Pretty much all of the east coast from North Carolina to New England was visited this weekend by an unwelcome guest — Hurricane Irene. This was a massive storm, over 500 miles in diameter, that managed to dump an enormous amount of water onto already soaked land, causing massive flooding. After hitting North Carolina as a category 3 storm, it made landfall again off of Coney Island, NY as a category 1. It proceeded to travel up the Hudson river. Areas to the west of the storm were soaked with a foot or more of rain. This included NYC, which suffered substantial flooding (and the first mandatory evacuation on record). Rhode Island, about 150 miles to the east took the brunt of the wind. Despite the reduction in force to a tropical storm, RI saw gusts of over 85 MPH and as of yesterday afternoon, between 1/2 and 2/3 of all customers were without power.
Of course we knew the hurricane was coming, and the press did a wonderful job of stoking hysteria. I figured no matter what it was going to be a bad power-fail situation. RI’s last significant hurricane, Bob, happened 20 years ago, which meant trees had grown up and engulfed wires, and had done so without being tested by high winds. So on our return from Cape Cod, the first thing I did was contact Mayberry’s, a huge RV supplier in New Jersey, and ordered a Honda EU2000i generator. FedEx had it in our hands early Friday morning, two days before the storm.
I had purchased a 4KW Colman generator after Hurricane Bob, as we had lost power for 11 days following hurricane Gloria in 1985, and about 2 days after Bob. I rationalized that buying a generator would dovetail well with my ham radio hobby and would virtually guarantee no storms in the future (that guarantee lasted for 20 years — making the best return on an investment ever).
The Colman worked fine for just about 20 years, although I never did use it. A couple of times a year I would fire it up and run it under load for an hour or two then shut it back off. That routine worked well until last year, when I stowed the generator with fuel in it during the summer of 2009, and didn’t attempt to start it again until the fall of 2010. By then the gas had evaporated and had ruined the carburetor. I had that replaced and the unit serviced last year.
Despite having a working generator again, I had fallen out of like with mine. For starts it was massively heavy. I could only barely lift it off a wheeled cart by myself. Starting it was always a problem as it took quite a bit of effort to get that 8 HP engine turning over. It was loud (as commercial generators tend to be) and it would vibrate all over the place. Finally it wouldn’t run long on a tank of gas. But frankly I had fallen in love with Honda generators which I had seen running at several events. I say “see” because hearing them is a challenge unless things are quiet and you are standing right next to it. They purr and make less noise than a human voice.
As I type this, my Honda is so quiet on the back deck that I can’t hear it above the sound of keys clicking on my keyboard, or the refrigerator humming away. Yesterday it ran our lights and refrigerator from 3 PM until 11:30 PM on a half gallon of gas. It was a strange feeling to be the only house with lights on for miles around. Thanks for a great product, Honda!
Honda EU2000i Generator
