I live in south florida and I was wondering if this hurricane season was going to be as bad as the last few years? We probably won't get hit because we just bought a huge generator to power up our whole house, and its like washing your car and it rains right? but statistically speaking any hurricanes?

my mother lives in south florida too....and i'm always watching the weather channel and what not...they said this year wouldn't be as bad as last year....however, last year was pretty bad....so i would still be aware.....sounds like there will still be alot of activity this year too.....

I have a 240 ford engine that powers a generator it is now set up to run on natural gas. I was wondering what I will have to do to run this on propane? Thanks

Get out your Yellow Pages and look up Strickland Propane, I think they have an 800 number. Ask for Hank Hill, explain your problem and I bet Hank will have the answer.

I am currently running a Honda 5000 while we're without power. I'm just wondering -- does it make a different if I run 1000 watts of power from it or 5000 watts? Will I use less fuel if I hook up a smaller amount to it?

Thanks.

More power out will require more fuel going in. As the load increases the engine will consume more gasoline.
Efficiency is another issue. With no load attached, output power is 0 watts. Efficiency will be 0%. As the load increases fuel consumption will increase, but efficiency will be higher. Often maximum efficiency will occur at full rated power, even if this is the highest consumption point.
Read through my home generator page listed below for other ideas on safe and proper connection of your generator.

I recently overheard some people talking about power, and one of the fellows brought up a very confusing statement. One guy related that he had a power generator that used very little if any fuel to work, and that it supplied his whole house with power during an outage on 3 occasions with no incident. Intrigued I listened to them more intently. This gentleman said he was going to cancel his commercial power, and use the generator exclusively for his home needs. At the mention of this the other man piped in with the "fact" that to disconnect from commercial power and use generated power was illegal during a time when commercial power was in service and available. That made no sense to me. How is that illegal, if that absurd statement is even true?
I guess i mean that if you were to totally disconnect from commersh power. Is it illegal then to use generated power, If commersh was still readily available in the area. I got the impression from the conversation that we had no option but to use commersh unless it was an emergency and nothing else during normal operating times. The answers are great though very insightful.

There are transfer switches for back up generators. If utility goes down, it'll disconnect from utility automatically and go to generator power(ATS's) Most utilities run at 13800 volts for primary and kicked down through the transformers secondary to 220volts.So if your main was still on and the generator was on the opposite would happen. You could kill one of the lineman working the lines. That could be a by-law for your area. Residential ATS's are on the market. Gentrans

you have to buy a carborator conversion kit

How many watts of electricity does the standard home vaccume cleaner use ? Will a 1000 watt portable generator run it ?

There is no "standard" figure.

Looking at an on-line catalogue I saw a range of machines which drew between 1100W and 2500W.