You’ve planned all year long: Your tablescape is a perfect combination of golds, reds and oranges, straight off the pages of HGTV Magazine. Your turkey, in the oven since the crack of dawn, would make Martha Stewart jealous. You’ve got two dozen of your closest friends and family on their way in a few short hours. And, thanks to a storm, your power just went out.
Sure, it sounds like an evening-before-Thanksgiving-Day nightmare, but especially if you’re living outside the city, power outages can hit pretty regularly, and for a longer period of time at least once a year. And it’s hard to forget last Thanksgiving’s major power failure in Dutchess County, thanks to the area’s first nor’easter of the year, which left thousands without electricity – and on the big feasting day itself!
That’s when it helps to call in the reinforcements, care of a back-up generator installed by Malcarne Contracting. Think of it as insurance: You may only need it sporadically, but, when you do, you’re not sure how you would have made it otherwise.
Whether it’s the biggest feasting day of the year or a typical cold Hudson Valley winter evening, what do you do when there’s a power failure? If you rewind time just a few short decades, a power failure may have been just a minor inconvenience. But with today’s high-tech toys and gadgets – all needing to be charged all at once, at the most inopportune time, of course – the need to work from home, and chest freezers full of stocked-up necessities, it can be a crisis. Plus, add in the fact that you need to keep the house from plummeting to the same temperature as that chest freezer.
A back-up generator means there’s always sunshine, regardless of the weather. Malcarne can offer several options, including the standard portable generator unit that can be stored in a garage and taken out, turned on manually, and used when the need arises. With this kind of unit, it’s important to remember that it must be maintained and operated regularly, and the gas drained and refilled, to keep it functioning well, or it may not work correctly – or at all.
Your best bet? A whole-house backup generator. Set up with an ATS – an automatic transfer switch – this type of generator needs no upkeep or fuss. After the power goes out, there’s a 10-second lapse before the ATS turns on the generator, restoring power and peace-of-mind to your family’s home. Running on propane, a whole-house generator can have a storage capacity of up to a week.
Best of all, when the power returns, it automatically switches off after two minutes – meaning life as you know it never has to miss a beat. Malcarne fits the generator to your house’s size, and can install it quickly – before those nor’easters start rearing their ugly heads.
All in all, it’s a minor change that will mean a major difference, whether you’re hosting a holiday or need to keep your house running status quo regardless of what the weather guys say. And that’s certainly one more thing to give thanks for this year.