OT: Need Portable Generator Recommendation

In my straight job, I engineer telecom systems. One of the main considerations is standby power, as well as tower loads, microwave paths, etc.

At my pre-divorce house, I installed a 20KW NG fueled unit. This involved pouring a slab, wiring a transfer panel, and re-wiring the house panels to steer emergency power to "essentials", i.e., main refrigerator, "beer" refrigerator, furnaces (not an issue in FL, but certainly important in Chicago), telephone switch, satellite receiver and TV distribution, TV's, garage doors, alarm system, engine block heater outlets, etc. Remember to add a couple of open receptacles, as you will discover that you need them.

I twisted the arms of some of the contractors with whom I worked everyday, and got what I considered a deal at about $22K total. The used Onan genset was $15K of that. The automatic transfer panel was $3K used.

At my new house, I have a Honda 5KW gasoline genset on wheels, with the panel and manual transfer panel pre-wired. Now, instead of everything switching over automatically, I have to wheel out the genset, fuel it, attach the cable to the transfer panel, pull-start the genset, and throw the switch on the transfer panel. Total cost

don't forget to check local codes re LP

some cities prohibit anything larger than a 30-lb tank on-premise due to explosion hazard in a fire

several years (let's see.....2005-1978...OK, a long time ago) I installed some 5 kW Onan's for the city and county PD's as part of their comm system upgrades, the two in-town had to be NG, the one out at the cable tower for the county's base stations were LP

oh, one more thing..........the 5 kW unit for the city PD tended to surge badly with just a pair of 60-watt solid state bases plugged in, but when we added the old 100-W tube-type fire dept base to the load, it settled down

it took about 300 watts minimum load to get it to run on-speed

How much do you want to spend? I bought and installed a 15KW Generac unit last year for the same reason (North Carolina) and the unit was about $3,200.00 and comes with an automatic transfer switch (12 breaker). I was also considering a portable but figured that if I was away when it was needed, my wife wouldn't be able to hook it up. Another problem is that if there is a massive power failure, the gas stations can't pump and I don't like the idea of keeping 15 or 20 gallons of gas around. Mine runs on propane since that is what we have here (no NG in the area) but it is capable of running on either one with minor adjustments. If I was going to run it on NG, it would only be capable of producing 12KW and in that case, I would have probably just bought the 12KW unit for around $2,600 and saved myself some money.

TBone, how has the Generac been working out for you? I work for a Generac dealer and have installed a bunch of them. Zero troubles except for the starter motors were poor on the first year or so of production. The later models have a Delco starter and they have been good. If your starter is gold colored you have a newer one, the early ones were black and it will fail sooner than later. Greg

Hi, Tried to email you but it bounced right back! I have a 5 HP Briggs powered generator setup to run on natural gas; pressure regulator & all just hook up the line. Don't recall the output, but if you're interested I'll check it for you. I also purschased a carb. so I could convert it back to gas. I'm in. Ga., so I don't know if shipping would be cost prohibitive. I don't need it so I'll take $800 for it. ~ Paul aka "Tha Driver"

America - made in China! :-(

Personally, I have a Generac SVP-5000 since here in NC, we get our fair share of hurricanes and power outages. I've got mine hooked up outside to my distribution panel and it runs everything in the entire house except the AC. I have an electric hot water heater and it'll run that too but when that's demanding current, you can't really run anything else. If I were to purchase another generator, it'd be another Generac but I'd get one a little larger and one with electric start. I'd rather have a fixed automatic standby unit fired by propane (since I have propane heat) but for what you are looking for, you should look at the 75D. It's diesel, runs at a lower RPM and should handle the load required by a household. Trust me, the first time your power goes out and you start it up and have power to everything in your house, it'll all be worth it...the misses will love you even more.

After reading replies I had to laugh... folks had you pouring slabs... electric start....electric sub panels etc.

I had a glancing blow and two back to back direct hits last year. after first hit I went to a big box store and bought a portable electric welder which also was a generator providing a single dual 120vac outlet and a single 220vac outlet, 5500 watts surge, 4000 watt continuous.

125 amp stick welder....4 stroke gas Robins (subaru) power plant.

It did nicely for me....about same needs as you stated cept a side by side fridge/freezer combo.

a little less than 1gal/hr. the problem was gas.... couldnt be bought since after the first one to a couple weeks after third....the ole dodge pu truck was my gas station.

Made by Lincoln Electric... model is powerarc 5500. It weighs a little over 120 lbs if I recall and cost me $650 I think.

Henry

Forgot....9.0 HP recoil start...bought at home depot.

Henry

Thanks Paul, but yours is probably a bit small for what I'm trying to accomplish. 5HP does not equate to 5KW, more like 2.2 or perhaps 2.5 KW, which won't meet my needs.

In calculating my load I anticipate somewhere around 2.5~3.5 KW will be my sustained/static load for 2 refrigerators, 1 deep freeze, 27" TV and satellite rcvr and a couple lamps and 2~3 fans. The refrigeration/freezer load is of course cyclical so as long as we can all stay focused on the need to keep them -CLOSED- and not stand there with the door open deciding what to have will minimize compressor time and leave us some headroom for an electric skillet/fry pan and an occasional load of clothes through the washer. Running the AC is completely out of the question; we'll just have to suffer. Running the central air would require minimum 10~12½ KW to get it to start (locked rotor amps) and I really don't feel like this is something I need to spend $4~5 grand on. Besides, a genset that big will be a fuel pig. Refrigeration load, TV/Sat and some lights & fans will get us by.

When planning the size and calculating load, you want to base your figures on 50% of the capacity of the genset. Running a 2.5 kw load on a 2.5kw genset is a recipe for disappointment and disaster. Been there & done that.

Also as I'm read>Hi,

If you do not need electricity quick, or when you are gone, a portable is fine. I have installed NG power generators for many people with basements that would be flooded without backup power. A portable sucks if it is raining hard, or nobody is home. Also in here in tropical North Dakota, a few hours without heat and broken water pipes are a big problem. That portable genny will not save you if you are not home! Many times I hear comments of the cost to remodel the flooded lower level of a home. The ~$6000 to install a NG generator is small to these people. Eight years ago we had a nasty spring ice storm, then it got cold. Many areas were without electricity for 2-3 weeks. I know of some people that were not home, went south for a few weeks. The standby genny started and ran for the week or so the power was out! A portable would have done them no good.

Myself, I have a portable. 15 years in this home and never any water in the finished basement. For me it is more of a convenience thing. Living in the city we are rarely without power for more than an hour or so, and that has been rare. The last time we ran the genny we had just returned from a day at the lake. We were hungry and tired, and a storm had just come through and wiped out the power. so I drug out the portable so we could fire up the microwave! Greg

Doggone Langerhans you been looking at my resume? I'm fcc-licensed MW guy myself (Farinon DVM6/45) and Mitel-certified on phone systems. Small world, huh? We run 7.5 KW natural gas Onans along our natural gas pipeline ROW for obvious reasons, the gas is there. These are overkill for the 6-gig M/W repeaters but there's a small window A/C and an occasional

100W VHF base station and SCADA RTU. In those few tower sites -not- on the ROW we keep a 200# propane tank because unlike gasoline propane doesn't go bad in long term storage or gum up the lines plus I can call a guy to go deliver/fillup and never have to leave the office.

But for HOME... well, that's a whole other matter. I've convinced myself that gasoline will generally be easier to deal with and I can always drop a siphon hose in one of the vehicle tanks if/when supply runs short. That might also cost-justify my thoughts about adding an aux tank on the RAM.

Size-wise I'd love to have a 7.5KW but something that size might need to be trailer-mounted and I don't have room to store a trailer. 7.5KW also sucks down a lot more fuel and STILL won't pull the central air. 5KW

-will- meet our needs as long as I can keep the wife supplied with her hormone pills ;-) and keep the fridge doors closed.

No Xfr panel, even manual pull not really in the budget, plus I'm in an unincorporated area of the county. Not rural, but we can get by w/shit out here they might lock you up for in town, like pulling the meter and clamping straight in w/suicide lugs (obviously no little guys around) or more elegant, putting a 30A twist-lok on a short pigtail out the bottom of the service panel and reverse-feeding through a separate dual breaker (Mains OPEN of course). Po' folk got po' ways... Anyone asks, man that's the -welder- hookup. ;-)

Alas, I digress. I was ma> snipped-for-privacy@dodgecity.cc wrote:

your correct... my bad for answering the posters question. READ the subject title and origional content !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Henry

Yes, you can use NG, LPG and Gasoline, but if the Gen set is supposed to support your household in an emergency, you must consider the reliability of the fuel supply, the expected run-time as well as noise. I would not consider any other fuel except diesel for efficiency reasons nor would I consider a 2 pole alternator (3600 rpm). The unit should be capable of running for at least 5 days without servicing. I consider these as a minimum. So, a silenced 10KW(or more), 4 pole (1800 rpm), manual switch over panel at the power entrance of the house and a 500 gallon heating fuel tank (2 weeks) would be the way to go. You should be able to do this for 5 - 8 K$, if you do the work yourself. You can have electric backup for less, but not without sacrificing dependability, efficiency, duration or economy. Steve

Basement??? What's a basement :-)) Here along the TX Gulf coast the water table is 10 feet. Slab city. You dig a basement it either comes with a continuous duty sump pump or a free swimming pool built-in.

Wife is home all the time & we do not travel in inclement weather plus we have adult kids within 5 miles that could get over here if there was a serious issue. A portable w/pull start will do just fine.

We're not in a flood plain, even tropical storm Allison (June 2001) that dropped 36" on us in 2½ days didn't flood -our- neighborhood, tho lots of others closer into town did. All T.S. Allison taught me was that I needed a bigger sat dish to address the rain fade. Put up a 40-inch (1 meter) dish and now we still watch when neighbor can't. By the way, total power outage in T.S. Allison for us was only 6 hrs. Many others were out for as long as a week.

So far so good but now that I have installed it, I will probably never need it. I must say that the way they wire houses here in NC made it a real PITA to install it.

The only trouble I had was one of the fuses in the transfer switch was bad and it was not a whole lot of fun trying to find a replacement. None of the local supply houses carried it and neither did the HD where I bought the unit. Come to think of it, they also don't carry the replacement oil filters for it either but fortunantly I found the correct automotive filter for it.

Gee, thanks for scaring the shit out of me. I went out to look and it has the gold colored one so hopefully, I'll be ok there.

We get allot of people calling for oil filters and a odd part or two. HD here plus a couple other stores sell them so we get to service them too. I too had trouble finding fuses other than Generac. We generally special order them from a local electrical wholesaler. We get a few that install themselves and it does not work when they are done. Of course it is warranty in their mind, but it ALWAYS is an installation problem. Once installed they have been running great. The first few that we got from the factory had some bugs to iron out, but after the initial shot they have been great generators. Far better than the last model they built! Those help keep me employed! My boss has two 8K units on his house, both are broke down at the moment! Greg

Yep, I got my First-Phone back in 1967, my EE in 1972, and currently design comm systems including conventional, trunked and cellular sites,

911 call centers, as well as big telephone switching, and all the IT networking stuff.

Just a couple of thoughts......I'm concerned about the "suicide lugs" approach. You need to plan the electrical loads for:

1. what happens when the mains drop out?
2. what happens in a brown out?
3. what is the start-up load when connecting the genset?
4. how you are going to provide essential power to certain things that are normally fed through a 3-phase 209VAC distribution panel when your generator is a 2-phase 240VAC device?
5. what are the implications of inductive loads at both #1 & #3 ?
6. what happens when the mains come back online and you want to switch back? Your gen will lose a backfeed battle with those mains. Bigtime.
7. a 5KW genset is only good for 40A continuous (if that). How are you gonna balance that load? Pray that the fishtank heater doesn't switch on at the same time as the furnace blower, while your daughter is running her hairdryer?

Despite the amusement claimed by others, all this stuff is just basic safety. It seems like you understand, but some of the kibitzers obviously don't.

160 lbs dry

Henry

In retrospect, it might not be too great or costly a task to install a small (50A) sub-panel and move or extend (breakers and all) the handful of circuits I've identified as "necessary" over to it. This would allow me the ability to still manually connect via twist-lok connector the sub panel either to commercial power or to the gen set and be isolated from the main. I'll hit the flea markets next weekend too, there's big one N. of town that just might have a manual transfer switch. Barring that, how about a 2-pole double-throw NEMA-3 starter w/a little manual override switch on the coil? (remember, po' folk and po' ways).

Any gensets have GFCI ?