Generator Recommendations

Here's my take on this. While a permanent, outdoor generator is convenient, & probably ideal, it's also mega expensive ... & now you have a small "addition" next to your house, not to mention maintenance & repairs. If your not your own mechanic, now you need a tech to come out to you! Big money there. THEN you need a place to store fuel, like you said. Even for us out here in what most MA people call "the sticks", where we lose power 4 times a year during a storm-free season, I could not justify the expense of a permanent fixture. Portables you can bring anywhere - if a relative needs one in an emergency, you can go help them out. If you need power where there's none, just wheel it over, or load it in the truck. If it breaks & your not mechanically inclined, you drop it off at the repair shop. Cheap & easy.

I like Yanche's idea that he spoke of in another post several weeks back: Buy 2 portable gen sets. No need to get anything as expensive as my inverter either, unless you want max quiet & max fuel economy for a given size, but at a MUCH higher price. Just a regular alternator Honda, Yamaha, or Generac -- 6,500 watts will run just about everything your going to need - and a 6,500 watt unit won't guzzle down gasoline, diesel, or propane like a 10k or 15k unit will. Then for your second set, a 2000w or preferably less unit to keep the fridge & heat on during the night when you don't need extra power. Sips fuel. Generac makes a few tri-fuel units that will run on natty gas, propane, & gasoline if you wanted to stick with one unit.

Like someone said earlier - steer clear of china junk. They're cheap, but WHEN they break good luck finding parts for them ... or anyone who knows anything about them.

And another thing: If you go real cheap you also run the risk of voltage spikes - like I had. Fried my ballast in the fan light, and my motion detector socket on the porch with my first $325 Cummins Tool gen. If both legs aren't closely balanced, one leg will spike up real high & cook all your lower end electronics. Not worth it. Any Honda or Yamaha will never do this.

If you plan on an automatic transfer switch, you may want to look into how fast a diesel would start. I need to hold the glow plug for 30 sec. to a minute if it's 40 or below outside ,then hit the start while holding the glow plug switch. Now it does have 5 wires for auto start, I feel it is better in my case to go manually, I wouldn't want a dead battery if it doesn't start and keeps trying.

As far as the noise goes it shouldn't be a huge issue. House is masonry and seems to do very well buffering sound. The generator would be all the way over on the side of the new garage, neighbor up the hill probably won't appreciate it as much though.

SMITTY wrote:...... not to mention maintenance & repairs. If your not your own mechanic, now you need a tech to come out to you!

Well Smitty I have a little bit of experience with diesels owning two trucks for all that time plus when my old man retired he was full time maintenance supervisor in National Guard.

Still considering getting propane, I have to find out what largest tank is you can get for residential use that you can carry in pickup truck. I won't be left having to depend on delivery for fuel..

while at Napa, the head repair man uses the store to supply batteries. He is the regional guy for Generac. services the
umteen stand by units for the high nose crowd...

he buy's 40 - 50 batteries a month.....conststantly!!!! thier is a matainance factor most folks don realize till the service guy hands then a huge bill....

sorry sir: thats not covered under warrentee.........

or the other side.......expensive "service contract" ...that equates to calling the guy during the storm and outage for the "covered" problem but finding out they cant get to you due to the overwhelming volume of n0-starts!!!

always the freekin battery...... or stale fuel....... he always brings in core batteries that have exploded. i mean wicked bad blew apart from lack of water due to overcharging of the onboard battery "maintainer".....

personally the units that do the automatic monthly start and test that are on a propane system look the best to me but they are way to much money for me ...AT This AGE

I can still wheel out the kawasaki or honda and hook up the neccessay cords and keep it full....


best story of last year is the local community of Lake Naomi has a stand by unit. cost em 80 thousand...its a 250kw unit or somethin. finally needed it after standing dormant for 10 years and it was no way gonna run. it was never hooked up correctly to do the monthly run and test and the 10 year old fuel was sludge. the oil and filters were mice filled and thick as glue.
needless to say the property matainance guy way fired from his 60k/yr gravy job......

Richard S. wrote:As far as h noise goes it shouldn't be a huge issue. House is masonry and seems to do very well buffering sound. The generator would be all the way over on the side of the new garage, neighbor u the hill probably won't appreciate it as much though.

SMITTY wrote:...... not to mention maintenance & repairs. If your not your own mechanic, now you need a tech to come out to you!

Well Smitty I have a little bit of experience with diesels owning two trucks for all that time plus when my old man retired he was full time maintenance supervisor in National Guard.

Still considering getting propane, I have to find out what largest tank is you can get for residential use that you can carry in pickup truck. I won't be left having to depend on delivery for fuel..

its 100 lb tank. local fill is 70 bucks. it holds 22 gallons. its the way to go . i have 3 in series and just go open and close valves to switch tanks. they are for cook stove and back up permanant space heaters

Richard S. wrote:I have to find out what largest tank is you can get for residential use that you can carry in pickup truck. I won't be left having to depend on delivery for fuel..

100 pounders. Tractor supply has them in stock.

So Rich, what did you end up doing?

I have been dreaming about this little gem, same diesel as my tractor, I like that.. http://www.generatorsales.com/order/KB9 ... page=KB900

grumpy wrote:So Rich, what did you end up doing?
I have been dreaming about this little gem, same diesel as my tractor, I like that.. http://www.generatorsales.com/order/KB9 ... page=KB900

Yeah, thats a nice little unit! Jeez, the options are expensive, though....

Yes, that is a nice generator mated with a very popular well made diesel engine. I've got a whole house generator already but if I were starting from scratch I'll look for a used six pole alternator and mate it with a diesel engine. With six poles the 60 Hz speed would be 1200 RPM. The lower speed engine could be a small automobile engine, running slightly above idle. That would make a quiet rig. Six pole generators are common on railroad "reefer" cars.

Deep Sea Electronics, http://www.deepseaplc.com/ makes lots of nice control systems for setting the engine RPM and generator voltage.

Yanche wrote:Six pole generators are common on railroad "reefer" cars.

Those units are very impressive. Many of them had 2-71 Detroit diesels that run for decades.

Rob R. wrote:Those units are very impressive. Many of them had 2-71 Detroit diesels that run for decades.

Yeah, I can still see them on E-bay from time to time.

009to090 wrote:

grumpy wrote:So Rich, what did you end up doing?
I have been dreaming about this little gem, same diesel as my tractor, I like that.. http://www.generatorsales.com/order/KB9 ... page=KB900

Yeah, thats a nice little unit! Jeez, the options are expensive, though....

Perkins makes a nice 10 and 15 kw genset as well, I am having a hard time finding out where the engines are made thou.

While surfing for info on diesel generators I came across a site offering new made in China 5KW units for $500.

http://puyangpower.en.made-in-china.com ... 00ES-.html

Here's a photo.



Looks similar to many of the units sold on the Internet for much more. If you look closely at the referenced web site it's a marketing company selling Chinese made products directly to a world market. There is a minimum buy of 20 units and 72 get packed into the smallest shipping cargo container. It would be interested to see what the delivered to USA cost might be. Let's assume the shipping and import cost double the cost to $1000. How many coal burners out there would be interested in one or more units? FOB the Baltimore, MD docks. Even the minimum buy would be a lot of money for someone to front but let's see what the interest is.

grumpy wrote:So Rich, what did you end up doing?

We went with small 5K portable Briggs and Stratton. After some deliberation it was hard to justify the expense of a larger one. We have a larger dryer type receptacle that is primarily for the compressor in the garage and giant extension for it so we can feed it back. (And yes I know we need to turn off the main switch). What I really need is indicator power from the street is on before the switch.

Richard S. wrote:What I really need is indicator power from the street is on before the switch.

Thats the exact reason I installed a new Meter box that had slots for 8ea. one-inch CBs. The house Main Distribution Panel was fed thru lugs at the bottom of the Meter box. Now, if I am one generator power (Main CB is off), I use one of the slots in the Meter box to power a seperate 15AMp light circuit. If this 'special' light comes on (its in the kitchen) then we know street power is back on.
I know I posted pics of this setup, somewhere on this site....

Edit....
Part of the story is here...
Coffee 10-29-11
I know I did a writeup in another Generator thread too.


I found the pics....

New Meter box being installed...


Main Distribution Panel with generator CB and Interlock installed....