Good Generators

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grailsback USER_AVATAR
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Re: Good Generators

Postby GRailsback » Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:16 am

txsmkmstr wrote:Good Generators is a broad spectrum subject. You should define your anticipated needs and $$$'s willing to achieve the goal. I would love a whole-house set up but can't justify the price at this moment. Having endured a 3 day outage many years ago I knew I needed SOMETHING to get me thru similar situations. I initially settled on a decent Generac 5500/6500 "portable" unit. I never did get it properly hooked up (transfer switch, etc.) and used a time or two.

I had some issues with the concept. First, it was LOUD and I do mean loud. Forget trying to sleep or do much critical thinking. That also has a tendency to attract unwanted attention, although I was never starved for power. The other thing was portability - oh sure it had pneumatic tires but pushing one across a snow/ice covered yard was a pretty big challenge and not fun in total darkness. The third item concerned the output - pretty hot voltage pumping out 129 VAC. I avoided any sensitive electronic hookups such as computers or TV's.

I rethought my needs and dialed in exactly what I wanted to power for say 3 days or more. Cold beer, frozen meat, light and heat were the must have items regardless of what time of year it was. A/C would be nice but not required. We know the Honda line of inverter generators are at the top of the list (plus a few others) but the price point was again - beyond my means. Started to research Predator (HarborFreight) and Champion inverter technology units. I initially bought a Champion 2000 watt (surge) unit and fell in love with it. Super quiet and appeared to be well built. On top of that I could actually pick it up and carry it (carefully :laughing7: ) so no more rolling thru the snow. This took care of my chest freezer and full size fridge along with an LED floodlight or two. I made the decision to pick up a second unit and finding both on sale meant I had two for less than a similar size Honda unit. Note that inverter technology is very stable and clean power - I could use the TV and computer with it if I absolutely needed to.

I re-wired my furnace airhandler unit to have a standard plug in connection. With natural gas the fan only needed a 15 amp circuit so this solved my heat problem. I'm now able to run all my needs at the same time and put things to a nice unplanned 56 hour test just a month or so ago. All systems are go. FWIW, I did test out a small A/C window unit that I had and it would run on a single unit with nothing else. I would have to do a temporary install as I redid my old windows and abandoned the window A/C but have it available.

Something to consider when going this route is routing the extension cords into the house. I always hated running them through a window (after screen removal) and closing a towel on the cords so I installed a wall pass-through with back-to-back duplex receptacles. The common tab was removed so each inlet was separated. A double male ended extension cord was cobbled together (safety hazard if hooked up without common sense) and that connects the outside generators to the house. Now I have hot outlet (one for each generator) in the house for my cords.

Anyway - likely not what this thread is about but I have time on my hands and sick of looking at snow and the thermometer - too darn early to start drinking beer. :whiteflag: My set-up for those interested.

Image

Built a little caddy to shuffle them around in the garage - good for my bi-weekly test run....

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Its never to early to start drinking beer. Ever
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Re: Good Generators

Postby bsooner75 » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:35 am

Thanks for the feedback.

+1 on the beer. I however did find out that it can be too early to drink whiskey.


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Re: Good Generators

Postby txsmkmstr » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:39 am

Smoking Piney wrote:
-Buy the biggest generator you can afford. The more you can run in your house, the better.

-Use stabilizer in the generator gas - you don't want the gas turning to jelly. I made this mistake once with my Generac and had to replace the carb.

-Exercise your generator at least twice a month. Start it up and let it run 10 or 15 minutes to keep it ready.


-Change oil on schedule. My Generac is good for 100 hours between changes.



True words right there. I'd like to add that if you go the portable route it would be very wise to "practice" setting things up once or twice while the weather is nice. You really don't want to be fumbling around in rain/snow/dark learning your set-up.
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txsmkmstr USER_AVATAR
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Re: Good Generators

Postby txsmkmstr » Fri Feb 19, 2021 8:45 am

GTR wrote:Boomer as bad as I hate to put this out on the inner webs, really don’t think you can go wrong with Honda.


I agree and sincerely hope my choice (Champion) was taken as a definitive answer. If your wallet will allow then get the best you can afford - still, i would emphasize the inverter technology and decibel (subjective) level regardless of brand. Really looking forward to what prospective generator owners settle on. There's a huge comfort factor knowing you won't be without power it the short term. It's a fun subject.
Custom LSG 24x40 - 36" Blackstone - (others - R & O FatGirl, ETSC RK-250, Tejas 1628 - all sold)
OkieGal
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Re: Good Generators

Postby OkieGal » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:22 pm

I appreciate this thread. A lot of good points and personal experience.
I think I am kind of in the middle.

I first bought a generator in 1999 because we get a lot of tornadoes (also was looking at Y2K, dontcha know ;) )
It was a Coleman 5000 watt and didn’t even have wheels. I put it on a small moving dolly and kept in the garage. It cost $500 – LOT of money to me back then.
I kept StaBil in the gas and was faithful about starting it regularly… for a while.
After about 10 years of not needing it, I had fallen down on my duties and when we got a big ice storm, it wouldn’t start.
I got someone to rebuild the carb and we started it, and of course the electricity immediately came back on. I had been without power for 4 days.
So I got back on my maintenance schedule, but I told myself that when I got settled in my “final”home, I was going to invest in a whole house generator.

That day came a few years ago – I am in the house in which I hope to spend the rest of my life. And of course I’m a lot older now and that pull-start Coleman was a hassle. BUT – dang, those things cost a LOT of money! I just couldn’t justify it.

So I compromised. I bought a 10,000 watt generator with electric start from Sams. I keep it on a trickle charger and run it every other month.
It’s not one of the name-brand ones mentioned earlier, but it does okay for me. We had a big ice storm last October and lost power for a couple days. I was at work during the day and ran the genny for about 4 hours the first evening. The next evening it ran for about 45 minutes and the power came back.

Last spring I had an interlock installed at the breaker box so I could run most of the house with 1 cord from the generator. There were problems
with that, so I’m going to have another electrician look at it, but I have plenty of extension cords.

The bottom line to me was: I have owned a generator for 22 years and have actually operated one for less than 5 hours.
(If I hadn’t dropped the ball with the Coleman, I could add 4 days to that number, but still - only 4 days and 5 hours in 22 years!)
Really hard to justify the initial expense and continuing maintenance of a whole house unit.

But here is another aspect. I keep this genny in the tan shed/workshop in this picture and when we have trouble coming, I move it up to
my garage. For this event, our weathermen started out saying it would be a week of extreme temps but no precip. Then they said we would
get snow but not ice or major winds, so the power outage risk was very low. Even though I should know better, I listened to them.
I was lucky that I never lost power, but if I had, getting the genny on THIS side of those 3.5’ drifts would have been challenging!

This has been a long-winded way to say I guess I have come full-circle and am reconsidering the larger investment.
txsmkmstr is so right about the “huge comfort factor’ - and the older you get, the bigger that factor is! :lol:

I CANNOT get this picture rotated. :scratch: :roll:
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