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Backup Generators

Not sure of your area but I looked into solar awhile back(for meter sharing purposes) it was going to be around $25k for panels and 2 batteries. If your someplace that’s sunny a lot it’d be worth looking into
 
hoz53 said:
Storm here the other day and my power at house has been off 2 days. Happens often enough Im thinking of getting a backup generator. Im wondering if anyone here has experience with them and mabie some advice wat to get. Im thinking of the ones that are basically permanent and run off nat gas. May endup going with a portable though. Thanks
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Having a Champion electric start commercial type contractor/home generator on wheels, if I had to do it over, I'd have gone much larger. I too lost power two days ago from a big storm. Still on generator power. This morning the wife was getting ready for work. Blow drying her hair after a shower where hot water use caused the 80 gallon(electric) hot water heater to cycle. Well pump also filling the tank caused the generator breaker to pop. Generator is around 8000/10,000. Well, hot water heater, well pump, blow dryer and if just one or two of the 5 fridge/ freezers we have decided to kick on, its already too much for my generator. After doing the math, I'd need around 16-20,000 watts to maintain the entire house without turning off certain breakers while running other items. My next purchase WILL be a stand alone generator hooked to my 500 lb propane pig. I can do most of the work so cost won't be too bad.
 
284winner said:
Having a Champion electric start commercial type contractor/home generator on wheels, if I had to do it over, I'd have gone much larger. I too lost power two days ago from a big storm. Still on generator power. This morning the wife was getting ready for work. Blow drying her hair after a shower where hot water use caused the 80 gallon(electric) hot water heater to cycle. Well pump also filling the tank caused the generator breaker to pop. Generator is around 8000/10,000. Well, hot water heater, well pump, blow dryer and if just one or two of the 5 fridge/ freezers we have decided to kick on, its already too much for my generator. After doing the math, I'd need around 16-20,000 watts to maintain the entire house without turning off certain breakers while running other items. My next purchase WILL be a stand alone generator hooked to my 500 lb propane pig. I can do most of the work so cost won't be too bad.
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women use so much electric that a small nuclear powered generating plant should be built alongside the house :D
 
Generac is probably one of the best home emergency generators you can buy today. A whole home unit 22KW unit m(200A Service) unit with the automatic transfer switch will run you about $5k. Then there is installation and if you are going to power the whole panel, then you should use an electrician to do the wiring. The generator and the transfer switch you can install.

When we finally move back on land, this is what will be installed in our house. Right now my boat has an 8KW Westerbeke diesel generator. Although it isn't auto start.

I use to sell generators from 5KW to 10,000KW. Back before Generac you would be looking at three times that cost to equip a home with total backup.

Here is a link for reference. https://www.generac.com/all-product...kup-generators#?cat=6&cat=214&cat=217&cat=249
 
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hoz53 said:
i think 5500 would be enough at this house. ive gotta make my load list to find out. I have one of those clampon ammeters so i can check everything and get the true draw. Mite be some surprises. once inawhile we get someone crashing into a pole and have a power autage because of it. Thanks
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Like I said I can run my entire house water pump washer dryer anything with no trouble but if I turn on the air it will trip the breaker on the generator
 
spaniel said:
If you have access to natural gas and the budget, that's the best way to go in most circumstances. I guess is the NG system goes down you're screwed.....
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My house went through Hurricane Katrina. I wasn't there but when I got back, the pilot light on my gas water heater was still burning. I had no lights and my phone could only call local numbers on the BellSouth switch but I had hot and cold running water. I came back with my brother-in-law's generator. I quickly realized that it was one thing to have a generator and quite another thing to be able to get fuel for it. I ended up running the generator one hour in the morning and two hours in the evening, mostly to keep the fridge cold. Family members had to bring me gasoline from 100 miles away. Fortunately, Mississippi Power was able to restore electric service in a week. My brother, who went through Hurricane Ivan the year before, had predicted that it would take a month.

My experience with the natural gas service after Katrina convinced me that I could rely on it as a generator fuel. I decided to go for flexibility and set up a dual-fuel generator. This way I could power my house with NG or load it up and take it to a friend, to be fueled by gasoline, if needed. I bought a new 5 kW roll-around generator and got a dual-fuel conversion kit from US Carburetion. I have a valve and quick disconnect fitting on my gas meter and can get the generator out and running in about 30 minutes. The whole setup cost me less than $1,000 and over the last 12 years has cost nothing to maintain. Unlike small gasoline engines, NG generators don't age appreciably. I just drag it out once a year and run it for thirty minutes or so with about 2 kW of load attached.

Some of my neighbors decided that they didn't even want to know that there had been a storm and installed "whole house" generators that cost north of $10,000. I think there's an annual service contract they have to pay. That's their decision.
 
Good info here and something I've considered. A shooting buddy is an electrician for the largest co. in the area and I once mentioned Generac to him. He was very negative about Generac and I didn't pursue why. That's probably the reason I've not followed thru to get something. We have a 500 gal underground LP tank that rarely gets used so I'd think that would be a good fuel source for a whole house unit.
Any experts know why he was so negative about Generac?
 
Jalen said:
Not sure of your area but I looked into solar awhile back(for meter sharing purposes) it was going to be around $25k for panels and 2 batteries. If your someplace that’s sunny a lot it’d be worth looking into
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I have been thinking about that and in my job may be helping build a solar farm soon. ill be looking into it for myself. I know a local lumber yard put a bunch of solar panels on their warehouses. I think they said it would pay for itself in 5 years and then they would have no electric utility cost. Have you put a solar system in? Thanks for the info.
 
Cemetery21 said:
Good info here and something I've considered. A shooting buddy is an electrician for the largest co. in the area and I once mentioned Generac to him. He was very negative about Generac and I didn't pursue why. That's probably the reason I've not followed thru to get something. We have a 500 gal underground LP tank that rarely gets used so I'd think that would be a good fuel source for a whole house unit.
Any experts know why he was so negative about Generac?
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thanks for that info-- that 500 gallon LP tank sounds like a good source for fuel.
 
Jdne5b said:
I have a whole house Kohler, with automatic transfer switch and runs off the house propane. It came with the house so I don't know exactly how much it cost the original owner but I'll see if I can dig out the paper work.

We were working outside a week ago and it came on. It was Saturday but the test day is Friday.. hmm.. check the power company website... yep. We were in a reported outage. Only lasted a few hours but it was nice not having to worry about it or to drag out a portable and get it fired up just in time for the power to come back on.
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Found it. This is from 2015 when the original owners installed this generator. Not near as bad as I expected. We get some nasty ice storms so it might come in handy.
20200612_092138.jpg
 
338 dude said:
I know Perkins makes a great diesel engine but if I were to install a back up generator of that size and that much money it would have to be natural gas I would worry about trying to preserve diesel and keep it from gelling much the same as the problems with gasoline storage
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I worked on the construction of a microsoft data center once. They had 10 Big Cat generators for backup and they ran them on diesel. I dont know how available Nat Gas was there at the time though. Im sure they had a good reason(s) to run diesal. Im not gonna spend even 10k on this project and I dont want to store diesel or gas either. Im not really trying to prep for a catastrophe just outages. Im by myself and if things really break down ill just get outta here. Thanks
 
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