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For those of you who don’t live in the Memphis area, this summer has been absolutely nuts in terms of weather events. Strong storms coming through and knocking out power to huge swaths of the area has been literally a weekly occurrence.
Luckily, earlier this year I picked up a Firman T07573 generator. I picked mine up on sale from Costco, but if you don’t have a membership, Amazon has some similar models. The generator has been a total lifesaver. I buy most of my proteins at costco, then portion them out and vacuum seal them. If I hadn’t had a generator, I would have lost hundreds of dollars worth of food at least 3 or 4 times in the last couple of months. It has literally paid for itself.
The only downside I’ve found is that you can’t run a generator in the rain without some kind of cover. First off, electricity and rain is a bad mix so you need to keep water off the connections to your extension cords. Second, the fuel tank is on top on basically every generator, so you’re going to want to prevent water from getting in the fuel.
A lot of times, waiting for the rain to end is not the end of the world. The storm comes through and knocks the power out, and then it passes and you set up the generator. Sometimes it doesn’t work like that, though. This last round of strong storms though were followed by literally hours of rain.
I lucked out and my power was only out for like 3 hours, but I decided I definitely needed a rain cover for my generator so I can run it even in the rain or snow. I looked around on the internets and found this one from Amazon. It’s made by a brand called “IGAN” that I have never heard of, but it says it fits my generator, and it’s available with next day shipping. Worth a shot! I ordered it, received it the next day, and started assembling it.
There is definitely some assembly required, but the instructions are straightforward. I admittedly am pretty good at building things, but I feel like this cover would be easy to assemble even if you aren’t a mechanic.
First off you’re gonna build a metal frame out of pole with plastic connectors. You just screw the poles together and push the finished pole into a plastic holder. Pay attention to the instructions though because you need one side to be different from the other to clear the handle on your generator. Here is the finished frame, making absolutely sure it fit on my generator before I went any further.
The frame mounts to the generator using what amounts to velcro zip ties. I wasn’t super sure about this setup, but in practice it seems fine. They give you two velcro straps for each connection so it does hold it pretty sturdy. There’s also no risk of the soft straps rubbing against your cover in the wind and wearing a hole in it. Here’s a picture of what each connection looks like when you’re done.
After the frame is strapped to your generator, you put on the sides. All four sides come as an assembly, so you basically just drape it over. Again, one end has shorter flaps to clear the handle, so pay attention to make sure you have it oriented correctly. Once you’ve done some pulling and tugging to get it all lined up, you just strap it to the frame with 8 velcro tabs.
Once you have it secured, you’re ready to add the top cover. The top cover is made of the same material as the sides but it does have something rigid inside to keep it in place. Seems very solid. It just Velcros onto the top rail of the side cover. One side doesn’t have velcro so it’s easy to lift it to refuel.
The side panels have velcro straps and metal rings at each corner so you can cinch it down when it’s being stored.
When you want to use the generator, you roll up all of the sides except for the one that is covering your outlets. This lets the exhaust escape, and allows airflow across the generator for cooling. The top cover has metal rings around it, and the sides have little metal hooks on them, so you can fold each side up and hook it to the top to keep it from falling back down. This also keeps the top held in place.
So far, pretty pleased with this purchase. I’m no longer worried about having to use the generator during an extended rain storm or snow storm. I haven’t used the generator with the cover on it yet but it did pass my “spray it with a hose” test with flying colors. It seems solidly constructed, it was reasonably priced and it seems like it does exactly what it says it will do. Go buy one on Amazon.
