30 Years of Outages: 8 Generator Buys I'd Never Make Again

Thirty years of storms taught me which generator buys quietly cost the most, and I'd undo every one of them tomorrow. I go buy by buy through an open-frame unit with no carbon monoxide shutoff, a backfeed cord wired straight into my panel, a propane conversion that never planned for real cold, an engine I let sit past its service schedule, and a big-wattage purchase that never matched my house or my own fridge load. Each one looked smart standing in the aisle, and each one waited for the one night it mattered.