Your Whole Blackout Setup Will Die If You Don't Do These 6 Things Before Winter

6 things to do to your whole backup power setup before winter — so it actually starts and carries the house on the coldest night instead of quitting when you need it. Switch the engine to a cold-rated multigrade oil — 5W-30 or synthetic. On thick oil, a cold start runs almost dry for the first critical seconds. Put the starting battery on a maintainer and run a load test. At 0°F, a lead-acid battery loses roughly 50% of its cranking power. Keep propane tanks above 1/3 through the cold period. A low tank in deep cold can't vaporize fuel fast enough to feed the engine, no matter how much fuel is left in it. Steepen the solar tilt for the low winter sun, keep snow off the panels, and stop planning your outage runtime around a winter recharge. Run the furnace off your backup power now and watch the blower's startup surge — it's the single biggest winter load, and the one that trips undersized setups at 3 a.m. Set the generator's outdoor spot now: at least 20 feet from the house, exhaust pointed away, kept clear of snow, with a CO alarm inside.