Generator install - where to start

[WinterDeere]

Well, it has been over a month! Being a General Contractor for 40 years, taking a month to make a decision KILLS your schedule.

This isn't really a high priority job, based on 15 year history, it'll be another year before our next outage. But if it really bothers you, know that I signed the contract within 24 hours of receiving the last of three bids.

I run a contract design business, and prior to that I was manager of an R&D department for a mid-size technology company with an anual project budget in the tens of millions. I appreciate the wide range of experience here, but I am sure enough that I don't need lessons on schedules from you.

 

[WinterDeere]

Is that a pickleball court painted on your driveway approach? A lot of people around here have them.

yes... sort of by accident. My kids took tennis lessons when very young, and I wanted a place to practice with them, without cycling up to the park at teh top of our neighborhood every time. So I painted a 1/2 scale tennis court in the driveway and bought a portable net.

Little did I know at the time, that a 1/2 scale tennis court is a pickleball court!

We also have a 1/2-court basketball court in the other parking area, in front of my barn, just above the top of that aerial image. We used to use that a lot, when the kids were young, but no so much lately.

 

[orezok]

This isn't really a high priority job, based on 15 year history, it'll be another year before our next outage. But if it really bothers you, know that I signed the contract within 24 hours of receiving the last of three bids.

I run a contract design business, and prior to that I was manager of an R&D department for a mid-size technology company with an anual project budget in the tens of millions. I appreciate the wide range of experience here, but I am sure enough that I don't need lessons on schedules from you.

The last major project I built was over 100 million at the rate of 1 million per week. Can’t afford to lose 4 million of production due to analysis paralysis.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I tell everyone I know that doesn't have a house, that they've been lied to about the economics of (renting) vs (buying a house).

How much doesn't a house cost? Oh the mortgage is this much, don't forget taxes and insurance!
Anything else? .... *crickets*

I show them a spreadsheet I have of costs over time. $24k for a roof? I'm expecting $40k+ when I finally do it here; granted it's lasted a while, but that's still $1.5k/year that needs to be considered just for that. Water heater, hvac, paint, etc. Not to mention yard upkeep.

Yes many of us "enjoy" doing a lot of this work, but it still costs money. My spreadsheet shows over $1k/month when you consider long term work. Sure, the house you buy may have a new roof and if you're lucky it won't need work. New furnace? Cool. A lot of "extra costs" depend on luck and maintenance (which costs money... and/or time and money); maybe you pay more up front for a place with new stuff (which may or may not need work soon). You get the general idea.

Oh, don't forget to budget for a tractor, too.

I agree that home ownership is expensive. I bought in 1994. I have spent more on maintenance and upgrades over the last 32 years than I paid for the place. New windows, doors, insulation, kitchen with floor plan revisions, guest bathroom refinished twice, master bedroom and bath enlarged with an addition, two new heat pumps (the first one lasted 20 years) including new electrical service panel, two roofs, two exterior paint jobs, house replumbed, deck replacement, gazebo, patio expansion, hardwood and tile flooring plus carpet replacement twice in bedrooms,

 

[WinterDeere]

The last major project I built was over 100 million at the rate of 1 million per week. Can’t afford to lose 4 million of production due to analysis paralysis.

Good for you, but no one cares. Let's keep things in perspective: this is a backup generator for my house, not volume production. Waiting an additional week for a quote on a $25k - $30k project that has zero urgency, given we average less than one major outage per year, is fine with me.

 

[tradosaurus]

Good for you, but no one cares. Let's keep things in perspective: this is a backup generator for my house, not volume production. Waiting an additional week for a quote on a $25k - $30k project that has zero urgency, given we average less than one major outage per year, is fine with me.

Updates?

 

[WinterDeere]

Updates?

Signed a contract with a local Kohler installer a few weeks ago, just waiting to come up in their queue. They had forecast early May, they seem to be quite busy.

Between now and then, I’ll need to finalize pad location, which may involve moving a section of pool fence, and mark several utility they will need to cross as they trench from generator location near propane tank to service entrance location.

New generator, new truck, new garage… this is going to be an expensive spring and summer.

 

[ponytug]

Best of luck! All the best, Peter

 

[tradosaurus]

Signed a contract with a local Kohler installer a few weeks ago, just waiting to come up in their queue. They had forecast early May, they seem to be quite busy.

Between now and then, I’ll need to finalize pad location, which may involve moving a section of pool fence, and mark several utility they will need to cross as they trench from generator location near propane tank to service entrance location.

New generator, new truck, new garage… this is going to be an expensive spring and summer.

Spend it if you can afford it. You can't take it with you.

 

[WinterDeere]

Got pad location and fence mod marked out yesterday, just before sunset. Talked with fencing company this morning, and got price to re-set fence, with me pulling the old posts prior to genny install.

Only thing left to do is mark our irrigation, fiber, well run, old mains, invisible fence, and too-shallow 1980's direct-burial lamp post wiring. I'll wait to do all of that the week before the install.

I also just had the oil-fired water heater relocated in the utility room, and am installing a heat pump water heater alongside it. If I can get that done ahead of the genny, then I can have those guys install a load management module on that one, as well. I don't really need the HPWH, I'm just installing it to better manage summer temperature in the finished basement, as it gets unreasonably warm down there with the boiler supplying all of our hot water.

 

[ponytug]

It has to be nice to up convert the waste heat from the boiler to hot water, and cool the room.

All the best, Peter

 

[WinterDeere]

It has to be nice to up convert the waste heat from the boiler to hot water, and cool the room.

All the best, Peter

That's exactly the plan. Free duhmidificaiton, while I'm at it... I'm pretty sure we're spending ~$150/month on running three dehumidifiers in that basement, all summer.

Our kitchen has a ceramic tile floor, right over the boiler room. It's nice having a warm floor in January, but my mind just pictures $100 bills blowing off a pile in the wind, while the air conditioning fights that waste heat all summer.

Both systems have been already plumbed in, with a bypass around each. So I can choose to easily shut down the HPWH, if we want to retain some of the waste heat in winter, or vice versa in summer. But the primary plan is to just run them both in series, with the HPWH feeding warm water into the boilermate, year-round. This will allow me to run the HPWH down in its most efficient range, while using the waste heat off the boiler to increase its efficiency, but also retain the never-ending supply of very hot water we get off the boilermate.

Exact temperatures need to be worked out over time, but I imagine heating to maybe 110 - 120 degF with the HPWH, then feeding that into boiler where it gets topped up to 140 - 150F.

The only mistake that's been made so far, is that I had the boiler tech's do the plumbing while I had them replacing a failed boilermate, and they used all copper plumbing for the bypasses. I hadn't really thought of it ahead of time, but this creates a thermal short-circuit between hot and cold at each appliance. I may end up cutting those out and replacing with PEX bypasses, but it's not first priority.