Propane Whole House Generators, Warning.

[Garandman]

I even have a swede (sp?) saw in case all my fifteen chain saws fail!

So how many chain saws is enough?

We got a propane genset up north because we already had tanks and vendor in place. Gasoline was more appealing when it didn稚 have ethanol. Diesel is often the choice of people who heat with oil.

Horses for courses.....)

 

[3Ts]

That's nuthin'. When I was a kid we had one that used ice.

My parents told me about that and that there was an ice delivery to the door as well. I do remember the milk deliveries and the paper routes.

 

[ning]

I've considered a whole house gen. I've got a spare 325g tank from when we swapped the house to a 1000g tank (later added a second after that).

With our capacity we can buy once a year at the lowest price - last couple of years have been $1.40/g. If you need 30% more propane than diesel, that's the equivalent of $1.82, which is about half the price of diesel here.

Considering the lack of diesel stink and a quieter generator, plus the nearly zero-maintenance of a propane tank -- it's a no brainier here.

 

[PILOON]

That's nuthin'. :laughing: When I was a kid we had one that used ice.

And at my log cabin I buried a 24 X 24 chimney clay tile with a foam lined door to keep the milk eggs and meat cooled.
Worked great, butter was always hard and nothing perished.

I later 'modernized' by converting a small Asteral fridge to propane.
Basically it used a soldering iron type element as a heat source that I replaced by a propane burner. As time went on I obtained a heavy old Servel propane unit as an upgrade. LOL, sold the Servel for 2-3 X what I originally paid for it years later.
The whole cabin was later propane plumed for lighting as well.

Then we got real modern when Hydro came around.

Good old days!

 

[goeduck]

We had a fireplace, but it was only good for heating the living room that was located at the end of one of the long Y wings of the house. We had a neat cantilevered hearth out along the front of the fireplace. It was also a sitting bench on each side of the fireplace. I remember many cold mornings when my dad would make a fire. We could sit on our butts on the floor with our feet under the hearth and eat our breakfast on the hearth in front of the fire. Great memories. He did orient the house to take advantage of the sun. In winter, the sun would shine directly into the house first thing in the morning at sunrise and hit a large brick wall, which it would heat up. The sunshine came in almost all day long until sunset. In summer, it came up way to the left and quickly got blocked by the roof overhang, and didn't shine in all day long. Passive solar before passive solar was cool. :laughing:

A construction contractor built my house for himself and did a few things right. The fireplace is smack dab in the middle of the house and is masonry all the way with crawl space combustion air. Huge. It also has glass windows to catch the morning sun to warm the masonry (we get the morning sun twice, once direct sunlight, then again as it bounces off the water). Warms the house up quickly (on the one day a year it is not raining). :laughing:

I put a wood insert in the fireplace and it is now the lead source of heat.

 

[diplodock]

We have a 20KVA with a transfer switch, fueled by propane. It will, and has run the whole house including AC during storms on several occasions.

They tell me that it will through a whole 200 gallons of propane in about 85 hours at full output, so it ain't gonna last forever in a SHTF. What it will do is keep the freezers going long enough to can or otherwise salvage most of the stuff in there, assuming you run a duty cycle frequently enough to keep the chill on. As for having AC for months - no going to happen without a re-fill of the the old propane tank.

To give you a frame of reference, 200 gallons of propane will run our fireplaces and cooking stove for 14-18 months. Just got it filled this week, last was in Feb, so no fireplaces (pilot lights use the most fuel) and it took 45 gallons.

We also have an 8KVA portable gasoline unit, which averages 1 gallon per hour.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

As for having AC for months - no going to happen without a re-fill of the the old propane tank.

You also have to refill your wallet too!

At over 2 bucks a gallon here, it cost me over $800.00 every time I fill my 500 gallon tank! With what a propane genset cost to RUN, that's WAAAAAAY to much cost per hour just to have some electricity...

SR

 

[Garandman]

A construction contractor built my house for himself and did a few things right. The fireplace is smack dab in the middle of the house and is masonry all the way with crawl space combustion air. Huge. It also has glass windows to catch the morning sun to warm the masonry (we get the morning sun twice, once direct sunlight, then again as it bounces off the water). Warms the house up quickly (on the one day a year it is not raining). :laughing:

I put a wood insert in the fireplace and it is now the lead source of heat.

Our place is pretty small (1250sf) andinexpensive, But was designed by an architect to be passive solar and be heated from a central source.

This side faces due South and the yard was cleared back enough that it is sunlit most of the day. Thereis a brick chimney in the center, and an atrium so the hot air can rise to the second floor. The back stairway was designed to circulate cooler air down to the first floor. We have a Hearthstone soapstone stove.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Tell me you actually use that stove?

I think some people missed the point. Saying I have Propane this and it runs that. First of all ,it has to work when needed, and secondly it might not be up to the task, for a variety of reasons in a longer outage.

For me, it's always about, not what works, but having an understanding of what won't work.

I love my Diesel Generators, but if i had a choice between a wood stove and a generator, I would take the stove any day. You can trust it, and you can fend for yourself. I keep hearing about people removing wood burning equipment to install propane or NG, and I just shake my head. So very short sighted and foolish.

 

[Garandman]

Tell me you actually use that stove?

You know people who buy $2,000 + stoves as decorations?

That picture was taken after it was installed last August. It replaced a smaller Hearthstone.

 

[Industrial Toys]

It looks brand spanking new, except someone may have been eating potatoe chips while admiring it.

 

[goeduck]

You know people who buy $2,000 + stoves as decorations?

That picture was taken after it was installed last August. It replaced a smaller Hearthstone.

That is a beautiful soapstone stove, I always wanted one of those and had an insert not been the better fit, that is what I would have purchased. Very nice, now go enjoy your potato chips. :thumbsup:

 

[hosspuller]

Just a point, for reference. Your situation may be different. Twenty years ago, I looked at our 2500' powerline. We're the only house on it. It's fed from a powerline on a major highway. I figured in a major storm we'd be the last to be restored even though the main line will be restored quickly. so I bought a 4Kw Generac gasoline genset to supply 220 volts for the well pump. It's too loud to take camping so I also bought a Honda 3Kw gasoline inverter 6 years ago.

This year, a hurricane put a tree on our power line taking it out. After 20 years of no outage lasting more than 6 hours … We were without power for 5 days, 3 hours . The Honda did a great job powering the freezer, refrigerator, 65" TV, Computer, and cable box. Clean inverter power. Only ran it a few hours during the day and all night to power my CPAP, frig, & freezer. Not much load, so easy on fuel during the night. The 4kw genset was only run during the day for water when needed.

We were lucky to have TWO gensets. Took one genset to a friend's to pump out a basement for a day. Then returned it for our well pump. The 4Kw failed the 3rd day. but with the other genset, we had everything but water. Got water by filling a tank at the neighbors (closer to the highway).

When the linemen got to us, they restored power in 20 minutes.

Things that were done right … Stored the 4Kw genset completely without gasoline. Had a tested cord, connection plugs and disconnect for the well pump. (220 volts). Had 15 gallons of fresh gasoline. (routinely rotated into vehicles and refilled). Honda genset routinely used so ready to go. Had a supply of engine oil on hand. Had plenty of extension cords and several outlet strips for phone chargers and low draw loads.

I'm ready for the next hurricane.

 

[PSDStu]

We went 19 days without power after Hurricane Michael in the Florida Panhandle and my propane powered, 8000 watt portable generator was a life saver. We have a 250 gallon tank filled to 80% and when we got power back we were down to 30% which the gas company filled the day we got power back. The generator ran our well pump, 2 refrigerators, freezer, 2 window ac units, stove, microwave, tv, and lights. We didn't run the generator 24/7, but it did run about 300 hours during the time power was out. It was tolerable with the portable ac units, but nice to get our normal ac back once power was restored. Never want to go through that mess again, especially being 70 miles from the coast.

 

[TMGT]

I have a 17kw Generac whole house standby, I looked at various options and liked the idea of going used military diesel genset route but quickly realized the LPG was the better option for me.

My main reason is fuel storage, second is ease of use if I'm not home when the power goes out, which is very likely.
I've been through a couple weeks without power in the middle of summer and its miserable, winter isnt much better but at least I have a wood stove.

I went full automation to ensure we could still have water/heat/ A/C even if I was gone without worrying about my wife trying to get everything hooked up and running properly or running when it doesn't need to because the power is back on and she has no way of known right away.

My personal experiance has been the Generac is pretty easy on fuel, I'm only running off 2 100lb portable tanks tied together and I haven't had to switch to my other tanks yet.
Granted that's mostly exercise runs (once a week for 20min) with a couple hrs of outage here and there but nothing too long.
I'll have to check the actual run hrs but it's been on those same tanks for a couple years.

Right after I installed it they ran a back feed line to the main line in front of the house, so we dont lose power like we used to (daily!).

 

[AVIVIII]

This may have been covered as well, but I also believe that the propane company screwed him by installing the wrong sized tank. According to Cummins, that unit at full power can consume nearly 300,000 BTU/hr and a 250 gal LP tank can only handle 275,000-ish BTU/hr vaporization rate (withdrawal rate varies with temp and 100 other variables). So it makes sense that the generator stopped running when the tank hit 40%, it couldn't bring fuel fast enough.

Why wouldn't you put in a 1000 gal tank anyways, especially if you were planning on having long outages.......

Edit: It also appears that the fuel consumption per kW is not linear. Without doing the math, it appears that a 20kW unit running at 1/2 load is more efficient than a 17kW unit running at 3/4 load. He probably should have listened to his electrician too....

That being said, I love my Cummins Diesel generator.

 

[check]

Well for us, the main advantage of an automatic standby generator is to retain power when we are not there. Right now up at the cottage it is -4°F and so we would be toast in a power outage if it weren’t for the automatic generator transfer switch.

We also still have the connection for a portable generator that runs into the cottage, so if we get an extended outage in the summer, we can still use or 5500 W King gas generator, and just run it intermittently if we are up there. Gasoline and propane end up costing about the same to run each of the two generators.

EDIT: Actually I just checked the Kohler website, and the LP (propane) gas consumption for our Model 17RES propane-powered generator at 25% load is 1.57 gallons of propane per hour, which costs us about $90 a day, since our propane is around $2.50 per gallon. (Full 100% generator load is about twice as much, but almost all of the time the load would be minimal.) Gasoline, on the other hand, is close to $4 per U.S. gallon, which costs us about $4 up here, and the gasoline portable generator uses about 15 gallons per day, or about $60. On the other hand, the portable generator is a 5500, whereas the propane generator gives us 17k.

 

[Sigarms]

Cost vs use, and what you can live with or without.

Being LP is what I'm on, and the longest I've gone without power is 3 days max, makes absolutely no sense to spend the initial cost on a generator.

If I were to run a standard whole house generator at 50% capacity, would last my 500 gallon tank 10 days, and that without using LP for ANYTHING else.

The reality is if it's that bad where you can't get fuel, a generator won't make much of a difference.

We do pretty well with extra water and candles. Fireplace for back up if really needed for heat, never got to that point.

 

[GLyford]

I do not understand ppl who feel the need to run the gen 24/7 during an outage. Last outage for us I think we ran 5 hrs out of 24. If it went to several days our useage would go up just for convenience reasons.

If it's warm out, we run our little 3500 enough to keep the fridge and freezer cold.

If it's cold out, we put the food outside and run the furnace enough to keep the pipes from freezing. It can just barely run the furnace.

Our little genny isn't up to running the well, so we try to have bottled on hand and fill buckets and coolers when bad weather is predicted.

We have gotten by without power by just using a camp stove and the fireplace, but it's easier with the genny. We have only been without for ~2 weeks after Irene (had to wait for a pole transformer feeding our trunk from the next town over) that prompted us getting the generator. Morale definitely took a big hit on that one, and we had to throw away a lot of food but I don't think we ever felt our lives were in danger.

 

[TMGT]

What prompted me was a couple day power outage, in the dead of winter, in an ice storm, with a newborn that was a premature and just gotten home from NICU. Couldn't burn with the stove for respiratory reasons and had to heat up bottles every couple hrs.
Had my old 6500 Dayton generator powering a small heater and alternating to the fridge and microwave as needed.

I said never again! Installed the whole home system. And then the power company ran a new back-fed line in front of my house and we almost never lose power for more then about 3-4hrs max in the last 5years lol
(Well unless you count when they hooked up the new line for the shop, 6hrs without power then but it was expected).