Comparison Home Stand By Generators

[Sprinklerman]

Pretty handy if the light tower is also functional!

Thats the good part , all 4 lights work , we just had a xmas party , there were about 15 kids ages 4 to 11 running around out back till 10:30 pm . My neighbors think I am a bit red neck , and .............................They are right . ( the community association doesnt like my generator , my travel trailer , my work van , but the yuppies forgot to renew the covenants and now there is nothing they can do .)

 

[K man]

K Man, I didn't see the reviews of other generators, other than Generac, and indeed it looked more like an ad than a comparison. Did I miss something?

I think you did miss a lot lol. The link that I posted brings you to a website to compare generators and they have Cummings, Hondas, Yamahas, B&S, Generacs and whole bunch of others. Try this link Electric Generators Direct | Specializing in Power Generators see if you get a different one if not I will find the right one. Funny when I punch it in I get the right site.
This is the original site Outdoor Power Equipment @ Power Equipment Direct - Outdoor Power Equipment Superstore - Power Equipment Dealer, Outdoor Power Equipment Store, Outdoor Power Equipment for Sale, Outdoor Power Equipment Dealers

 

[BobRip]

Moss, kinda to your point. People will spend big bucks on luxuries in a car or a home, and not have any kind of back up power. I don't mind having my standard of living drop a little, or even more, during a power outage. We actually find it kind of exciting. I do mind going down to dark ages level, cause I am too old and not accustomed to that kind of living. So folks put your money where your priorities are, but consider that when the power is out your priorities will change. The Lexus and new truck may not look as important during the week long winter outage. Most any safe generator system is better than no power.

As an aside we had the best Christmas ever when we lost power for three days up to and including Christmas. We ran the fireplace and 8000 watt generator. The kids were forced into the family room to be warm and it was a much more family like experience.

 

[ultrarunner]

- Westerbeke

This is the pinnacle of standby power.

HS

Down at the marina a lot of Northern Light units installed and still see gen-sets of all sizes leaving the Anon Cummins yard everyday...

 

[houstonscott]

Down at the marina a lot of Northern Light units installed and still see gen-sets of all sizes leaving the Anon Cummins yard everyday...

In the Coast Guard the diesel mechanics never thought much of cummins Diesel engines. CAT, Paxman, Perkins, Mercedes, westerbeke diesels. Cummins were kind of cheesy. HS

 

[nc redneck]

I just checked with my dealer (Vermont Generator Systems) and in response to my questions about a carbo heater and battery blanket he said:



The one thing I like about the Cummins/Onan is that an interior display is standard.

Costco sells them, who knew?

I have no need for interior display unit with my Generac whole house. Power goes out Generac starts runs for 30 seconds and lights, TV, heat or AC come back on. Power goes off unit shuts off and everything goes back to normal. Who needs a display for that.
I have owned all three major brands. Onan, Generac,Westerbeke . Generac at my home, Westerbeke in my houseboat and Onan in my RV.
Generac is by far the best, close second by Westerbeke ( excellent tech support on new install ) Onan is by far the worst, probably why they are on sale at Costos and being dumped on market. Many failures from the time it was bought new in 2006. It has less than 100 hours on it maintained to the highest degree, started and run several times per year. You never know with this thing will it start or not. About 6 no starts when needed . No Tech Support they could care less.
Happy Customers ? ( what is that ) I almost look forward to the day it dies so it can be replaced.
Good Luck

 

[daugen]

Hey NCRed, just realized you are only about two hours West of me. When I go into the local Lowes, there is a 20kw Generac promo right at the door. Interesting, my motorhome had a little Cummins/Onan 4kw gasoline air cooled generator and it was a very hard starter. Had to prime for a long time. Maybe a bad engineering job on the install but one would think Winnebago would know how to install a generator by now. It never died on me though. And isn't that what we want? We want them to start, and we want them to keep running. Much more than that is gravy for most of us.

Houston/HS, I always liked Westerbekes in boats. They made great generators and great small engines. Couple of zillion sailboats have them. And when folks started to realize people were dying living on or swimming around and under houseboats from carbon monoxide poisoning, Westerbeke had the engineering chops to beat the market on a low CO2 gas engine generator. I always thought they were like an American Perkins. I also had an ancient 15kw Onan diesel gen in my old boat, a heavy beast that rattled the whole boat. I often thought of replacing it with a nice compact shiny red Westerbeke, but it just never died.

Problem with all these diesel gens is that they are so much more expensive per kw. If you don't have other diesel equipment, pretty hard to make the case for them unless the application is commercial.

 

[ultrarunner]

Just about all the local Hospitals are Cummins or CAT powered starting at 150 kW and up.

At the port I see Westerbeke and Northern Lights

Commercial Marine | northern lights

 

[daugen]

Northern Lights was always the Mercedes of boat/ship generators until one got into big ship units.
A Lugger primary diesel engine and a Northern Lights generator was/maybe still is considered the cats meow in trawler power.
Which reminds me....lots of old running generators pulled out of boats and replaced. I bet one could pick up a boat gen for a song, maybe fix something simple (not a fuel injection pump) and then have a great generator for peanuts. Like walking the boneyards at tractor dealers, I wonder if some nice gens could be found in the back of some boatyards.

 

[ultrarunner]

Northern Lights was always the Mercedes of boat/ship generators until one got into big ship units.
A Lugger primary diesel engine and a Northern Lights generator was/maybe still is considered the cats meow in trawler power.
Which reminds me....lots of old running generators pulled out of boats and replaced. I bet one could pick up a boat gen for a song, maybe fix something simple (not a fuel injection pump) and then have a great generator for peanuts. Like walking the boneyards at tractor dealers, I wonder if some nice gens could be found in the back of some boatyards.

Good point... where I live there are always boats going to salvage... mostly pleasure and some of the old wooden cabin cruisers are quite large.

My friends insisted on a Northern Lights for their 60' 3 master steel hull schooner... they sailed the world for 9 years and never a single power issue.

 

[bigdeano]

can anyone suggest a meter, digital preferably, showing the amps consumption?
Putting a clamp ammeter on the feed line I suppose would work, but how about
a nice wall gauge or even a small one that would fit where a breaker is...
I'd love to see what the system surge and constant draw numbers are to best shed load if need be.

I put current meters on my 10kw diesel generator. I bought 2 1000:1 current transformers and mounted them in a 6 x 6 junction box next to the generator receptacle in the garage. I mounted 2 50ma AC meters in the kitchen and connected them to the transformers with buried sprinkler wire. I bought the transformers and analog meters on fleabay. They came directly from China. I tested the meters with my DMM and they're very accurate. The whole setup didn't cost much. It's nice to know how much load is on each leg of the generator.

 

[s219]

I put current meters on my 10kw diesel generator. I bought 2 1000:1 current transformers and mounted them in a 6 x 6 junction box next to the generator receptacle in the garage. I mounted 2 50ma AC meters in the kitchen and connected them to the transformers with buried sprinkler wire. I bought the transformers and analog meters on fleabay. They came directly from China. I tested the meters with my DMM and they're very accurate. The whole setup didn't cost much. It's nice to know how much load is on each leg of the generator.

Have any example links for the transformers and meters? This sounds like something that would be great to do for my 21kW diesel.

 

[bigdeano]

Try this link. There's lots of info by googling current transformer.

Current Transformer Basics and Current Transformer Theory

 

[yan man]

I have researched this for my home I found the Consumer Reports very helpful, it ran both Wheeled units and stationary and gave results for Gas, Diesel, and Propane. Go to you area library it was published in the Fall of 2014. I have decided to go with Propane Generac 8k, which come with a transfer switch. My big decision is weather to buy online, or from Lowe's (they offer a discount to Vet's-10%). Good Luck.

 

[s219]

Try this link. There's lots of info by googling current transformer.

Current Transformer Basics and Current Transformer Theory

I was really asking for links to buy the stuff. I did find some 100A clamp-on transformers on eBay for about $10, ship from China, which ought to do the trick. Now need to find some basic ammeter displays. Would be great to find some that can do the scaling for direct read without having to build a little controller circuit. Any suggestions?

 

[oldgeezer]

I have not seen this mentioned tho I may have missed it. If it has been, here it is again.
RE backfeeding house from a swimming pool , dryer, etc. or worse from a 120 v plug somewhere handy. Even if you throw the main or cut loose from the street power to avoid killing power linemen you still have created a probable extreme fire hazard to your home. The plug you are backfeeding is fed by small gauge wire. In some cases as small as 12 ga. or even 14 ga. The power source should start at the point of the heaviest ga. wire & work it's way down to the appropriate ga. for the appiance operating at that location. What you are doing in the case of starting the power load thru small gauge wire is creating extreme heat in your wiring. I mean extreme heat. This can burn down your home or your neighborhood. Sometime just plug a 1500 w. appliance like a hairdrier or space heater into a 14 ga. extension cord for a while then feel of the cord how hot it has gotten. The longer the cord, the hotter it will get. Too much resistance in small gauge wire. And that is just pulling 1500 w. A water heater has two 4500 w elements in it alone & clothes driers, heat & air units & ranges pull more than that. Spend a couple hundred on some sort of transfer switch. It's cheap insurance. I have a 15,000/22,500 Generac gas power on a transfer switch with a sliding plate that prevents me from have both generator & street power on line at the same time. Remember, ALWAYS feed thru the heaviest gauge wire 1st & your properly installed house wiring will serve just as it does from street power. No melting, stinking hot wiring in your walls & attic just waiting to ignite something.

 

[bigdeano]

I was really asking for links to buy the stuff. I did find some 100A clamp-on transformers on eBay for about $10, ship from China, which ought to do the trick. Now need to find some basic ammeter displays. Would be great to find some that can do the scaling for direct read without having to build a little controller circuit. Any suggestions?

They have matched sets on ebay which might be your best bet. Don't know if you want analog or digital. Don't know how far apart your transformer and meter will be. Looks like most on ebay have 5A secondary which might cause inaccuracy on a long run. You'll have to do the math. That's why I went with the ones that have 50ma secondary in my 50A application so I could use small wire. ebay is the only place I've ever looked at them, I'm far from an expert on these.

 

[jacspath]

I concur about he PTO idea. In the Catskills we often have a 2 day outage and that is a lot of time to have your PtO tied up. Propane is great, but means you can't move the gen around without a lot of re plumbing. Gas/diesel is more exp. but hey, you are not running it that many hour/yr. I assume.

But definitely get a battery start unit. My wife cannot pull start our 7.5Kw WEN unit [and have a trickle charger hooked to it so you are sure it will have a full charge when needed]. Also look for a unit with at least a 10 hour fuel tank so you don't have to get up at 2 am to refill the tank.

And, unless you spring for a whole house unit, don't forget that you will have to pull some breakers off when you put the gen on line. I put in a separate breaker panel with just the circuits that I want to energize with the gen. That way, I [or more importantly, my wife] only have one breaker to throw to switch from whole house line to selected gen power.

Also, I was not that happy to think of the gen coming on automatically when we were away from home. Not that we go away so often, but going away for a couple of weeks of vacation and knowing that the gen might be running that whole time would keep me from enjoying myself. So I have a couple of good friend neighbors give me a call if the power is out for more than a day and we all go and start each others units for a few hours a day to keep the heat [good insulation is a must in cold climes] up and the refer/freezer cold.

Think the whole system [including how you want to use it under different circumstances] through very thoroughly before you worry about which unit to pick.

 

[s219]

I have not seen this mentioned tho I may have missed it. If it has been, here it is again.
RE backfeeding house from a swimming pool , dryer, etc. or worse from a 120 v plug somewhere handy. Even if you throw the main or cut loose from the street power to avoid killing power linemen you still have created a probable extreme fire hazard to your home. The plug you are backfeeding is fed by small gauge wire. In some cases as small as 12 ga. or even 14 ga. The power source should start at the point of the heaviest ga. wire & work it's way down to the appropriate ga. for the appiance operating at that location. What you are doing in the case of starting the power load thru small gauge wire is creating extreme heat in your wiring. I mean extreme heat. This can burn down your home or your neighborhood. Sometime just plug a 1500 w. appliance like a hairdrier or space heater into a 14 ga. extension cord for a while then feel of the cord how hot it has gotten. The longer the cord, the hotter it will get. Too much resistance in small gauge wire. And that is just pulling 1500 w. A water heater has two 4500 w elements in it alone & clothes driers, heat & air units & ranges pull more than that. Spend a couple hundred on some sort of transfer switch. It's cheap insurance. I have a 15,000/22,500 Generac gas power on a transfer switch with a sliding plate that prevents me from have both generator & street power on line at the same time. Remember, ALWAYS feed thru the heaviest gauge wire 1st & your properly installed house wiring will serve just as it does from street power. No melting, stinking hot wiring in your walls & attic just waiting to ignite something.

I am all in favor of a proper transfer switch or interlock feeding directly into the panel, but if I understand what you're saying about back feeding through a branch circuit, the breaker on that circuit would trip if the amperage back fed through the circuit into the panel exceeded the wire's capacity. So in other words, if you back feed through a 40A dryer plug, the max current is going to be 40A before that breaker trips. You'll never exceed the wire's capacity.

 

[aczlan]

I am all in favor of a proper transfer switch or interlock feeding directly into the panel, but if I understand what you're saying about back feeding through a branch circuit, the breaker on that circuit would trip if the amperage back fed through the circuit into the panel exceeded the wire's capacity. So in other words, if you back feed through a 40A dryer plug, the max current is going to be 40A before that breaker trips. You'll never exceed the wire's capacity.

The key is to make sure that your wire is sized to match the breakers on both ends (in the panel and on the genset).

Aaron Z