In the market for a generator

bjp_ne_elec said:

What brand and Model Number?

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Generac/Guardian 10KW with automatic xfer switch. I am not a rep for these. Our County Sherriffs Dept bought two and had us install them. I was impressed enough to have another customer buy one as well. Again we just did the install and made sure she knew that is all we were doing. Our AHJ acccepts the disconnect that is on the generator for a disconnecting means. Right or wrong that is just what it is.

These burn almost 2 gal of LP/hr at full load so you will need a sizeable tank.

76nemo said:

Anyone installed or have an opinion on this set???


http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/Guardian-UltraSource-4583/p1267.html

I was looking at this awhile back when the HO shot it down for the price. Now that we are in the midst of another good winter storm, she's scratching her head again:-?

Anyone???

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im not a fan of those portable generators. i had to install a gen tran today and the lady couldnt get her generator started. she kept pulling and pulling and nothing happened. an automatic generator is so much better. just wire it up, set the exercise, it tests itself weekly and starts on its own. no messing with cords in the middle of a blizzard or ice storm

for the price of that generator brad, i would go automatic. i own a 10kw by guardian and it was around 2500 dollars. only problem is the choice of fuel. either LP or NG. i have NG and it was 600 dollars to install pipes to it.

i would never instal a gentran in my house

Generac Gens

Generac Gens

The company I work for is a factory licensed sales and service company for Generac. They are good units and you can get then starting at 7Kw up to 36Kw I believe it is in an air cooled unit, bigger if you want to go liquid cooled. They can be programed to run at a certain time every week if you want. Depending on the size you can get a "load shedding" ATS for it that will do 16 circuits as well as the rest of the house. The load goes above 80% of the generators capcity it will shut off the non essential circuits and leave the 16 "emergency" circuits powered. Problem with that paticular ATS is $$$$$$.
We just finished a set up like this on a 48Kw liquid cooled unit running off LP. Surpising how quiet that big of a gen actually was.

76nemo said:

Anyone installed or have an opinion on this set???


http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/Guardian-UltraSource-4583/p1267.html

I was looking at this awhile back when the HO shot it down for the price. Now that we are in the midst of another good winter storm, she's scratching her head again:-?

Anyone???

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I have set these up for several HOs.
One guy connected it to his 4000sf house and forgot to turn off all of the loads including his AC units. It ran the whole house, no problem!
Down side. It is loud and uses lots of gasoline!

charlietuna said:

Speaking from experience--hurricanes can teach you a lot-- consider a few things before you invest. It's a luxury to own an automatic generator--but your prime interest is FUEL ! I have struggled thru quite a few hurricanes--one for 26 days and the last for 16 days without power. One of my neighbor's companies had a complete automated system(12kw) installed since he worked out of his house. Only trouble he was out of LP gas on the third day and there was no way a delivery truck was available for 12 days! Of course once the power goes "OFF" you don't know how long it's gonna remain "OFF"? So you must conserve! The average household just consumes like they are still being supplied by the power company....

Being an electrician you can improvize --- now i was on a well, but had LP gas for cooking and water heating. My neighbors planned for nothing !!! I had a 7kw portable unit that i wired into my house at 240 volts. I was very critical to what that generator fed, not because of electrical load, but because of fuel consumption. I ran a single circuit to each of my neighbor's houses to feed their refrigerator/freezers. I also cross connected my water system with their houses to provide them water. They did not have gas so they could use my showers for warm water as needed. The generator was started every morning at 7:00am and ran until 11:00PM. I disconnected all my appliances at the breakers to prevent them from being damaged by poor power from the generator. I disconnected all the TV sets and used an old black and white portable for news broadcasts. Gasoline for the first week was hard to find--got up one morning and drove over 100 miles to find gas and then it's rationed like 10 gallon max! After a week, gas was not a problem--i was burning about ten gallons a day and the neighbors were bringing their share. Consider the fuel source when considering a permenent system.

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Charlietuna:

It's good to know there are still "neighborhoods" where folks look out for each other.

It's been my experience that disasters often bring out the best in people.

The setup I installed at my compound (home, office, warehouse,yard) is a 400amp service rated ATS hooked up to a 22kw guardian LP ultra quiet (exercises at 1/2 speed) with a separate 500 gallon LP tank. It easily runs the whole compound with very little conservation. We've also got a 20kw wind turbine, are shopping for solar pv, and are also looking seriously at a geo-exchange system to heat/cool the barn & office.

I'm also stocking up on ammo, food, medical supplies and other stuff.

Life is good, we've got work.

Sounds like the sky is falling on the left coast!

Nah, the sky fell completely out here many years ago. We actually have to look down to see it these days.

Really, I just don't want to have to depend on an inept and corrupt government to take care of me and my family in any kind of catastrophy or calamity.

I've witnessed first hand how "on my own" I am after a major earthquake. So we get out the camping gear (motorhome) and get on with life. That frees up uncle SAM to look after others who weren't prepared. I don't want to live in the high school gym, sleep on a cot in the middle of a sea of other people, screaming kids, etc.

I love my independance and intend to keep it for as long as I can.

If she's giving you the evil eye it's too late. You're doomed.

Fuel stabilizer?

Fuel stabilizer?

I noticed a few posts warning of leaving gas in the generators (Honda was worse?). Will a fuel stabilizer solve these problems?

I just ran into a problem with some bad fuel yesterday. My mower started dying and I saw a milky residue in the fuel filter that looked like what I found in my car after a blown head gasket.

This was my first time having a problem and I added some stabilizer I found while I was running around trying to find the right filter (it said it also helped with water in the fuel). It seemed to cure my ills for now but I'm not sure if is fixed or if the new filter just has not had time to clog up.

I'm planning to add more stabilizer at the end of the season for storage. But with a generator, you might not use up the gas so would you add this to the generator each season or just as you add new gas?

I use a product called Sta-Bil in all of my seldom used gas engines, motor home, small generators, lawn tractors, weed wacker, chain saw, snow thrower, plow truck, and reserve fuel cans. It keeps gasoline fresh for over a year in an open container and up to five years in a sealed container. The shop that I use to get parts and service for the small engines hates the stuff because he says it keeps the engines & fuel systems pretty clean inside and costs him work.:smile:

Every year I put 5 gallons of treated gas in each of my service trucks and refill the cans for storage. So far I'm very pleased with the results.

Put in a lot of the Generac units. All the below is about the Generac/Guardian units. They had their problems but for the money what do you want. My bigest issue was dealing with the manufacture and the dealer agreements.

We would scrap out all the factory flex and prewired transfer switch and start over with pipe. The flex natural gas hose was always hang up until we chucked that too.
For these figure buying a car sized battery, gravel, gas pipe, and a 2 pole for your panel.

IMO if your going to have a generator for your home get an auto transfer sw and auto start unit.

Everyone is always worried about the noise. Unless it is an aproval issue with the city who cares. Would you rather have hot/cold, dark, nothing working in the quiet, or a noise outside like a lawn mower. I forgot the spec and it changes with the models. The models change yearly just to make it harder on the installers, sales, & service people. I want to say the spec is 68-72 db. The catch is it is measured 20' away. Like said a few liguid cooled units run quieter at 1800 RPM while the air cooled are 3600 rpm.

An option for a few of the air cooled units that are around 15 KW and above is a quiet test mode. All that means is once a week when it does an auto start up, it will run at 1800 rpm which is quieter. It will not generate power in this mode. A neat feature, but you can set it to run any time each week. So if you set it to run when your not home for 5 minuits it does not matter on the noise to most people. My thought is it is just a dip switch setting on the board that does this and it's disabled on the lower models. I forgot which switch it was. But I never got to test my idea out.

People have told me they had problems getting fuel with gas generators when the whole area was out. All they had to do was drive to the next town but because many traffic lights were not operating normaly it took almost as much time to fill up their can as the generator burned.

As much as I hate Home Chepo they were selling units about the same as it cost to ship one from the manufacture at a dealers price. Unless you ordered a few units or got some special.

Also don't expect any manufacture support on the product.
If it's broke you'll find a list of dealers that are sometimes pushed to provide warrenty service, but are no way set up for it.
If you have a question the manufacture does not have an end customer help line or tec support. The best they will do is provide you with one of their unfortunate dealers. You will be calling another EC that has no intrest in providing free help for someone elce to install or repair the unit. At least I never did. I would get calls asking what terminal should I put the purple wire on model #... If I was at my PC my guess is could take me an hour to find that information & figure that out, but why would I. All I would say is "would you like to schedule a service call with min charge of". That would get rid of them.