More homeowners buy back-up generators

With December-like temperatures settling in around the Delaware Valley, lots of folks are already shopping for generators.

Howard Cohen, knew before he moved to Haverford, Pennsylvania two years ago, that he wanted a generator.

"We know from our previous home...after losing power in Penn Valley so many times," said Cohen.

Last winter, he made the move.

Cohen said, "We had a 2-day outage and it was very annoying and we just decided that we've had enough."

Wes Garnas became Howard's neighbor in the summer. And having previously lived in Bucks County, he too, was familiar with winter power outages.

"... and when we moved to this area, we found the same thing happening. So we decided since we were moving to a new home, it was a good time to put in a generator to back us up," said Garnas.

The power outages during last winter's severe storms were more than an inconvenience. They cost homeowners thousands of dollars.

Storms sent many families to hotels for days and even weeks. Food spoiled, pipes froze and basements flooded when sump pumps lost power.

This year, home Supply stores are selling full power generators sooner than usual.

Bill Reynolds, Project Specialist from Home Depot said, "This year, I'd say, it is double to what it was last year."

More people are buying portable generators.

Brian Freitag, of Home Depot said, "They're normally about 30 amps. So we're talking about enough power to keep a refrigerator going and maybe a washer and dryer. But one at a time, not both."

But not everyone's jumping on the generator bandwagon.

Bruce Feldman laughs and says, "I figured I'd rather take that $10,000 and perhaps stay at the Four Seasons for a month."