a shot.

I charged up the battery, but it didn't do anything but "click" when I turned the ignition. Still, I replaced the engine oil, then found an appropriate socket wrench to remove the dozens of bolts holding the panels to the frame. This exposed a bolt attached to the spinning part of the engine, and I found that when I applied a tremendous force to that with a large wrench, I actually could turn the engine over. A few turns loosen it up. After fussing with this for a while, I turned the key and was shocked to see it jerk on its own.

Eventually I was able to get it to start. I let it run for a while, and even plugged a lamp and an electric heater (1500 Watts) to see if it was generating electricity. It was!

Unfortunately, once it stopped, I couldn't get it to start again - at least not consistently. I tried buying a new battery, since the one inside it was ten years old. Even that didn't seem to provide enough juice to turn the engine without a lot of fussing and jiggling first. So I set it aside again.

Until today. When we lost power this morning we were in a bind. The wife's recently hatched quail are in a brooder that needs to be kept at 100 degrees F., and she has an incubator running with a few dozen more eggs.

There couldn't have been a worse time for us to be without power for an extended period.

So at first light I went out into the garage and tried to get the generator running with the new battery again. Still no luck. Then I wondered if a car battery would make any difference. I can't jump from my Prius, but that old Volvo is still hanging around, so I attached it's battery to the generator's with jumper cables. The thing ground into life, and remained on. I ran 100' of extension cord to the brooder in the bathroom and soon had the quail warmed up again.

Unfortunately we lost one chick which had hatched just yesterday, but the others recovered. It could have been much worse.

Now I had the motivation to take advantage of this thing and see what it could do. It has a 240 Volt outlet that can actually put out 6000 watts of power - if you can track down the right cords and adapters. This process required several visits to Home Depot and the Tractor Supply Co. (Did you know that the L14 connector for a 30 amp generator is different from the L14 connector for a 20 amp generator? Sheesh! Me neither.) Then we tracked down all sorts of splitters and power strips, and a proper diesel can (they're yellow!) and filled that up with extra fuel.

Believe it or not, I've never actually bought diesel fuel before. It smells a lot better than gasoline. I know because I got it all over my hands.

Anyway, now we've got the fridge, microwave, kettle, modem, router, chicken brooder, lamps, and a couple of computers all capable of doing their thing until the power is restored. And I'm almost used to the noise of the thing.

It would be nice if we could drive the well pump as well, but that's hard wired to its circuit, so we'll be flushing with buckets of seawater for the time being.

I know there's a way to wire this thing directly to the house, but that's outside my experience and budget for the time being. According to our neighbor, my grandfather had once done this himself once, but in his usual fashion he did it his own way and got into trouble. Instead of isolating the circuit properly, he let the electricity flowed back into the grid, putting any poor lineman who was working in the area at risk of electrocution.

I'm just grateful the thing runs at all, and that I've managed to start it up without killing myself. The novelty of posting to Steemit during a power outage is pretty grand.

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So about this storm:

The wind kicked up some serious waves in the bay, this morning. Big four-footers rolled right up to the beach - about twice the size of what you see here. (I'm always a little late with the camera.)

Some serious branches came down in the yard.

And an entire tree, just across the street.

The road was buried under fallen branches, brush, and debris, and the line at the one open Dunkin Donuts went around the block. I wouldn't have waited if I hadn't promised to bring The Wire a latte!

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How do you handle a power outage? Do you have a generator, or are you happy to rough it with candles and blankets?