That Time We Talked About Top 3 Hurricane Preparedness Needs

This is episode number 106 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're glad that you could join us, unless you're from Kenosha and your city's on fire and probably not doing so well right now. Everybody else seems to be doing okay, though.

There is a lot of craziness going on in the world that we live in today. In fact, my brother-in-law, who is a firefighter, they— oh, that was fun.

I didn't turn the boopity boop off again. There you go, everybody.

Yep, there it is. And it just keeps going.

It does. It feels like forever.

Yes, it's like a bad headache. It just lingers.

Yep.

Anyway, he's a firefighter up in kind of the West Texas area, And a couple nights ago, they had like 9 fires that broke out from lightning. So, I mean, just really great. Yeah, crazy stuff. And that's the same night that my brother who lives up in Amarillo, they had an inch and a half of rain, and then it was so dry a little bit.

Sounds like they could have just traded.

It would have been better. So anyway, crazy things happening in the world.

Yeah, man. Well, I think by the time this, this episode comes out, I mean, like, hopefully the, the stuff in Kenosha will have you know, calm down.

I hope so.

A little bit. So, um, man, like, it, it just seems like when you think 2020's got nothing left to give you, it's got a little something left in the tank.

Ah, dude, it is. I've said this before, like, this is gonna be the year that people look back on for hundreds and hundreds of years, for sure. I mean, it This year is never going away.

No. There's going to be books on books. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is what it is.

While all of us will try and forget it, they'll keep writing the books about it.

Yeah. I often wonder, what did I do to have to live in this time? I'll tell you, I think it's one of the greatest time periods ever. The innovation and the way the world is moving is is really, really cool. But yeah, um, man, this year sucks.

Well, like, I'm— one of the things I want to ask people from time to time is like, when they talk about how crazy like 2020 is, which I think it is, it's crazy. Like, what was crazier, 2020 or 9/11?

Hmm.

I mean, because like we were all still living in 9/11 for like 2 years afterwards, uh, from, from some of the stuff that like our government decided to do and, and some policies that, that came down the pike. And we're still existing under some of those today.

Yeah.

So like, and, and this may not be an answerable question for like another 20 years, but like, if you look into the crystal ball and you were to say which one was crazier, 9/11, 2020, that's a tough one. Yeah.

No, because I don't think we can answer that question yet because I think there's a lot of things that happened as a result of 9/11. Like, even, even like airport protocol, just the way security looks, so many things. I don't know that we're going to fully know until we've got over the hump of whatever coronavirus is, and the cure for it, or at least how we manage it, and figure out what that looks like. I think it's going to take years.

Yeah, but it's also a really easy question when you bump it up against other things. When you say, Like, is what's crazier, 2020 or Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy assassination? Like, people are gonna go 2020.

Yeah.

One, because they're living in it right now and it's just ridiculous.

Yeah.

But like, two, it's like you look back and it's like, well, that was bad then, but it wasn't that bad, right?

And did it really last and last and to, to where there's like no end in sight?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I mean, we're kind of looking at this going, okay, we have no idea when or if this is actually going to end.

It was bad, but we got over it.

Yeah, we're currently trying to live through it, and people have different ways of doing that. I'll tell you one of the ways that I'm living through it is I continue to find things around my house that need to be fixed.

Yeah, I think that's everybody right now. They're stuck in their home, they're going to find everything wrong with it.

Yeah, and it's just one of those deals where it's like, look, I'm here more often than I should be. now that the world's kind of opened up again.

Yeah.

In a lot of ways, uh, but now I've got to teach my kids from home, at least for a time period. And so now I'm still home more than I normally would be, and I noticed that I've got like this brown spot in my yard. And I was like, that is not normal, uh, although we have not gotten near the amount of rain It's been pretty dry this year. Yeah, it's been drier than normal, I would say. So I started looking at it and I went, I think that my sprinkler is just not hitting that area. So I turned it on, which, you know, we— I think we've talked about, we've reviewed the Rachio smart controller

before.

Right.

And so I'm holding my phone, turn it on, and I noticed sure enough, like there's this little spot that my sprinkler isn't hitting. And so I was like, that's weird. And so I go over and I'm kind of looking at the, uh, the sprinkler heads and I noticed one of them looks like it's bubbling.

That's not good.

So I decided to get my hands dirty, dig up— dig the thing up. And those of you that, that may— or maybe you have a sprinkler system, you don't really do much with it, or maybe you've never had one— sprinkler systems are really pretty easy to work on, but they're a pain in the neck.

Yeah.

Because, uh, you know, you're digging things up and you gotta— you know, a lot of times if, if it is bubbling like that, you got water and you gotta figure out how to get the water out. This muddy water, it's just a— it becomes a mess.

Yeah.

And it always takes longer than you think it's going to to fix it. And you go, you go to the box store or wherever you go to get the supplies you need, you come home, you're like, that's not what I actually need. So you got to go back and get something else. Well, that happened to me a couple of times actually, uh, but luckily the only thing that was bad was the riser. So, you know, you got the, you got the pipe underneath and you get a riser and then you put the sprinkler head on top of it, and the riser had a crack in it. And that's what was— thankfully, that was the only issue. So went to Home Depot, I got the riser that I needed. I come back and I

decided while I was there, you know, I've heard that there's a new type of sprinkler head out there that would do better than what I was using, was just a pop-up misting. Um, so it fanned out in kind of a 180 degrees, right? Okay, so I found these new sprinkler heads and they're called a rotary spray head.

Okay.

And it does what you think it does. Like, whenever it says rotary, it, it rotates.

Okay.

But it's not like a typical, um, sprinkler that just kind of starts at one side and rotates and, you know, sprays out one nozzle, then comes back. It's not that. It's a continuous spray that rotates around and they're individual streams. So it's like this nozzle has holes all through it, and it not only sprays in every direction, but it sprays at different heights.

Okay.

Okay, so it'll get, you know, the grass that's real close to the sprinkler head and grass that's far away, and you can adjust how far out it goes, and you can also adjust the radius. But it's really bizarre to look at. Like, if you've never looked at one, you need to go on YouTube or something and, and Google rotary spray, um, spray head for, for a sprinkler system. And the rotary nozzle is— it's crazy, but it supposedly saves water.

Oh, okay.

And since it's, it's not just a mist, it sprays in a direction, it also works in windy conditions.

So You get a lot of drift.

No, it doesn't. And so one of the really cool things is in my Rachio app, you can— since it's water saving, it actually says it takes longer to water than, like, almost twice as long. It's still saving water, but because it's spraying out individually rather than just all at once, it just takes longer to put the water on the ground. And so In my Rachio app, I have the ability to select 3 different types of nozzles, and one of them is the rotary. So it knows to push a little more water there to do it longer, probably. So interesting. I fixed it, it works great.

And, uh, so is, is, is rotary— is, is it a head? Is that what it is?

It's a nozzle.

Nozzle. Yeah. So a rotary nozzle is something that, that people should be looking into for their, for their Sprinkler systems.

Yeah, I think it all depends on on kind of the the area that you're using it in and how many sprinkler heads you've got. Like how it's designed. If you've got a design that has like multiple heads all the way throughout the the yard, then then yeah, I would really use those. If you've got them mainly on the perimeter and you know they're spraying in a you know back and forth motion or you know one of those old you know I'm talking about one of those types of things.

Like I love those.

Yeah, they're very satisfying. Oh, they, they're so satisfying. Uh, it's even better, like, we had a dog that loved to chase it, and so it's like he'd like jump every time it— it was— he would do it for hours. Uh, but anyway, they— I, I think that if you've got the type of nozzle that, that kind of goes in 100 or 360 degrees all the way around, that type of thing.

Yeah.

They're, they're more expensive But I—they're supposed to save water, so I think it's something to look into. Yeah, cool, man. So what else we got going on? Well, good question. I want to do a shout out to our friend Lauren Fox. Yeah, this guy is incredible. So we—we kind of showed you the coaster from last week. Yeah, but we got the product. Da da da. Yeah, here it is. If you're—if you're not watching on YouTube, you need to go to YouTube. Check this out, man. Like, this is a piece of wood, probably about a quarter inch thick. And he did this with a laser.

That's what he said. He said he did it by hand.

I mean, I'm going to— I'm going to trust him and believe that he did it. But it's spot on, man. It's— it's amazing how good it looks. So go to YouTube if you are not already subscribed. Subscribe to our YouTube. You'll get notifications whenever we push stuff out. But go look at that thing. He's got an Etsy store.

He does. Yeah, we're gonna link that up, um, and be on the lookout for that sign in future episodes if you're watching on YouTube, 'cause I'm gonna put it on the wall right over the chair.

Right over there.

Um, and it'll be displayed proudly here in the studio.

Yeah.

Um, that, that may actually be like one of the things that people end up getting their picture made by, as well as the massive logo, the one, the, the 7-footer, whatever it's called.

I don't know. It's, it's a massive wheel. That's right. It's what it is. It's awesome. So yeah, it's a really cool— that's a really cool piece of art, especially if you're— if you've got like any kind of logo or business that you're, you know, trying to promote. Like, man, it was, it was pretty affordable too.

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, like, he, he made one for my other business too. And for that one, uh, the other one that he made me, he actually made like a little stand for it to sit on. And so like, it's actually up on a shelf in my office. Cool. Um, it's awesome. Well, it's not actually— I think someone took it out of my office because they wanted it Nice, nice. It's sitting in someone else's office who's actually in the office more than I'm in the office. There you go. So cool. I'm not an office guy. Well, no, I have an office. You're in the field, not in the office ever. No. So, but c'est la vie, c'est la vie.

Well, we've got a really, really fun episode.

Yeah, we haven't done a top 3 in a while.

No, it's been a while, and, uh, this one is kind of, um, timely. It, it's timely. It was born out of tragic situations a little bit. Um, but we're gonna do top 3. What's it gonna be about?

We're gonna do a top 3 of the— your, your top 3 hurricane resources, I guess it would probably be the— or your hurricane items.

Yeah, like post-hurricane items. I guess like the must-have things in the event of a hurricane.

Yeah, and after that goes through, What are you gonna have? What are the top 3 things you need to have?

Yeah.

'Cause we here in Texas just, well, I mean, like, we, by the hair of our chinny chin chin, missed 2, well, like, I guess 1 tropical storm and 1, I guess, did it get to category 5? I know it got to category 4.

I don't know if it ever got cat 5. I don't remember it getting to 5. I think it stayed at cat 4.

Was that Laura? Yeah, so we had Marco and Laura, right?

Yeah, we had— well, we had Marco first, right? Uh, no, no, no, we had, uh, we had Laura first because it's alphabetically so, right?

Well, I don't know that that means that they hit—

No, but it formed first.

Formed first.

Laura formed first, and then, and then Marco came, and we had a lot of people wanting to petition Laura to be renamed to Polo.

Ah, yes. Which is kind of funny. Should have been.

Should have been. Uh, but yes, it was Laura, and Marco just kind of disappeared.

Yeah.

It was kind of like, eh, Marco.

I don't know what he ended up doing, but I don't know, I'm sure he bothered somebody.

Fizzled out, I guess.

So, but anyway, Laura was supposed to— was it— I mean, it did hit the Gulf Coast. It just kind of went up the, the far east end of Texas and the far west end of Louisiana. Yep. Um, did quite a bit of damage. I mean, it was a big storm. And not to, not to downplay it at all, but like, um, it did not directly hit us. However, uh, you got to enjoy some of the aftermath of Laura.

Yeah, it was, it was really bizarre because we were, we were very fortunate. Um, you know, a lot of people were like, oh, it's gonna be another Harvey, but then we realized that it was not gonna be another Harvey exactly because we weren't gonna get the dirty side of it, uh, like we did with Harvey, but Um, we still were expecting to get the brunt of, of some of it, and we didn't. So we're very fortunate.

However, we had like one band of rain come through. I mean, it was nothing.

Yeah. And yeah, that was— it was weird because it lasted for like 5 or 10 minutes. It was, it was a super small thing. Um, now our friends to the east, they got hit hard.

They got some rain.

They got, they got hit hard. And, uh, so our prayers go out to them, but What was weird is later that day—

Was it that day or was it the day after?

It was kind of the day after.

Okay.

Um, we lost power for like 7 hours.

Yeah.

We lost power. And so it's weird because I— this is during the time that I was fixing my sprinkler. And so I had gone to— actually, I went to Lowe's. I would not go to Home Depot. I went to Lowe's. And I bought what I needed, come back, I'm working on it, and I tell my wife, I'm like, look, I didn't get what I needed, I gotta go back. So I went back, and but before I did, I had heard that there were power outages in Conroe. So I, I actually called Lowe's, I was like, are y'all open? They said, yeah, we're on generator power, um, but, but we're open. And I was like, all right. So I went back, got what I needed,

came home, and I had actually been texting one, one of our friends, um, uh, and I said, hey, listen, like We have power, and if y'all need a place to stay, like, we can probably— you come over to our house, whatever.

Yeah.

And so we were talking about that, and I'm out there changing my, my sprinkler heads, and all of a sudden, 3 neighbors from across the street come out, come out of their house, and, uh, they're like, y'all okay over there? And I was like, I'm just changing a sprinkler. Like, yeah, we're fine. And he was like, oh, do y'all have power? I was like, yeah, I mean, I think so. And we did. Well, what's weird is my street, there's like a line of demarcation down it. Either we have power or our neighbors don't. It's kind of the opposite. Well, then about 5 minutes later, our power went out and it lasted for like 7 hours. And

so yeah, it was fun.

All the fun of the post-hurricane without any of the actual fun of the real hurricane.

Yeah, and so like, I remember calling you and you're like, we have power. Like, as weird as my house is, we normally don't lose power. Yeah, well.

Which I mean, for those of you that don't know me and Kevin, I mean, we live like what, 2 miles apart?

It's pretty close.

I mean, yeah. I mean, so like it was really weird that you didn't have power and I did. And what we ended up figuring out is we just have different companies.

Different energy, yeah, different companies. So yeah, so it—

One for the weird house.

Yeah, it kind of, kind of led us to this, to this place of like, what are the top 3 things you want to have, um, during a hurricane situation? Maybe, you know, not specifically a power outage, but a lot of times that ends up being the situation.

It does.

Yeah, it comes with it. So we got this top 3, right? And it's hard because I told you before, you could do like 29 or 29.

Yeah, I could do it. I could do quite an extensive list. Yeah. So I tried to, because I mean, like, I can, I can go pretty dark pretty quick. And I tried to, I tried to keep it pretty light. Okay. For like, you know, what would, what would actually be practical? Yeah. Because sometimes what Craig would have is not necessarily what's best for the entire family.

Yeah. No, I, I'm, I'm with you on that because specifically one of mine on my list is, is one that I could do without.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

But, but my— I don't think my family could.

There you go. All right, so do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first?

I'll go first. And, you know, uh, in full disclosure, we have not revealed each other's lists.

Yeah, we haven't seen each other's lists.

These could be the same.

Well, okay. They could, theoretically. Theoretically.

Theoretically, they could be. All right, my number 1, candles.

Wait, so are you going 3, 2, 1?

Number 3. So my first one I'm gonna talk about, No, number 3 is a candle. Got it.

OK, a candle.

Candles. Multiple candles in multiple places of the house.

Alright.

Because I've got children, and my wife really does not do well with total darkness. I think we talked about that on the sleep episode a little bit. She just doesn't really like being in total darkness. We're going to have to have some candles in the house to be able to light a path, if nothing else. We have a whole cabinet There's just candles.

Just nothing but candles.

Nothing but candles.

Man, here's, here's my issue with candles in like a, like a power outage. Like inevitably you're heating the house up.

Oh, you are.

And man, I will do everything in my power to keep from heating the house up. Like I'm with you. Like I need light. I need to be able to see.

Um, the, the only, the only benefit is that those only come on whenever it's dark. Right. And so, you know, hopefully temperatures are dropping a little bit, although I'll tell you this, we're recording this late. And when I was heading to your house, it was 90 degrees.

Yeah.

And so this time of year, it just doesn't cool off. Brutal. Yeah. So, you know, I— yes, that, that is the case. Now, if you're actually in the midst of a hurricane and it's raining, the likelihood of it being 90 degrees in the middle of the night is—

Yeah, that's pretty low.

Unlikely.

The temperature does drop pretty significantly.

Right.

So, okay, I like it.

That's mine.

All right, number 3 for me, wind-up radio.

Oh yeah.

So I actually have like a fancy Red Cross version of one of these that I take out from time to time. And like they have multiple bands, not just FM/AM either, and can actually, you know, in theory charge other devices and things like that. Super, super handy in a bad situation like that. Most people don't know that like most certain radios take stations operate off generators, right, and, and still broadcast. Yep. Um, and so you're able to get good information. It's one of the few things that radio stations are actually still good for. Yeah, music isn't one of them. Nope. But, you know, weather updates and news and, and, you know, shelters and different things like that— really, really good information. Yeah.

So, well, and, and a lot of those have like multiple things on them. Yes. Right. They're like—

it does have a flashlight option on it and all those other things, but you know, really the main thing is, is the radio. Sure.

Yeah. And, you know, thankfully through Harvey we never lost power, um, but if you don't have power and you don't know what's going on, yeah, that's a, that's a big problem. Yeah. Now one of the things I will say is that, you know, we recently had a couple episodes with Tacus, the internet company, and they have generators hooked up to their primary lines in the neighborhood to push their signal. Oh, even if power goes out.

That's cool.

Which is really cool. Um, unfortunately, in my neighborhood, someone had vandalized it and was not working. Um, yeah, that's a whole new— whole nother thing.

But, um, I need to find these guys.

No, absolutely. But I, I told my wife, I was like, well, if you don't have power, then you really have to have the modem working in order to, to be able to, to get the internet to come through. So you kind of have to have some sort of power anyway, you know? Right. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, maybe—

I mean, maybe they put battery backups in their modems that they put in your home or something.

Well, they don't, but I'm assuming you could put a battery backup to it.

A UPS or something like that?

Yeah. And, and But my point in that is that if you can get Wi-Fi, if you can get internet, then your need for a radio would be less.

Oh, sure.

But in extreme situations, and like us, I mean, we didn't have internet or power, either one, because it had been vandalized. So it doesn't really matter.

Thanks, vandals.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

All right, man, what's your number 2?

Number 2. Non-perishable food.

Okay.

Yeah.

Straight for the stomach.

Oh man, I, I mean, it's one of those deals where I, if the power goes out at my house, so this happened the other day, right? The first thing I did was I went and got a ribbon and I tied the door handles closed on the refrigerator.

Yeah.

Because I'm not opening the refrigerator. Um, now that's going to come into play here in a minute, but I— for me, having, you know, just cans of food, crackers, um, those types of things around, bread, you know, peanut butter, Spam. Hey, I'll eat Spam. I will.

Hey, if you get hungry enough, Spam starts looking real good.

Absolutely it does. Hey, and you get some like like, you know, Cheez Whiz, a little Spam, some crackers. Hey, you're good.

Yeah.

So for me, I just want— I just want enough food to get me through the power outage.

Yeah.

You know, because here's the problem. So the other day when power went out, we actually got out of town. We got in our vehicle, we started headed toward my mother-in-law's house. On the way there, we noticed the fast food lines of those places that still had power or had a generator were wrapped around the building.

Yeah.

When we came back, because we didn't stay gone, we actually turned around and came home, um, the restaurants, you couldn't find a place to park. And I'm not just talking about parking spaces, and people were parked everywhere— on the grass, off the curb, on the streets. They were parked Everywhere because people weren't expecting not to have power and they needed food. Yeah. And they weren't going to open their refrigerator, and even if they did, they couldn't cook it. Yeah, they didn't let— I mean, most people around where I am, at least, they're not running natural gas stoves and stuff. And so again, you're heating up your house whenever you do that kind of thing. So they went out to eat. So I want food at my house. Yeah. So that's my number 2.

All right.

What's yours?

My number 2 is matches. Oh, okay. So I'm a big believer. Yeah. Like, well, and, and so like, to the point that you were just making, like everything in my house is pretty much natural gas. Yeah. So even, even when the power goes out, we tend to still have hot water. Sure. We can still cook food, but a lot of those things are electrically ignited. Mm-hmm. And, uh, matches are key. And then we all, you know, we also have like like the barbecue pit and all those kinds of things, right? And so, you know, and then, you know, if I had any candles, I'd need a way to light them. Yeah. Um, and I, I guess I say matches, and I think

what falls underneath that category would probably be like a lighter. A lighter, sure. Um, I'm just— I'm a big— I'm a big believer in keeping stashes of matches around because, I mean, they're portable, they're durable, they last a long time. Yeah. I mean, their shelf life is I don't know, I mean, forever pretty much. Yeah. Um, so I keep, I keep batches of them around anyway. Yeah. Um, just for such situations.

Sure.

Um, so yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's something I can throw in a backpack, something I can keep on a shelf, something, and, and like I'm gonna have multiple uses for it. Yeah. You know, and, and so like even if I didn't want to heat the house up, I could go outside and light up the barbecue grill. I could go light up the fire pit, you know, to create light. All kinds of different uses for those, for those matches.

Yeah. So, well, and you know, we've even got a, uh, uh, a lantern, you know, even something like that. Like my wife was saying, hey, is our lantern at— in the camper? Is it home? Right, it's in the camper. But you know, we could have gone and gotten it. Yeah. Um, so yeah, no, tons of uses for, for matches.

Oh yeah. And like, if— I mean, like if you have camping equipment, a lot of people have like those butane— yep, you know, stoves and different things like that that you you know, need a lighter or a match, right, to get it going, right? So, um, yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of the match.

Yes. So that's good. All right, you ready for my number 1?

I'm ready.

All right, so this is something that we don't have, mm-hmm, that I have already figured out what I'm gonna do to get it.

Okay.

A generator. All right.

Um, well, let me just pull this Band-Aid off. We both had the same number 1.

All right. Hey, a generator. So I'll tell you, for me I, I've done the research and I've had people come out to my house and analyze what it would cost to put a, a stationary in-home—

So you're talking about like, you're talking about like a whole home generator?

That's what I'm— yes, yes, that's what I'm talking about. But I've got a couple of caveats. Okay. Because I've had someone come in, like Generac, come in and give me an estimate, be $15,000.

Oh yeah, they're expensive.

So I mean, we've got natural gas at our house. Um, and so we've already got that, and it's still gonna cost $15,000. Now that's for a whole house, and we got 2 air conditioners, and, you know, all of our appliances are electric, you know. So, you know, we don't really— That adds up pretty quick. It does. Yeah. The only thing that we've got natural gas going to is our heater and like our, our furnace and our, uh, water Our hot water heater.

Okay.

So everything else is electric. So yeah, once you start putting on— now, now we've got LEDs everywhere, but still $15,000 is what it was gonna cost to get a whole home one. However, there's a workaround, because what I think what a lot of people do with their generators, they've got a portable generator and they just run, you know, extension cords into the house. Sure. Which is fine. Yeah, great. It works. You can unplug your fridge, plug it into that. You can do the same thing with, you know, A fan, lots of other things. What you can't do, however, is you can't run your air conditioner off of that. So I'm not spending $15,000 on a generator, especially whenever I've

got to leave it with the house. And I guess it's something that would be a good question to ask, like, a realtor or someone, like, does that actually add value to your house? I'm sure it does.

I'm sure it does.

But you're not going to get $15,000 worth out of it.

Probably not.

Um, but there are some workarounds, and there's a couple of different ways to do it. But basically, um, the most efficient way to do it is you add a box onto your electrical panel.

That you can plug one into.

That you then plug an inlet to, and that feeds that box. Now, in that box, there's a— there's like, you can get different numbers, but let's say you get one of the bigger ones, got like 10 breakers in it. You hardwire that to the breakers that you want to turn on. and it overrides that breaker.

Right.

There's another option, and that, by the way, that's called a manual transfer case, is what that's called. Um, there's another option, and, uh, geninterlock.com actually makes this device, and it goes onto your actual boxes, your, your box outside of your home or in your home depending on where it is, and it shuts off power And when it does that, you have— you are getting no outside power to that. And then you're in— whatever's coming into the inlet, that's where you're getting power. And then you can selectively determine what breakers you want on and off. There's a danger to that though. You have to know how much wattage you're trying to turn on, otherwise you got a problem. So it kind of depends, like,

how safe do you want to be versus how much do you want to know?

Yeah.

Uh, what— so what I want to do is for me, I want to do that second option where I can turn on whatever breakers I want because I want to be able to run one air conditioner, turn off, or another one, you know, go back and forth. Um, but I want to get a, like, a 10,000-watt generator, which is a big one. Yeah, it's a big one. And, but I've found them. Champion makes a really good one that's dual fuel, so it uses gas or propane. Um, and it's like $1,100. So, okay, not terrible.

No.

You can do the entire install of this thing. for— I mean, depending on how much you, you can find the parts on, on Amazon, eBay, um, even, even, you know, part store, and get it depending on how much you're going to pay an electrician. I know a guy who's done it in 2 different houses for less than $1,500 including the generator.

Hmm.

And I'm sitting here going, man, for— forget needing to have this, that, or the other as far as lights, you know, candles, food, whatever. if I have all the power back to my house for $1,500 and I can take that generator with me, so I've really only invested like maybe $400 into the infrastructure to make that happen, for me, that's money well spent. Sure. And it is going to happen before hurricane season next year for me. So that's my story. All right. And that's why I'm going.

Yeah, I'm actually— I'm a big fan of Generacs. We, we have one on the office. Okay. And it's been— I mean, like, they've been a fantastic fantastic company to work with. Sure. Um, I think they're great. Yeah, I mean, like, no, I'm not shunning them at all.

I have zero complaints.

Right. Um, the other thing that we've looked into is, I mean, it's, it's kind of like a generator, but like a whole home battery that's powered by solar cells. Um, right. So, and it's essentially a generator. Yeah, it is.

Um, so if you, I mean, if you've got solar panels on your house, you, you need to put a battery on it.

I mean, like, for situations like this, yeah, you do. Right. Um, and, and sometimes, you know, whoever your installer is, just make sure that they know what you're doing so that you can have enough power to the things that you want power to, like you're talking about with air conditioning and refrigerator and lights and all those kinds of things. Because sometimes those batteries can't handle it all at the same time.

Right.

So you just need to make sure you've got what you need in order to power the things you need to power. Depending on the time of year, I may not be as concerned about the air conditioning. Yeah, as much as I am food preservation.

Yeah, maybe because that's one of the things we were talking about, like the amount— I mean, think about the amount of food you've got in a freezer and a refrigerator, right? If you've got separate freezer and refrigerator alone, goodness, it would cost us hundreds and hundreds of dollars to replace a lot of that for sure, you know? And condiments and all kinds of stuff.

Well, not to mention like if your freezer thaws and like that goo just goes everywhere, because then you, you're, you're potentially gonna have to buy a new fridge or a new freezer, right?

So that, I mean, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars in and of itself.

Yeah. So, so anyway, though, that's our list, people. Yeah. So if, if we left something off that you think is just absolutely vital, important, uh, let us know in the, the comments on the YouTube page, the, the reviews on the, uh, the podcast, and maybe on Facebook, Instagram. Don't do it on Twitter. No, because we're just, we're just not gonna We're not gonna respond.

Nope.

So, you know what? Knock yourself out.

Hey, I challenge you to give us a reason to go to Twitter.

Test our resolve in this.

Right. Don't be mean, but—

Sure.

I mean, I guess if you want to be mean.

Be mean. It might drive more traffic.

I'll put it this way. Nobody else is going to see it.

No. So, it doesn't matter, really. But, yeah, send us a note. Let us know if we left anything really, really important off the list, because we probably did. Um, yep, because we're not hurricane survival experts.

No, even though we live in the area.

We've seen a few.

Well, you've seen more than I have, so—

and you know, they can, they can be devastating, they can be no big deal. They're all, they're all different. They're all a pain.

They're all a pain. They're all different.

And like, you're like, here's the weird thing, man, is like there was almost like this feeling of disappointment over people when we didn't get it.

I know, it was— did you see the memes that were out there that were like, hey, Yeah, there's two twin hurricanes never happened in the history of records coming. Hello, 2020. What else can you throw at me? But can Texas get a little bit of rain? Yeah.

You know, little something something little something.

You know, and we didn't. Not a thing. Not a thing.

And and people were complaining like the school is all canceled because of the hurricanes and there's nothing here. And it's like, what do you want them to do?

Right. So yeah, I mean, and they're like, hey, look, you know, you're already working. You're already doing school from home. Why can't you know?

Why are we canceling school?

It's like. I don't need power.

But the real funny part was, is like they canceled school on Wednesday and Thursday.

Yes.

Specifically because we might get hit by the hurricane. And then they had to cancel it on Friday because they didn't know if they were gonna have power.

Right.

'Cause of the rolling brownouts.

Yeah, it was the weirdest thing ever, which that's what they call it, a rolling brownout, because they were— here's what happened. So our energy company was overloaded and they were trying, they had most of their primary lines lines busted up, and so they had to repair all of them. They had really one coming to our area, and so in order to not overload their system, they had to black out certain areas. And but it was a forced blackout. It was not because there wasn't power, they didn't want to give you power.

Yeah.

They selectively did it. So they call it a brownout instead of a blackout. But then they were rolling it, so certain places would be out and then some places would have it, and that's why you know, Conroe had it gone before we did, but they also got power back before we did. So this rolling brownout, craziest thing I've ever been around. Yeah, but it happened. It did happen.

So a lot of people don't realize, like, there's massive, like, solar farms in Louisiana. Yeah, these are— and I think that's probably what got hit, and they were having to repair the lines of these, these— I mean, like, because these things are the the entities that are helping provide the power for this area. That's right. So that's it. So anything else, Kev?

No, I think that's it, man. Thank you, uh, for downloading today's episode. We thank each and every one of you. Uh, if you have not already, go on iTunes, rate and review us. We love that. And don't forget, you can always get a hold of us at info@homeownershow.com. Thank you for telling other people about us. If you got any questions, let us know. But until then, we'll see you next time.

See ya!