Here in Arkansas zoning laws are rather lax and no one complains about a running generator. In my neighborhood almost every house has a generator for those times when the power goes which is a couple of times during the winter. We have gas heat and gas hot water heaters. We had an electrician rig up a connection to the power box so we can hook up the generator to our heating system to operated the electric blowers and thermostat. There is a switch we throw when this is done. We have a small generator and use it to heat and run a few lights, etc. One does have to add gas a couple of times a day. During long stretches there are long lines at the stations that can operate on generators. The ideal thing would be to have a generator that ran on natural gas. One neighbor has a natural gas full house generator that comes on atomatically when the power goes. This runs into about $5000 in Arkansas. I sure miss my wood stove.