How To Pick, Power, And Safely Run A Home Generator

The storm hits, the lights die, and suddenly every decision you’ve made about backup power gets tested. We unpack a clear, common‑sense path to choosing the right generator, matching it to your actual loads, and running it safely without wasting money on features you don’t need. From quiet inverter units to heavy‑duty portables and whole‑home standby systems, we break down wattage math, surge demands, and the outlet types that matter when you’re trying to keep food cold, rooms lit, and your connection online.

We dig into fuels with real trade‑offs: why gasoline delivers the highest output, how propane stores cleanly but trims running watts, and when natural gas is a dream for short outages yet risky during long grid failures. You’ll hear practical runtime guidelines, simple fuel rotation habits, and honest pros and cons of tri‑fuel and dual‑fuel designs. We also cover the new wave of features—remote start, cold‑weather battery blankets, Bluetooth load monitoring—and explain which ones improve resilience and which are just shiny.

Safety sits at the center. Learn how to use transfer switches or interlocks to avoid deadly backfeeding, why 20 feet of distance and airflow are the rule for placement, and how to bring circuits up methodically to protect your gear. We even map the often‑forgotten chain for home internet—ISP power bricks, routers, and mesh nodes—so your Wi‑Fi survives an outage. If you’ve ever wondered how many watts you really need, which outlets to look for, or whether that 12,500 “peak” spec is fooling you, this walkthrough delivers clarity you can use before the next blackout.

If this helped you get outage‑ready without overspending, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a smarter plan, and leave a quick review with your top must‑run items during a power cut.

https://augasonfarms.com?sca_ref=9315862.VpHzogdDNu

Augason Farms
Support the podcast. Click on my affiliate link and use coupon code PODCASTPREP for 10% discount!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Milestones And Community Support
• 1:36 Why Update Generator Advice
• 2:08 New Features And Options
• 4:02 Calculating Wattage And Surge
• 6:06 Transfer Switches And Backfeed Risks
• 9:13 Carbon Monoxide And Noise Security
• 10:18 Apps, Smart Plugs, And Connectivity
• 13:37 Fuel Types, Runtime, And Storage
• 17:06 Reading Specs And Real Output
• 19:46 Whole‑Home Systems And Natural Gas Limits
• 22:51 Research Before You Buy And Deals
• 25:37 Closing And Affiliate Link

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

The National Libra Sunder Thunderstorm. To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Everybody, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, December the 6th, 2025. Couple administrative items at the front end. I want to thank everyone who placed an order through the August and Farms affiliate link in the month of November. The grand total that I will be donating to the Chesterfield Food Bank is$50. I rounded it up a little bit. So$50 will be going to the Chesterfield Food Bank. Thank you so much for your participation in that. Another milestone, the podcast recently hit 50,000 downloads. So again, thank you so much for stopping by and taking a few minutes out of your busy day, out of your busy lives, listening to me ramble on and on about prepping. Received several emails about the gray man episode, and I will get to those in my next mailbag episode, maybe the middle of this week coming up. All right, so what I want to talk about tonight is a couple years ago I did a podcast on generators. I called it Generators 101. And I believe it is either number two or number three as far as the number of downloads that it received. So I want to go ahead and do an update. And I was doing the research, there is a lot that has changed, and I was really quite surprised. Well, with technology, I really wasn't, but so surprised. So let's go into some of the updates and some of the things that I found out while doing my research. So what we'll do, we'll go over some of the fresh rules, some of the county ordinances that may or may not apply to you, some of the new whiz-bang features they've added to some of these generators, and then some of the safety precautions that we can use. So the types of generators really haven't changed that much, but their availability has. So tri-fuel generators, which is the generator that I have, is still ranked top of the type of generators, basically because it gives you several options on the fuel. So we'll go into that. So we have it runs on gas, propane, and natural gas. So you're not stuck just with one. So if one becomes scarce, too expensive, you have options. A new twist that a lot of these brands have added is a USB C port. Now, these things put out a lot of watts, like 5,000, 10,000, 12,000. To be on a safe side, I'm not sure if I would trust a USB-C plugged into a generator. Now, granted, it's stepped down, you know, several times, so it's not gonna explode in your hand once you plug in your phone. But you know, do we really need a USB-C on our generator? To me, that's just another wire, another gadget that could go bad and perhaps cause a malfunction somewhere. Remember, we're gonna have our power banks charged, so I really don't think I'm gonna be plugging my iPhone directly into my generator, but it's available. They also have battery warm-up blankets, so in very cold climates, you can have a blanket that runs like 12 watts. It runs very low power over the generator, in case it's outside and not in your garage, to help it start a little quicker and a little easier, and it's not such a drain on the battery. They have auto start, they have they start with key fobs, they have apps. So we'll go into a few of these things here in just a second. So if you're budget conscious, what you want to look for is like an inverter, a generator inverter. Now they're relatively inexpensive, but they are kind of limited on what they can do. Decibel-wise, 40, 50, 60 decibels. Again, they're probably some of the more quieter types of generators. So it really just depends on what you need. All right, so let's talk about wattage. So, probably the most important thing when it comes to a generator is the wattage. How much do you need? Right underneath wattage is how you're gonna fuel. So, number one is wattage, number two, in my opinion, will probably be the type of fuel and how you're going to run your particular generator. So, when it comes to your dual fuel and your tri-fuel generators, we have to remember about the wattage splits. So, we'll start from the beginning and talk about how much power you might need. So, a standard household fridge in the United States is about 500 watts running and about 1400 watts in the surge. And what I mean by surge, it's when you first turn it on. It's going to get that first blast of electricity, high wattage to get it started, and then it's going to step down and then it's going to, it's like when you start your car in the cold, 2000 RPMs or whatever it happens to be. And then as the car warms up, the RPMs drop down to 400, 500. Cars and trucks are all different, just depends on what you have. Microwaves, 1200 running, 1600 surge, shop lights, LED, maybe 6 watts, maybe 10 watts. But remember, if you're going to plug your appliances or your lights into a power strip, you need to take that into consideration as well. Maybe 15 watts, up to 30 watts, depending on the size of the power strip. So here's a rule of thumb: add up everything that you have if you're running it all at once, which if you if you need to do that, that's fine. But most people just with a backup generator don't run their entire home, but that's a possibility. So go ahead and add everything up and then add 20% as just a little bit of buffer so you're not popping breakers. Hooking up your generator. Extension cords still work. Some cities or counties require a transfer switch if it's over 2,500 watts. Install for a transfer switch could be between 200 and$500. It just depends on where you're located and then who you hire. If you yourself are a good electrician or a good DIY electrician, you can save yourself quite a bit of money. Very, very important when you're using a transfer switch to tie into your main panel. So a transfer switch, very simple terms. You have your generator sitting over here and you have your main panel to your house. You can put in a transfer switch. So when the power goes out, you can go outside, turn on your generator, and then it starts powering whatever you have it plugged into in the main panel. So for the sake of conversation, we have a 10,000 watt generator in the garage. It's hooked up to our main panel. The power goes out, everything goes dark, everything stops. You go out, you can flip the transfer switch on your main panel, which basically says, okay, power coming from my generator. You flip all your breakers off, you flip on the generator, the generator starts running, and then you go back to your panel and you start clicking the breakers that you want. If you have a whole home generator, that's a no-brainer, but I don't. So I would go, I'd keep the AC off, I'd keep the furnace off, and I would go, okay, I want the kitchen lights, I want the fridge, I want the freezer, I want the microwave, a couple things in the back of the house to be powered. So I'm basically telling it what I want to power. The great thing is that it's very simple to use, relatively speaking, but you need to be very, very careful in that if you don't know what you're doing when you're hooking up a generator to your home panel, get a professional because you do not want to back feed the grid. So basically, you need to isolate your generator from the grid. Because if you don't, you flip on that generator, electricity is not only going to your house, it's going back into the panel and back down the power lines. And we don't want to injure or kill the linemen two or three blocks away that are up in the bucket truck trying to repair the lines of the transformer. That is very dangerous. That's why some cities and counties require an electrician to come in and put in the transfer switch and make sure everything's wired up correctly. And then sometimes the county or the city will send somebody out to inspect that work just to make sure. You would be surprised on the number of people that want to save a few bucks. They end up backfitting the grid and somebody gets hurt or killed down the line. So be very careful. I have a very healthy respect for electricity. I was electrocuted when I was in college, and as I think about it, I just get chills because it is it's one of the worst feelings that I've experienced so far, and I don't want to experience that again. And I certainly wouldn't want someone trying to save a few bucks and end up hurting or killing a lineman. Okay, a safety update. So carbon monoxide deaths when it comes to generators have doubled in the last 18 months. The rule of thumb is set your generator outside at least 20 feet from any door or any window or any intake vent. Do not put it in an enclosed garage. If you do, the garage door needs to be open and you need to have plenty of ventilation. Do not run your generator inside your home. I'll say it again. Under no circumstances should you run a generator inside your home. In an SHTF situation, the sound of a generator is basically saying, Hey everybody, I've got power. Come see what I've got. Come steal my generator. I've got power, you don't. So there are all sorts of tricks and tips. There's little generator sheds. Some people will build their own sheds, some people will buy the commercial sheds, some people will put them far away from their house, some people will chain them to their deck. But just be very careful when it comes to situations like that. Also in 2025, smart load apps. So this takes a lot of the guesswork out of what do I want to turn on and how much power is it pulling. So some of these inverters and generators now pair with your Bluetooth app. Well, what a shocker! There's an app for that, and you can pair your generator to your phone via Bluetooth. No Wi-Fi, because if the power goes out, your Wi-Fi goes out unless you have everything wired and powered to have your internet working as well. So I have Verizon, I have fiber optic. So the fiber optic comes off the pole, comes into the house, and it comes into a for the lack of a better term, I'll just call it like a power brick that's installed in my laundry room. From there, power is under the house, up through the floor, into the wireless gateway, and all that good stuff. So the thing about that is if I want to power my router during a power outage, that's great, but I also have to power the power brick that's in my laundry room. Now, assuming there's no cut to the fiber optic, the lines have not been taken down because of ice or snow or an accident where a car hit the power line. But remember, the power brick in my case, and then the router itself. I've got Starlink. So if I don't want to do the power brick, I use my Starlink just as an emergency backup, and I'm good to go. So with these apps, so you can have everything running. You can have apps, you can have smart plugs. I have a few smart plugs and it's plugged into my Echo devices or my Alexa. So I can say, now she's probably listening now, so I'm probably going to turn something on. I can say, Alexa, turn on the whatever. I don't have anything called the whatever, so she hasn't said anything back to me. Or Alexa, turn off the whatever. So with the smart plug, this oh, now she's shooting now. She doesn't know what I'm talking about. Thanks, Alexa. That's fine. So with the smart plug, it's plugged into the wall, and then the let's say the light. The light is then plugged into the smart plug. So if you have that part of the house powered, you can have the power going. So instead of having to get up and flip on the light, you can have it in the smart plug. You go to your app and it's called living room, Christmas tree, internet, and you can just say, whoever you have, Google, Siri, Alexa, turn on the light. Turn on the Christmas tree and it comes on. Yes, yes, Alexa. Thank you. So, and then it turns on and it turns off. That saves you from having to get up and turn the device on or off. Again, convenience, but again, technology and something can always go wrong. So let's talk about fuel. We've talked about wattage. Well, let's talk about fuel and let's talk about the generators and the different type of wattage parameters or guidelines that these have. So let's take a 5,000 watt, a 5 kilowatt tri-fuel generator running at about half load. Again, it's only going to pull the amount of power that it needs. So if you have a 10,000 watt running generator, it's only going to pull what it needs: 2,000, 3,000, 5,000. So this 5 kilowatt tri-fuel running at half load for gasoline, about 1.8 gallons per hour, about 1.6 gallons of propane, and 0.25 cubic feet per minute of natural gas. I have no idea what that looks like. So a quarter of a cubic foot, I can kind of I can kind of picture that in my head, but if it's not gallons or liters or pounds or inches, I have a hard time visualizing that. So let's talk about the fuel, the different types of fuel, and what they do. So a standard 20-pound propane tank gives you about 12 hours, 20 gallons of gas, about eight hours. Again, it depends on what you're running and how long you're running it for. Most folks forget about the running time and then the wattage. So make sure you do the math ahead of time. It makes sense because if you're going through your house and you're saying, in the summer, I want to power X, Y, and Z in the event of a power outage, or in the winter I want to run X, Y, and Z through my generator, then you need, like I said before, gather up all the wattage as if everything is on at the same time, add 20% as a buffer, and then that's what you need. Again, don't forget about the surge. And if you have a trifuel generator and you have all three gas, propane and natural gas, go ahead and try it on all three. Rotate. If you want to use propane one time, you want to use gas a second time, always use what's available to you. Now, when it comes to the long-term storage of gasoline, every three months, every six months, make sure you use that. So if you have a five, 10 or 20 gallons of gas on standby and it's coming up on three months or nine months, however long you're comfortable storing your gasoline, throw it in your car, throw it in your truck, and then after work, go ahead and fill them back up and set those back in your garage. So if you're planning to run a 9,000 watt load, propane and natural gas probably won't cut it for an extended period of time. So gasoline is going to be best in that situation. Your five-gallon jerry cans of gasoline, they're very easy to store. With the propane, when you hook it up to the propane tank, now they have the 100-pound tanks, the 20-pound tanks. Again, it just depends on how much you think you're going to need. If you live in a part of the country, you live in the part of the world that gets a lot of snow, a lot of really bad winter storms, and you want to run on propane, you might want to consider the larger 100-pound tanks. You could have two or three of the 20 pounds, you hook them up to your grill anyway. And a lot of these generators have little quick releases. Again, they've really come a long way as far as efficiency and some of the availabilities. So let's talk about some of the wattages. So what I did, I went to Amazon real quick, and let me throw just a couple prices out here. So here is a Duramax 13,000, and it's a dual fuel, 13,000 watt dual fuel generator. So here's a Westinghouse 12,500. It's also a dual fuel generator. It's already plugged in, it has the wires for the transfer switch, it has the app, it has the USB. So here's the thing when looking at this, you say you see it on you're like, oh, 12,500. Oh, 13,000. That's exactly what I need. But if it's a tri-fuel or if it's a dual fuel, make sure you go down and read the fine print and see exactly what it can do. So with that 13,000 watt generator, its starting wattage is 13,000. It runs on gasoline, it runs at 10,500. So once you turn it on, 10,500 is all you're gonna get out of that. So again, take into consideration the surge of some of the larger appliances that you're going to plug in. They have a few things. One is called a gen tent or a generator tent. It's a cute little gadget, it's flame retardant, heat resistant, and it's basically a little waterproof hat or a waterproof umbrella that you can put over the generator. Yeah, it's kind of neat. And if you're not worried about somebody stealing it, then that is certainly an option. If you don't have it in a little shed, again, that's another option. So here is another one that I looked at that was really kind of interesting. So let's go back to the Westinghouse 12,500. So the 12.5 kilowatt generator, it runs on, so it's a dual fuel. It runs on gas and propane. So it's 9,500 running watts and 12,500 peak or surge on gasoline. With propane, its running is 8,500. So 1,000 watts less than when it runs on gas. So the propane max for the running is 11,200. So it needs 11,200 to start its own little surge and then 8,500 on propane. So 1,000 watts is quite a bit. So again, if you have the propane and you don't have a big load that you want to run, running it on propane might be perfect. This one has a remote start, a 12 volt battery charger, and it has a little bundle. It has the key fob, the extra oil filter, it has a quick connect for the liquid propane. So, all in all, a pretty nice looking looking generator. But again, they are all over the place when it comes to prices. I've seen them at Costco, relatively inexpensive. They were actually less expensive than they were on Amazon, depending on the sale. Let me flip through a couple more here. So when WEN, it's a very good brand. It's an off-brand, but I have several other power tools and they work well for me. So they have an 11,000 watt and it runs 120 or 240, which is kind of important. It depends on what you want to plug into it. Now, when you look at some of these generators, make sure you're paying attention to, I guess, the panel on what you can plug in. Now, some of these will have like an RV plug. I call it like a 50 amp plug, a 30 amp plug. Some of them will have four or five just regular household plugs. Some will be grounded, some won't. Again, if you're going to get a power strip, spend the extra money and get you a very robust power strip with its own breaker. So in case something happens, it trips the breaker on the power. Record and you don't hurt the device or you don't hurt the generator. So looking at some of the stats on this when 11,000 or 11K. So 11,000 surge on gas, 8,300 running, propane, 9,500 surge, 7,500 running. So that's even less than what we spoke about before. It switches between 120 and 240 automatically, electric start. It's got a key fob, six and a half gallon gas tank, and it says six and a half gallons provides up to 8.5 hours of half-load runtime. So that's what they say. Again, individual mileage may vary. So this one has four 120 volt GFCI outlets, one 120 30 amp twist lock, which I call like an RV plug, a 12240 50 amp outlet, a cigarette lighter plug. It's got a couple USBs, very important. Again, a million different variations out there. So take the time and do the research and figure out what is going to work for you. So again, never run it inside. Take the time, do the research. I know it seems kind of nitpicky, but when it comes down to ooh, a 13,000 or a 14,000 or they make 16,000, these things are monsters. Now a 16,000 watt generator probably, unless you live in a McMansion, will probably work as a whole home generator. But if it's going to run your heat, gonna run your AC in the summer, it's 240, that's high voltage, and just make sure it has the capacity. You have the ability to plug it into the transfer switch, into the main panel. Some of these, when you get them wired correctly, they have a type of feature that when the power goes out, it is so quick to start and turn on that you won't notice it. And if you do, it'll be just for a very brief second. These Generac whole home generators, they say that they are so quick to power up that you'll never know that the lights went out. The lights won't flicker, you won't lose internet connectivity. If you're on your desktop at the time and the power goes out, they say it'll kick on quick enough that it won't blip, you won't lose your connection, and it's just like nothing ever happened. Again, that's one of the features that they tout, and apparently it works. So a lot of people completely hands off, they just want it to come on and just do its thing. A lot of people have these whole home generators and they're actually tied in to the natural gas line. So they don't have to worry about a tank. Power goes out, generator comes on, and they don't have to worry about necessarily the load or how much fuel. Oh, I have to go out in the yard, I need to check the tank. I forgot how full that was the tank half full, was it three-quarters full before the power outage? Oh, the gas, oh, do I have 10 gallons left? What about that? No, I mowed the lawn last week, so I probably used two or three gallons. If you're hardwired into the grid, in this case, natural gas, that's something you don't have to worry about. But if you flip over to an SHTF situation, do you really want to be dependent on the city or the county and their natural gas? Eventually, the infrastructure, the pumps, and all the gadgets and computers that get that natural gas to your generator are going to fail. So if that is your only means of backup power and it's nice and cold outside and the power goes out, that's great. You're nice and toasty, and nobody's the wiser SHTF situation, you're gonna have a different story. Whether it, whether the grid goes down in two days, five days, it will fail eventually. The computers will go down, the pumps will go down, and so will your supply of natural gas. Again, it's all what you want, it's all the different applications you can have. They're very, very useful. So be very careful. They can be very dangerous. Do your research. The last thing I want you to do, and again, I'm not an electrician by any stretch, the last thing I would want somebody to do is to run out and get a generator, they bring it home, and then they quickly realize three weeks later or three months later when they need it, it doesn't pull enough watts for what they need. Now, could you probably take it back and return it to Home Depot or Amazon? Sure, absolutely. But do you really want the hassle of dragging that two or three hundred-pound unit? Now they're on wheels, most of them, dragging that unit all the way back to the UPS store or wherever you need to return it. If you had just done a little more research ahead of time, you can save yourself that headache. Costco, Sam's Club, BJs, all of these places, Home Depot, all the big box stores have sales. A lot of them have really good prices right now. And then once spring hits, like, oh, be safe from the summer storms, here's our generator sale this time of year. Be safe from all the winter storms, here's our generator sale. So they're out there, tons of different options. Just take a few minutes and go ahead and do your research, and you'll be a lot better off for it in the end. All right, folks, thanks for stopping by and listening. Thanks again for the folks that participated and purchased items through the August and Farms affiliate link. I will stick the affiliate link in the show notes, and there'll probably be a commercial somewhere in this podcast letting you know the details about that affiliate link. All right, folks, I hope everybody's having a good, safe weekend. I'll talk to you very soon. And as always, be safe out there, take care of one another, and until next time.