Power Envy

You could literally hear the transformer exploding,” she said.
Then things went south fast, escalating perilously like the plot of an action movie, or “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” in previews. As Ms. Sidel pulled an old land-line telephone out of the closet, one birch tree crashed into the side of her house and another into her front door.
“I called a friend who said, ‘My generator has just kicked in, come on over.’ I got out through the garage, drove over the lawn to the street, and I stayed at my friend’s house until Wednesday,” she recounted. “My girls generator-hopped all over town all week, thrilled to have a different sleepover every night. But another friend of mine has four kids, and she was not so lucky. You can’t generator-hop with a family that size. I have nothing but gratitude for all my generator hosts.”
In another part of town, Christopher Peacock, the high-end kitchen man, was charging a few lights and the refrigerator, along with his family’s computers and cellphones, on a small gasoline-powered manual generator he set out in his driveway, snaking a web of extension cords from the living room.
But Mr. Peacock has well water, and with not enough power for the pump, his family grew not just colder but grubbier as the week progressed. On Wednesday, he; his wife, Jayne; and their 11-year-old son fled to Cape Cod, where they have a summer house.
“School is canceled, so why not?” he said. “It’s like a war zone here. The thing is, I am waiting for, and am in line for, a permanent generator installation. I’ve got one essentially on order, but they’re all back-ordered since Irene. I am definitely feeling some generator envy.”
Mr. Peacock was not alone in this feeling. The back story to the recent biblical weather was the Great Generator Divide. With hundreds of thousands of households without power last week — nearly 800,000 in Connecticut alone — who had a generator (and how big it was) was the second most urgent topic in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. Generator envy ran wide and deep as the staccato growl and smoky breath of portable generators defined the haves and the have-nots in many neighborhoods.
In Greenwich, Conn., some chilly residents shivered while their neighbors’ mega-units (the whole-house kind that kick on automatically and emit a sound hardly louder than a cat’s purr) powered not just furnaces, washers and dryers, garage doors and electric gates, “but the mood lighting on their trees,” Leslie McElwreath, a broker at Sotheby’s International Realty there, said wonderingly, impressed by her neighbor’s generator prowess (and his spotlighted trees).
Indeed, in a town like Greenwich, where the accouterments of the high-end houses are super-sized, generator power is now a selling point, as home theaters, heated driveways and wine grottos were in years past, said Robert Bland, the brokerage manager of the Sotheby’s office in Greenwich.
“You can’t even open your garage door or your electric gates if you don’t have a generator,” he said. “And with the weather so unpredictable, it’s become a required amenity.”
Every Sunday, Mr. Bland buys a gatefold color ad for his company in The Greenwich Time, the local newspaper. Last week, he cannily offered a roundup of listings with generators, including a $13.5-million showplace. “In this unpredictable world,” Mr. Bland’s ad read, “practical and proud can go hand in hand.”
Of course, one person’s practical is another person’s neighbor-tease. Julio DiBiase Jr., a luxury builder in Fairfield County, says he always incorporates a generator into the huge spec houses he creates. But not just any generator.
 Last year, one of Mr. DiBiase’s mega-houses sold for more than $11 million, one of the highest spec sales in Greenwich history, said Ms. McElwreath, who had the listing. Mr. DiBiase ticked off its features, starting with a 100-kilowatt Cummins, the Rolls-Royce of generators. It was a necessary feature, he explained, if you consider the power needs of the 16,000-square-foot house: nine zones of hydro-air, 10 zones of radiant heat, a whole-house Lutron lighting system, a Sub-Zero, several refrigerator drawers and wine coolers, a wine cellar, a home theater and a gym.
“The funny thing is, the new owners, who are from out of the country, didn’t understand what needing a generator was all about,” Mr. DiBiase said. “Then we had the hurricane, and they were without power for four days. They really saw the value in their generator.”
In the less rarefied air of the Catskills, Charles Petersheim, a builder who in the last 10 years has put up 100 houses in Sullivan County, has just begun offering generators to his customers. His niche is making new cottages, farmhouses and Victorians that “read” old, with wide plank floors, Shaker-style cabinetry and front porches, yet have none of the problems of actual old houses. (Mini-cottages start at $285,000.)
These houses are particularly appealing to young New York weekenders, like the painter Alexis Rockman and Albert Hammond, the Strokes guitarist. In fact, said Mr. Petersheim, whose company is called Catskill Farms, all his customers are from New York City, and 95 percent are younger than 40. A few months ago, Mr. Petersheim offered to retrofit the houses he had built in Barryville, N.Y., with standby generators.
“We were seeing more and more power outages in that area,” he said. “And it’s not a super-high-priority area, so the power can stay out for days. Pipes can freeze, food spoils, you can’t get water. It’s become a stress point for our customers. I sent out an e-mail to 20 of them saying, ‘If you’re getting too annoyed with this, it’s pretty affordable, under $7,000 for a 14-kilowatt Generac fueled by propane.’ Seven took us up on it.”
Courtney and Bronson Bigelow (she’s in public relations, he’s a lawyer) were among them. “The first time we had a power outage, it was kind of romantic,” Ms. Bigelow said. “But then it kept happening. When you’re trying to squeeze every second of your weekend, it’s a huge bummer. You can’t wash dishes, you can’t wash yourself, and it’s 20 degrees. This summer we had this freakish weather, torrential rains over Fourth of July, then these weird microburst thunderstorms, and then Irene.”
“It’s a luxury,” she continued, “but also peace of mind. If the power goes out on a Monday, you don’t have to drive all the way up to check on your pipes. When the snow came last Saturday, and the power went out and the generator kicked in, I have to say we were feeling pretty victorious. We invited a bunch of neighbors over to share the power, and also to gloat a little bit.”
Power failures are like childbirth, said Marilyn Bethany, a former magazine editor who lives in Columbia County, N.Y. Her farmhouse runs on oil heat and well water.
“Each time it happens,” she said, “you swear, never again. And then, of course, you forget all about it. But the kind of generator we want costs $5,000. That’s money you really hate parting with. After the ice storm a few years ago, when we lost power for six days, I went to Home Depot to look at one. You kick it, you say, ‘Ah, a generator.’ But it’s not very sexy. Imagine all the things you could do with $5,000.”
Over in Lakeville, Conn., Allen Cockerline, who raises grass-fed cattle with his wife, Robin, at their Whippoorwill Farm, has two large portable generators, 10 and 15 kilowatts each. One runs off his tractor; the other is powered by gasoline. (The tractor-powered one he bought with the farm; the other one cost about $1,500, he said.)
They are a necessary insurance policy for a perishable product, he said: “There’s $30,000 worth of beef in my freezer. I’m not going to let that go.”
But armed as he is against calamity, Mr. Cockerline will admit to some generator envy.

“My system is down-and-dirty,” he added, and “in that respect I have a certain amount of envy. But I’m sure my generators are bigger than theirs. Much bigger.”

You have to determine what you need and what you’re willing to invest,” said Trey Kelsey, who owns Greenwich Hardware & Home in Greenwich, Conn., and sells and installs a range of generators, from portable Generacs to whole-house Briggs & Strattons. “Generators start at very small wattages,” he said, “from a couple hundred, which would power two light bulbs, on up.” (While some list the power they generate in terms of wattage, others use kilowatts, one of which is equivalent to 1,000 watts.)
“A fridge is about 700 watts,” Mr. Kelsey said. “A sump pump might be 800 to 1,000. A radio is not a big user, at 50 to 200 watts, but what about your dryer, or the electric start for your furnace?”
His best seller right now is a 5,000-watt Generac, he said, which costs from $700 to $1,000, depending on whether you add features like electric or manual starts, greater fuel capacity, warranties and E.P.A. certifications for emissions.
But “if you’re going to go the portable, extension-cord route,” he said, “make sure you run it from the driveway, with your garage door closed, so there’s no back draft. In a perfect world, perhaps you want to hook it up to your breakers, which means you need an electrician to install a transfer panel. That might start at $500, or cost $1,500, or more. But those are all on back order right now, and the electricians are working overtime.”
“The generator is the easy part,” Mr. Kelsey said. “Here’s something nobody ever thinks about: If you have a gasoline-powered generator, and your gas station is without power, you can’t get gas. You’re going to want to store some. Safely. Homes with natural gas can get a permanent generator, or you can order one fueled by propane. You could spend $5,000, or $25,000. It’s a question of your needs and your budget.”
In Wilton, Conn., Paul Bonomo of Cannondale Generators has also been working overtime since the Oct. 29 snowstorm and has doubled his phone lines, to eight from four.
“It’s insanity,” he said. Like Mr. Kelsey, Mr. Bonomo sells brands like Generac, Kohler and Briggs & Stratton. “Generac is the most price-competitive,” he said. “But a lot of it is personal preference, what kind of motor you like. It’s also price, warranty, noise level. They’re all good brands.”
Just don’t call Mr. Bonomo if you want one. His waiting list for generators has 800 names on it. He sounded exhausted.
“I am,” he said. “I have worked every day since Irene.”
So have many of those at the Home Depot. Right now, that company’s generator sales are up significantly over last year, said Jean Niemi, a company spokeswoman, “due to high demand” after the ice storm and Hurricane Irene.
Is the weather becoming more, well, biblical?
Dr. Joe Sobel, the voice of WINS-AM (1010) weather, noted the recent excitements: the flooding rains from Irene and Tropical Storm Lee, the microburst thunderstorms, the October snowstorm that wreaked havoc because the leaves were still on the trees.
“The thing to keep in mind is that there is nothing unusual about unusual weather,” he added. “It’s actually the norm.”