Here’s the deal with freezers in a grid down situation: Make sure you have on hand cheap indoor/outdoor thermometer (the kind that have a long wire with the sensor on the end). At the first sign of a long power outage put the sensor in the freezer and get the door closed quickly. You should keep a deep freezer at about 0°F in normal times but if you can keep it at 20-25°F short term you won’t lose anything. But it would be good to use up your goods soon as possible.
We were thinking about a standby generator but our co-OP has the power so stable anymore that we decided to run extension cords and use our portable generator because a standby is so pricey and we would almost never use it. Knock wood...
We do have a portable that we have gotten by with. But hubby puts off starting it to make sure it works, and I am totally inept when it comes to that. And I wouldn’t be able to lug it to where it needs to be.
I just want to be able to flip a switch and have my well work, my oxygen concentrator, and maybe a computer now and then. I have battery pack for the O2, but would need to recharge it every 3 days.