Before You Buy Backup Power
I Install $40,000 Generators for Wealthy Families. One Client Told Me the Only Thing on His Property That Truly Mattered Cost $30.
Then he handed me a bottle of pond water, told me to drink it, and explained why there's one in every bag and vehicle he owns.
Dale Rucker · Backup power installer, Tennessee
Updated November 2026 · 11 min read
I want to tell you about a job I did on a Tuesday this past summer. I still think about it whenever the news gets loud.
I put backup power in big houses for a living
Whole-house generators. Battery walls. Buried fuel tanks. Transfer switches. The kind of setup that lets a house sit through a week of dark like nothing's happening.
My customers have money, but not the kind you'd recognize. Surgeons. A few lawyers. Men who "consult" and don't say for whom.
I've done it for 16 years. It's a good living. It's what lets my wife stay home with our two kids while they're small.
And for about the last year, my phone hasn't stopped.
The questions changed before I noticed
It used to be comfort work. Keep the freezer cold and the Wi-Fi up through a summer storm. That was the whole conversation.
Now people ask how long they could go cut off completely.
They ask how much fuel they can bury. They ask about a second panel for the well. Men who wanted the quietest unit on the market six months ago don't ask about noise anymore. They ask about runtime.
I didn't think much of it. More work is more work.
Then I took the job at the big house.
"Leave the water for last," he said. "It's the only part that counts."
The owner met me in the driveway himself, which they usually don't. Early sixties. Fit, in a way that had nothing to do with a gym.
I noticed three things in the first 10 minutes.
He was home on a Tuesday, in work clothes that had never done any work.
A bag sat by the front door. Not a suitcase. A packed bag, sitting there on purpose.
And when I asked my usual scoping question, "What are we planning for, a storm or an outage?", he looked at me a beat too long.
"Plan on the grid not coming back for a while," he said.
I've scoped about a thousand of these jobs. Nobody had ever put it that way.
Around noon he came by the panel, and he said what I've been thinking about ever since.
"Leave the water for last. It's the only part of this job that counts."
I said sure, the well tie-in was the last phase anyway.
"That's not what I mean," he said, and went back to a room where the news was on with the sound off.
See What He Meant by "the Only Part That Counts"★★★★★ 4.8 stars, 2,318 reviews
"You think you pay two bills. It's one bill."
By the second morning he'd loosened up. You spend enough hours on a quiet job with a man, and you start talking.
I asked him, carefully, what kind of work kept a person home on a Tuesday. He gave me a job title built to explain nothing.
Then he told me this. I wrote it down that night, so it's close to word for word.
Everybody thinks the power and the water are two separate bills. It's really one bill. Electricity pulls the water out of the river. Electricity cleans it. Electricity pushes it through every mile of pipe to your sink. Lose the first one, and you start to lose the second.The homeowner, on day two
He set down his coffee.
"You can go weeks without food. You'd hate it, but you'd make it. Water, you get days. Not weeks. Days. It's the one thing where nobody gets to tough it out. And it's the one thing nobody stocks, because the tap has never let them down."
He asked if I knew about Asheville. I said a little.
After Hurricane Helene, he told me, most of that city had running water back by the end of October. They still couldn't trust it to drink until November 18.
"That's with everybody driving in to help," he said. "Now run that in a whole lot of cities at once. Who's driving in?"
I didn't have anything to say to that. I was standing there getting paid to wire up a house that would stay bright as a Christmas tree while nothing fit to drink came out of the tap.
That night I counted what was in my own garage
I was quiet at supper. My wife wanted to know what was the matter. "Long job," I told her.
I didn't tell her that a stranger had just explained, calm as a weather report, how my kids could run out of water in a way I'd never pictured once.
After they went to bed I went out to the garage with a flashlight.
One case of water, and part of another. Four of us.
A case is about 3 gallons, and the CDC says at least a gallon per person per day. I stacked it every way I could think of. It came out to just over a day.
Sixteen years in the backup power business, and my family had a day of water.
I told myself the guy stared at the worst case for a living, and it had bent him a little. That would bend anybody.
Then I thought about that bag by his door.
And the fact that a man that careful with his words was paying me $40,000 to bury iron in his yard, and telling me it wasn't the part that counted.
Day three, he put a bottle of pond water in my hand
He came out mid-afternoon carrying a scuffed plastic bottle with the label long gone.
Threaded onto the top of it was a small red tube about the size of a marker. If I'd found it on a job site, I'd have swept it up with the wire ends.
"You wanted to know what I do about water," he said. "Here."
He tipped it up, took a long drink, and held it out.
"What's in it?"
"I filled it from the pond out back about 20 minutes ago. The one with the geese. Go on."
I'd been going by that pond all week. You wouldn't let your dog in it.
I looked at the bottle. I looked at him. He wasn't kidding, and he didn't seem to care much whether I did it.
I drank it.
It was water. Plain water. No grit, no pond smell, nothing floating in it.
"That little thing did that?" I said.
He nodded. "That little thing."
He walked me through it the way you'd show a man a good tool. Four stages in there. No power. No batteries. No moving parts. The grid can be up or down. The reason the water quit makes no difference to it.
You give it a rain barrel, a creek, a farm pond, or the bathtub you filled before the pressure died. Filtered water comes out the other end.
"What did that run you?" I asked.
"About 30 bucks," he said. "I've got one in every bag and every vehicle I own."
I looked over at the concrete pad I'd just poured. $40,000 for the lights. $30 for the water. And he'd told me on day one which of those he'd keep if he had to pick.
What I found when I looked it up
I don't believe anything until I've read the spec sheet. That's the trade. So I looked it up on my phone sitting in the truck.
It's the MINIMLS Emergency Water Filter Straw. Here's what it actually says it does.
- A 0.01 micron hollow-fiber membrane, behind a coarse screen, a medical-grade PP cotton layer and a flow layer.
- Removes 99.99% of bacteria and protozoa, including E. coli, Salmonella, Cholera, Giardia, Cryptosporidium and Legionella. It blocks microplastics too.
- Rated for 1,800 gallons. That's more than 550 cases of bottled water, from something you can hold in two fingers.
- 2 ounces. No expiration date when stored dry. Keep it from freezing and let it dry before you put it away.
Then I read the part I respected most.
Viruses, it doesn't touch. Same for chemicals and heavy metals. And it won't make salt water drinkable.
When viruses are a concern, you boil the water or add tablets. If you suspect chemicals, you don't drink it. They put all of that right on the page.
In my trade, the guy who tells you what his unit can't do is the one you hire. Be careful of anybody selling a straw that handles everything.
Emergency Preparedness Sale ends in
- Filters 99.99% of bacteria and protozoa
- Rated for 1,800 gallons
- No batteries, no pump, no expiration when stored dry
Up to 67% off. Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you. Not sold on Amazon.
I waited two days. Then two things changed my mind.
I'm telling you this part because you may be about to do the same thing.
I told myself I'd order when the next check cleared. I did what everybody does. I nodded at the truth, then I went and made dinner.
Later I was driving to a job with the radio on, and a news story came on about water systems. In July 2026, the FBI and EPA warned of cyberattacks on water utilities in at least seven states. More than 30 communities in Minnesota were hit. Officials said drinking water was largely unaffected, but CISA said the activity led to boil water notices.
I don't know what comes next. Neither does the radio. But I heard that man's voice in my head.
Then on Thursday my wife came home from the store a little annoyed. They were out of the big jugs she buys for the cooler, and there was a sign limiting people to two cases.
An ordinary Thursday. No storm. She said it like it was nothing.
I didn't sleep that night. Around one in the morning I got up, sat down at the kitchen table, and ordered.
And I didn't order just one
When they came, I took one out to the creek behind our place at seven in the morning. I filled a bottle, threaded on the straw and stood in the wet grass drinking it like a crazy person.
It took a few hard pulls to get going. After that it tasted like plain water.
I went inside and told my wife all of it. The bag by the door. The pond. The $40,000 and the $30.
She didn't say a word until I was done. Then she said, "Your mom. My mom. The kids' godparents."
Not one word about the money. By bedtime she'd placed a second order herself.
What's different at my house now
There's one in each kid's backpack. We had them both try it in the yard, so it wouldn't be new to them if it ever mattered. My six-year-old needs the squeeze bottle, and she's strangely proud of it.
There's one in each vehicle, unused, and a box in the hall closet.
The whole thing cost me less than the brake job I did on the van that same month.
I told my crew too. Two of the guys bought that week. My lead installer has made fun of every single thing I've ever been excited about. He texted me a photo of his, next to a bottle he'd filled at a creek on a job site, with three words.
"Alright. You win."
You can be wrong about everything but this
Here's where I've landed.
Maybe the timing's way off. You can decide all of this blows over. I hope you're right. I hope he was a nervous man on a bad Tuesday and nothing ever comes of it.
If so, you're out a few bucks, and you've got a drawer of straws you never needed.
But water is the one thing you don't get to be wrong about even once.
It doesn't send a warning first. And there's no catching up later, because by the time you know for sure, so does every store within 50 miles.
You can leave that case and a half on the garage floor and hope for the best. I did, for 16 years, while I wired up other people's houses.
Or you can get it done this weekend. Get one for everyone you love, and a couple of spares. You don't want to be splitting one filter between your kids.
Do the water first.
From the MINIMLS team: if you've got a generator, or you're pricing one
A generator is a fine thing to own. It keeps food cold and a house warm. Keep it. But it answers a different question.
| Filter straw | Generator | |
|---|---|---|
| Needs fuel | No | Yes |
| Works with the grid down | Yes | While the fuel lasts |
| Removes bacteria and protozoa from fresh water | Yes, 99.99% | No |
| Keeps the lights and fridge on | No | Yes |
| Runs a well pump | No | Yes, if it's wired for it |
| Goes with you if you have to leave | Yes | No |
They do different jobs. The expensive mistake is thinking you've done the water job because you've done the power job. Even on a well, your generator only helps while it's wired right, it starts, and the fuel holds. And a stove running on that generator is no help if there's nothing in the pipes to boil.
Our rule is one per person, plus one in the bag by the door. A family of four is at five. Got a car? Put one more in the glovebox.
One straw is $29.99. Five bought singly would cost $149.95. The Family Pack is 5 straws, 1 free included, for $79.99, about $16 a straw. Next to backup power, that's a rounding error.
Do the Water First: 5 Straws for $79.9930-day money back.
"Will I manage it?" The first few draws take some effort, and that's normal. If pulling is hard for you, thread it onto a regular bottle and squeeze into a glass.
"Why not a cheap one?" Marketplaces are full of look-alikes, and you can't see inside a sealed tube. You wouldn't buy a generator from someone who wouldn't show you the spec sheet. MINIMLS has 100,000+ customers, and it prints the spec sheet.
"Will it keep?" No oil to change, no carburetor to clean, no expiration date when stored dry.
Buyers give it 4.8 stars across 2,318 reviews, and it's tested to the rated figures. It's also third-party lab tested for bacteria and protozoa removal, and pressure-tested for membrane integrity, seal strength and leak resistance. Bigger family? 10 straws, 2 of them free, are $129.99, about $13 a straw. 40, 8 of them free, are $389.99, about $10 a straw.
The Emergency Preparedness Sale takes up to 67% off right now.
And it's all on us. Do what he did. Fill a bottle from the cleanest creek or rain barrel near you, and drink it. Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you. Unused or used.
You don't need a bunker. You don't need $40,000 of iron. You need the bare minimum. Your generator will keep the lights on. What's your family going to drink under them?
Gave one to each grandchild going off to college. They laughed. Then one of them had a boil notice at her apartment and called me.
Barbara N.works good. light. kept one in the tackle box
Mike R.Feels sturdier than I figured for the price. Caps fit tight.
Walt E.
Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you.
Get the Family Pack: 5 Straws for $79.9930-day money back.
P.S. What finally moved me wasn't anything he said about what's coming. It was where he put his own money. He could've bought any answer he wanted, and he kept a $30 filter in every bag he owned.
P.P.S. Come sit at my kitchen table at one in the morning and run the sum I ran. A gallon per person per day, and a case is about 3 gallons. A family of four goes through a case before dinner on day one. Two weeks is about 19 cases. One straw is rated for more than 550. There was never going to be a garage big enough, and it turns out there didn't need to be.
Sources: WUNC on Asheville, November 18, 2024. FBI and EPA notice and CISA alert, July 30, 2026. StateScoop on Minnesota. CDC, emergency water supply and water treatment guidance.