I want to know how to prevent my house from freezing (I'm in New England) in the middle of winter during a multiday power outage. Today, I run a 7kW generator that can keep the oil furnace running and the fans to circulate the air through the heat-exchangers (it is a multi-zone system).

It seems that I need soft-start compressors and coordination between the different units so that they don't all try to start at once.

I don't care if the house gets down to 40F during this period. I just don't want the interior water pipes to freeze.