Getting a whole house genny installed...

[Midniteoyl]

Without medical imperative, a whole house auto-magic generator is only a money pit.

consider becoming familiar with the tranquillity of a temporary power outage.

A couple of Aladdin lamps and a wood stove go a long way towards necessary creature comforts.
At least I have come to appreciate the difference over the years.

Those of us on wells sure like having it work..

 

[coobie]

You AC can account for up to 50% of your electrical use.

You run a generator with everything in the house on, a 500 gallon LP tank won't last long.

Every 8 hours of run time = an oil change as well.

The electrician who installed my unit stated to change the oil/filter after 40-60 hours of run time which I do with 5w-30 full synthetic oil.Otherwise I change oil/filter once per year.My other suggestion and I found this out the hard way the constant trickle charge slowly boils the water out of your battery causing it to have a short life span maybe 2 1/2 years.I now fill my battery with distilled water twice per year.My battery life now is 5 years plus.

 

[murphy1244]

I change oil and filter every 2 years or 100 hours. Use Mobil 1, 5 w 30

 

[coralhead]

I have a small 6.5kw generac hooked up to my house to run the important things that are needed with the power out. Refrigerator, freezers, selected outlets in the kitchen and family room, lights and mainly the sewage sump for the basement bathroom. We heat with a wood stove, cook with propane. The unit is hooked up to our 500gal LPG tank. The automatic gen does come in nice when there are outages even for a short time. I remember the first time the power went out in an ice storm we would make coffee for the neighbors and take it to them. An auto transfer/start generator is pretty nice.

 

[check]

I have a small 6.5kw generac hooked up to my house to run the important things that are needed with the power out. Refrigerator, freezers, selected outlets in the kitchen and family room, lights and mainly the sewage sump for the basement bathroom. We heat with a wood stove, cook with propane. The unit is hooked up to our 500gal LPG tank. The automatic gen does come in nice when there are outages even for a short time. I remember the first time the power went out in an ice storm we would make coffee for the neighbors and take it to them. An auto transfer/start generator is pretty nice.

Autostart is really nice when you are not there during a power outage, but man oh man, does it ever use up propane when the power is out for days on end!

 

[techman]

Just be aware a 22KW Generac (on propane) will use 2.2 gal/hr at half load, or about 25 gal/day. Your tank will last a number of days, depending on how full it is. Make sure that the installer uses a propane line big enough to feed it. You may need to upsize the regulator as well. At full load it will use 350,000 BTU/hr, and this should determine the regulator and pipe size.

Paul

 

[grsthegreat]

Just be aware a 22KW Generac (on propane) will use 2.2 gal/hr at half load, or about 25 gal/day. Your tank will last a number of days, depending on how full it is. Make sure that the installer uses a propane line big enough to feed it. You may need to upsize the regulator as well. At full load it will use 350,000 BTU/hr, and this should determine the regulator and pipe size.

Paul

83 cu ft propane per hour x 2500 =208,000 btu at half output and 328,000 at full. Most lp co supply 1/2" high pressure line to unit and use a separate low end regulator at generator. I agree they suck down the propane, thats why i never run mine 24/7. I do have clients that want 24/7 run time. But im to cheap.

for my natural gas custoners, i usually have to upsize their gas meters to supply gen unit.

 

[nikdfish]

When the propane guy came out for the site inspection, he indicated the line installed to the gen would push a 13 or 14 inch water column (generac calls for 12") & would have 15k BTU capacity beyond the generator max load requirement. The tank is owned equipment so we are paying for an upgrade to its' regulator as well as the one at the house.

Nick

 

[s219]

I went with a similar size (21kW) diesel mainly so we could run our geothermal system in a pinch. This after years of limping through power outages with no generator or just a small generator for essentials. If weather is mild we can go without the geothermal. If winter, we can heat with wood. It's the peak of hot/humid summer that I was worried about. If we lost power today for example, with heat index of 105F, I can't see tolerating the home very long without at least periodically kicking on the geothermal for cooling. So that became the benchmark by which I sized the generator. Well pump was the next most critical need but much lower power requirements.

One thing I did was install a soft-start kit on the geothermal unit so that it has a less severe startup load. It supposedly reduces the startup draw current by about 70%. This eliminates the need for load shedding. Everything else is much lower startup draw and the diesel doesn't even flinch when that stuff kicks on.

Hopefully you will have the same good luck as me -- after investing all that time and money installing the diesel generator, we have yet to have a major power outage. I set ours up for manual start with an interlock switch backfeeding into our main panel, so I need to manually go fire the generator up and flip the interlock before it energizes the house. None of our power outages have been long enough to even let me do that! I run it once a month for testing, and that's the only activity the generator has seen in 2.5 years.... It's almost like I bought insurance against power outages....

 

[buickanddeere]

Without medical imperative, a whole house auto-magic generator is only a money pit.

consider becoming familiar with the tranquillity of a temporary power outage.

A couple of Aladdin lamps and a wood stove go a long way towards necessary creature comforts.
At least I have come to appreciate the difference over the years.

Being able to keep food frozen , drainage sumps dry, water for livestock and flushing , heat trace cables to protect water lines and block heaters to start tractors are essential here. An Aldladen Lamp ain't gonna do that. Pretty nifty lamps they are however and make excellent light .