Generator

[justinl]

well to be honest i dont think that winter in Vancouver is bad enough to really warrant a generator (unless you have a wad of dough sitting around... which i dont). outages usually dont go over a few hours around here ime.

for back up, i use one of those computer UPS back up batteries. it would probably run a pump (which is all that's needed in an emergency) for a fair amount of time. the nice thing about the UPS is that it will run automatically in an outage. a generator on the other hand would have to be started manually. that said, if you can afford a generator, definitely go for it.