Well!
I hear you, Greg, about the PoCo forecasts. Each outage was followed by a call from them, estimating it would take 18 hours to restore power. In fact, no outage exceeded 2 hours.
My respect, and thanks, to the guys who had to work in that slop!
A pop-up canopy is certainly worth trying - though I have doubts about them staying put in the wind.
Ghost, I like your idea. I see another model more appropriate to my use. Making the necessary holes, and finding protective bushings, ought not be a problem.
I expect such a shed will also help reduce the amount of noise the neighbors must tolerate. "Quiet" is relative - and the low roar of my generator isn't the most pleasant of sounds.
Greg, I'm not sure what you mean by 'pull it over.' I have been running mine for 15 minutes, under load, every month. This is long enough to bring everything up to operating temperatures.
Whether I "need" to do this with a small gasoline-powered generator has been debated by some. Apart from that, the monthly drill meant I already 'knew' how to start it - no fumbling about in the bad weather, wondering 'where is that choke thingy?'
As mentioned, this is a PORTABLE generator. It's enough of a hassle taking it to a job site .... I can't see myself adding all that propane and hardware to the mix.
For those who wonder: Yes, I do have the generator chained & locked to the concrete slab. Eventually, it will also have a fence around it; I had this slab purpose-built for mounting my water filtration, my air conditioning equipment, and my generator.
On the whole, it was quite nice for everything to work out yesterday. This was the first real use of the generator; I had only completed my 'inlet' for the generator power a few weeks ago.
My only real surprise was how much 'extra' capacity the generator had; it had no issues with the starting current for the furnace blower motor. (As a rule of thumb, my 3-A motor would draw 18-A at start-up; the old motor drew double the power).
