> standby generator-which is adorable

From Austin here. It’s about $16k for a natural gas, 22kW (hey gotta run that decent, Texas sized a/c, right?) generator. That’s all up, installed with all the permits for electric and gas and city included and it will take about 4 months to install.

PS: I’d rather live in San Diego any day

To be fair a 22kW generator is massive overkill for anyone not living in a 8000 square foot home.

I took some some measurements and did the math a while back, my "Texas sized AC" draws 4KW when continuously running.

Ok, so apparently one needs to account for inrush current (aka "locked rotor current"), the head space needed for that put me over the second smallest generator power output. The next one up from that isn't made any more and the one up from that one (16kW) has a 12 month lead time. Popular choice apparently. That's how I ended up with 22kW. On the plus side, it's plenty to run everything simultaneously with room for adding a freezer later and some other thing later. Admittedly that's pretty comfy, but I needed something quick and decent to run family member's life support systems.

since it's mostly labor and installation cost (presumably those are about the same cost no matter the size), I feel it makes a lot of sense to go a little bit bigger than you need

Compared to my cost of living in the bay that's absolutely pennies. And good luck getting anything installed permits or otherwise because finding contractors (especially decent ones) is nearly impossible without a healthy population of tradesmen.

I was also affected by blackouts in CA so it wasn't like I had power there either. Only difference is the weather is very livable without HVAC.

Shop for labor in Austin right now. If it's work requiring a permit, the backlogs are long. If it's not, prices are inflated AND backlogs are long. I've been trying to find contactors to finish my outbuilding for over a year. I ended up doing a lot of it myself or paying friends because not being new construction in a subdivision puts me at the back of every line and at rates I'm not willing to pay. If you want to build a new house in a subdivision, picked from a catalog and you're willing to pay top dollar though, you're fine. (I can't even call in ga it's from GCs I know because they're just too busy building the thousands of new houses already delayed in Austin metro.)

I tried to get someone to lay down a few bags of mulch in SF and he wanted to charge me $7000. No, I did not miss a digit. I did it myself in about 2 hours including driving to Home Depot.

I was quoted an AC install for $36k. We already had central heat so this was a relatively easy install. I did manage to find someone that did it for $15k but even that took a lot of searching.

As far as permitted work? We didn't even attempt any of that except a rather big electrical job. It was prohibitively expensive, took months, and they didn't finish a ton of the work as we found out selling the home. This was after I got 7 estimates and went with who I thought was the "best".

I didn't move to Austin and I'm sure it's bad there, but I can't imagine it's worse than the bay. Actually this specific problem is the biggest reason we decided not to pick Austin.

The manor difference is that you can find people to do the work. I stared at a cement pad for six months, waiting for a building to start going up. Then it was another four months for framing. You can't find anyone to do the work out here any more, they're all building new for CA expats. When I sold my house in th not h bay, it needed a new deck. $18k and a week later it was done and the house sold before there was a sign in the front. Over a year to get a fancy shed (that's how you classify it to avoid permits) and it's still not done. Trade-offs.

Yeah some famous tv guy in LA waited years to get his solar panels installed. I feel like I’d be earning way more in California for the crap I do though.

You can work remote, I left San Diego in January but kept my CA level pay while moving to a significantly lower CoL area.

Also San Diego is nice, but damn has traffic gotten horrible in the last 20 years. And the house prices. Don’t even get me started.

Bill Maher

You could have moved to a different part of California. Texas has areas that meet the exact description you have for California.

With my income state income tax becomes a massive consideration. I also don't think there are any LCOL areas of CA with decent schools.