British In Poland

Anybody who has lived for any period of time in Poland will have had some experience with power cuts.  For home owners like me who are out of the major towns they can be a real annoyance.

Years of under investment and bureaucratic restrictions means that the majority of the electrical infrastructure is old and in bad condition.  Not surprisingly this leads to regular outages either due to bad weather or for scheduled repairs.

A loss of electricity for any period of time is particularly annoying for me because without power not only do I not have light, but I also  don’t have any heating or running water.  This is because without power my gas boiler doesn’t work, and even if I switch over to my coal furnace I still need power for the pump that circulates the water through the radiators.  Likewise because my water comes from a well in my garden (no town water supply near me yet) without power I run out of water as soon as my 80 litre tank empties as the pump won’t kick in to refill it.

Furthermore, because I work from home I need a 100% guarantee that my computer and internet access both work  – I can’t risk the chance that one of my clients calls to say a website is down or an urgent problem has occurred and I can’t do anything about it.

My solution was to buy a generator and here it is:

If you want to buy one then first you need to consider a number of issues:

• How much Power? You need to buy a generator that has sufficient power to run whatever you need to connect to it.  I want to be able to connect my water pump (which needs 1400 watts whilst running), my boiler (less 50 – 100 watts) and my computer network (around 200 watts).  Therefore I calculated the most power I would ever need is around 1700 watts so bought a generator rated at 2000 watts to add a safety margin.
• Voltage Regulation - There are two types of generator – those that have a computer chip built in to regulate the voltage and those that don’t.  If you just want to plug in a cement mixer or a drill then you don’t need voltage regulation.  But if you want to connect any sensitive electrical devices such as a computer then you must use a generator with a voltage regulator to avoid causing damage.
• Noise – Generators are quite noisy given that they are basically small petrol engines.  More expensive models are quieter.  To be honest I want my generator just as an emergency backup so noise isn’t my biggest concern.  I don’t need it at night and I don’t need to worry about neighbours so the fact that my generator is rated at 90 decibals isn’t a problem.  In practice I hook it up at the back of the house and with the windows closed it is barely audible from inside.

To work out how what type of generator you need have a read of the info at justgenerators.co.uk.  They have a lot of info on their FAQ section and info about noise levels etc.   To work out how many watts your devices need have a look on the manufacturer labels or in the handbooks (you did keep them right?).

I found my generator at castorama in Krakow on promotion for 1000 PLN.  I checked out the generators at Leroy Merlin but they were cheap chinese junk.  The one I found was german and so far seems OK.  It is one of the cheaper models so is pretty basic but does the job.  Over the last year I have used it 3 times to keep my freezer from defrosting and I am very happy with it.  Here it is in action kicking out 240 volts (the domestic voltage used across Europe).

More expensive models come with a wheelbarrow style wheel and handles to make moving it around easier (this thing is very heavy at 50 kilos) and require less maintenance – mine needs an oil change every 8 hours of run-time according to the manual (which seems excessive to me) and the oil dump valve isn’t very accessible.

So if you have got a house or are planning on buying one, now you have a new toy to add to the shopping list :-)