Best gifts for preppers

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Start with what the house needs through an outage and work backward. A refrigerator, a furnace blower, a sump or well pump and a way to charge phones is the usual list, and it adds up to a number of watts. Our generator sizing calculator turns the list into a size, and that decides whether the gift is a battery station, an inverter generator, or the hardware that connects one to the house.

A portable power station is silent, safe indoors and needs no fuel, which makes it the backup people actually use. A gasoline or dual-fuel inverter generator runs for days if the fuel holds out, and it is the answer for 240 V loads like a well pump. Whichever it is, the safety gear is not optional: battery CO alarms on every level, a generator kept at least 20 feet from the house, heavy outdoor cords, and never a cord into a wall outlet.

The unglamorous gifts here are the ones a prepared person appreciates most. A transfer switch kit and inlet box make backfeeding impossible. A 25-foot generator cord gets the machine far enough from the house. Fuel stabilizer keeps the gas usable, because stale fuel is the most common reason a generator will not start on the night it is needed.