Portable Diesel Generator Recommendations?

[Industrial Toys]

The 87 plymouth Caravell Police car with factory Propane, never gave me any trouble. Wonder what they did different?

 

[Captain Dirty]

FWIW: I have a yanmar clone 5kw (6500 surge). <snip>
It is an electric start. It has needed a few repairs due to low quality QC/parts due I think to the nature of it being a "clone". The decompression release is essential. It can be manually started. "Can be", as in if you really needed to, you could. It is a high compression diesel, so it isn't easy. I keep a few spare on hand now. <snip>

Joel at Earth Tools has an interesting and entertaining video on rope starting a diesel, Rope Starting a Small Engine at Rope starting a small engine - YouTube

 

[RjCorazza]

I retired my 7kw gasoline generator last year. The 2 short list generators were a Kubota 11kw diesel portable, or a 15kw pto generator. I ended up with the pto generator.
Diesel generators are going to take a big chunk out of an $8k budget.

 

[bmaverick]

I retired my 7kw gasoline generator last year. The 2 short list generators were a Kubota 11kw diesel portable, or a 15kw pto generator. I ended up with the pto generator.
Diesel generators are going to take a big chunk out of an $8k budget.

Yep. About $1,500 for a 12kW unit. PTO from 480-RPMs to 540-RPMs.

NorthStar PTO Generator 13,000 Surge Watts, 12,000 Rated Watts, 24 HP Required
Error | DNS Resolution | Northern Tool + Equipment

My tractor has a multi- 4-speed PTO, so, I can tune in 540-RPMs as low as 1,100-RPMs engine. That's at a nice quiet idle or with a higher demand for 1,900-RPMs engine to get to 540-RPMs PTO. Better than WOT on the tractor to get to the PTO 540-RPMs at 2,600-RPMs engine.

My machine just sips fuel very easy. So, the power would just keep coming.

IF you want the PTO generator portable, then this is the setup for the SAME PRICE of $1,500.

Chicago Electric
16000 Max Starting/15000 Running Watts Tractor-Driven PTO Generator
16 Max Starting/15 Running Watts Tractor-Driven PTO Generator

 

[fried1765]

Most forced air furnaces (assuming this is what the OP has..) are fairly low in their power consumption....no where near 10KW. I use a Honda EU2000 for home backup, it runs my furnace and much more with ease.

OP, they are not diesel, but the inverter style portable Honda's are handy for lots of jobs, including home backup. As long as you are willing to control your manual switches, they will run the basics very well....furnace, fridge, TV, lights, etc.. Just something to consider.

I do those same functions with my Yamaha EF2800i inverter generator.
Weighs 68 lb., runs 14.7 hrs. on 2.6 gal.
Of course it is not big, and not diesel, but with load selection, it is just fine for true emergencies.

 

[Industrial Toys]

A few hours is no big deal.

In an extended outage though, the very last thing I would want to do is leave for gasoline. And then, how much do you buy?

I have said it again and again. The power out is not your biggest problem. The bigger issue is always not knowing when the power will be on again. Just this last weekend and the high wind, I learned how useless, utterly useless any information is (on stupid aps and websites) from the power utility. Typically, the information for your outage shows "under investigation" with no restoral time but then the power comes back at some point, with no information ever being put forth. I'm a firm believer in looking after oneself. You can't rely on any of this.

 

[groundcover]

I have a 6K Gen-Pro Lombardi diesel that I would sell. Very low hours , always stored indoors.

 

[Industrial Toys]

If I was interested, I would have only one question. How many RPM?

 

[groundcover]

A bunch ! 3600 . On the bright side you never wonder if it's running, can hear it anywhere !

 

[ultrarunner]

Even in CA my Diesel Gensets all have round the clock coolant heaters set at 180F...

When power is needed I have it in 6 seconds... well under the 10 second required max.

 

[groundcover]

My 60 KW LP has a block heater, finally added a thermostat but when I asked Cat service about turning it off for the summer he said let it alone, this machine will use more power than it ever makes !

 

[Industrial Toys]

Two customers of mine with BIG expensive 100K+ sets had failures on account of loss of heating. Of all the parameters, that is not monitored. If it's critical to these machines, why not?

 

[groundcover]

Exactly!

 

[ultrarunner]

Coolant Alarm sounds if either over or under temp as well as fuel leak into containment tank, over cranking, battery, etc.

I've had good service with inline coolant heaters but short service life with Freeze Plug Block Heaters....

 

[4570Man]

How many watts does a coolant heater pull? I would think it would be fairly expensive running them full time. And if I was taking the effort to put them on thermostat control I wouldn’t go to 180. 60 degrees is leaps and bounds better than 0.

 

[Industrial Toys]

My JD6200 block heater draws 8 amps. A little Kubota draws 3.2 amps.

I recently got a transformer for my 7.5 Diesel Inverter block heater to run it at 60 volts thinking half the wattage, but it's really a quarter. Surprisingly, given enough time, it does keep the block warm.

 

[TractorGuy]

Shop Craigslist for a MEP-802A that has been sorted and load tested.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Well for one, a Diesel will wet stack if run under too light a load.

I was running my 7.5 last summer during an outage and my draw for fridge and freezer and a bunch of electronics was something like 500 watts. To me, that's even a waste to have a Diesel running. I do run my water heater at half power, mostly to kep calcium buildup down and never ever noticed a loss of hot water (only me here and another on the weekends). The 7.5 handles the water heater and water pump without issue, but really, if push came to shov, I could shut them off. I have a pressure tank and the hot water stays hot a long time.

With the exception of effort required to manage loads, life goes on as usual and I'm not in the dark. Not in any room or buidling. Place is usually lit up outside at night, during an outage like a ball park, just because I can. All for 7.5KW.

Exactly. I have a 2-cycle camp generator that will run 4.5 hours on a gallon of mixed gas and is whisper quiet. It cost me $149 at Coastal Farm. We just had an outage a couple days ago, and if we had battery backup for the router, I could go back to waiting 24 hours to even get the generator out. I have an 8000w propane generator if we need to run the water heater and pump for showers, but a cistern provides gravity feed water for cooking and flushing. The big drawback of a generator is the noise, which is really irritating.

Life can be pretty plush with 19th century technology. We have a hand crank coffee mill to grind the fresh beans. We have a wood stove to heat water for the drip coffee maker. The wood stove doubles as primary heat in cold weather. The heat pump does fine above freezing, but wood heat is far more efficient below freezing. If the power goes out, the internal temperature of the house doesn't change.

I have heard of wet stacking, but have never seen it. I used to build forest service bridges, and in cold weather we let diesels idle all night. In the morning we opened the throttle, put a load on them, they would blow a little soot, and would work fine. I can see it might be a problem if the genset was so oversized it never went to full load, but any diesel should be able to idle for a few hours with no problem, as long as it got a good workout before shutting it down.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Made me wonder what harm wet stacking actually does? Fowl up the Turbo which none of my gennies have, or the muffler?

Really, I wish I had a house with a totally seperate Emergency lighting system. Probably run on an inverter. Because, a the end of the day, no matter how many generators I may have, when I decide to shut them off, I am in the dark.

 

[4570Man]

Made me wonder what harm wet stacking actually does? Fowl up the Turbo which none of my gennies have, or the muffler?

Really, I wish I had a house with a totally seperate Emergency lighting system. Probably run on an inverter. Because, a the end of the day, no matter how many generators I may have, when I decide to shut them off, I am in the dark.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just feed the panel with a battery reserve. Or just get some battery lights.