Your last generator Maintenance Run

[Industrial Toys]

I run my Electrically heated house with my (main) 7.5 Onan/Kubota and a 200 amp ASCO ATS. Of course with load management. Hot tub too (good load bank). It's a different story if you want the set available for occupents who are not capable of understanding or calculating loads. If my lady friend is around, she doesn't even know if the generator is running, or whether we are on utility or generator power. So, I constantly have to keep her informed and tell her what she can and can't do.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Decided to put the pump and heater in the hot tub, fighting back the black flies. Generator now running. Load was 400 watts with fridge and freezer going plus electronics. Another 5000 watts with the hot tub on, currently sitting at 15c. Generator barked a moment when the domestic (jet) water pump came on. It seems to bark more when there is a good load on the 7.5KW set already. Going to leave it on a while mostly to dry out the Rotor and Stator.

 

[grsthegreat]

Ive installed hundreds of generator systems. Houses with gas heat and water heater can usually have entire house on a 22 kw no matter what size house is...cause lets face it no one runs an entire house during a power failure. Getting it to pencil out for electrical inspector is another thing. When you add electric heat thats the game changer. I use the standard 50 amp load shed modules for smaller applications and use a 100 amp load shed manufactured by PSP Industries tied onto a generac SMM (load shed) module for large heat loads. Generac is supposed to be coming out with a 100 amp load shed module...but they have been saying that for 2 years.

I place soft starts on heat pumps to dampen the start up load. a good soft start unit can drop 60% plus of the inrush load of a heat pump. I use Hyper Engineering's "Sure Start" units and they work great. I have houses that have heat pumps that shut down under generator loads operate 100% after installing these units. I used to place load sheds on hottubs, but dont do that anymore. I shed other loads instead. I had one hottub load shed unit fail a few years back and the hot tub froze up. I paid to repair it, and went back and removed ones ive placed them on in the past. I swapped out and put load shed on water heater instead.

Also items that cant turn themselves on like dryers, ovens, and the like really should not influence the size of generator. If power is out just dont run oven and all 4 burners at same time. One stovetop burner mar only pull 3,500 watts. That and a microwave will cook a dinner in emergency.

My house is 4,000 SF with gas heat, gas water heater, electric oven, gas cooktop, 5 ton a/c, hot tub and 5 heated water troughs that need power in winter. I got rid of heat pump cause it was constantly breaking down and going into defrost all the time. Mine is a 22 kw system and its gone thru 4 long power outages since installed 3 years back. Ran everything without a hickup or dimming. Even is summer the lights dont flicker when a/c starts up. It runs entire house and barn (for water troughs). on community well that has its own set of generators.

 

[grsthegreat]

Our internet has been slow to non working recently so excuse the slow response and thanks for all the suggestions to what I thought was a problem with installation. Will try to get pictures of this installation as requested. I assumed that since the Generac came with a 200 amp service panel I would have 200 amps of power available. Our electrician split the power from the main entrance panel to Sub panel A and sub B and hooked up gen to B. What I don't understand is what keeps the generated power from going from B to A and back to the main panel therefore powering the whole house. I can live with the present setup and if I need power in another part of the house I will make electric cord with 2 male ends and don't send the safety police please.

i would need to see a picture of both panels and what the circuits are. I have installed lots of 22kw units on houses by using two (2) of generacs 200 amp transfer switches and one generator and they work fine. It all depends on the load. The 200 amp switch just means that the UTILITY side has 200 amp available, it does not mean that the generator has 200 amps available. A 22kw has a 96 amp output at 240 volts

 

[grsthegreat]

while i was typing the above, my generator started its 2pm exercise . The generator emailed me to tell me its running. I checked it on the computer

 

[Industrial Toys]

A watched pot never boils and a watched hot tub doesn't get hot either! Ran for about three hours. Looked it up, 1000 litres of water (Hot Tub) take 4000 watts to raise the temperature 1 degree C in an hour. Discouraging!

Interesting load shedding information. I not only want to shed load automatically, but then be able to turn selected loads back on. The odd heater, or water heater for instance. I will do it with RF controls and RR9 Latching Relays. The RF controls I like and am very impressed with are obsolete and discontinued, so I am keeping my eyes peeled on E-Bay.

 

[Fallon]

A watched pot never boils and a watched hot tub doesn't get hot either! Ran for about three hours. Looked it up, 1000 litres of water (Hot Tub) take 4000 watts to raise the temperature 1 degree C in an hour. Discouraging!

Interesting load shedding information. I not only want to shed load automatically, but then be able to turn selected loads back on. The odd heater, or water heater for instance. I will do it with RF controls and RR9 Latching Relays. The RF controls I like and am very impressed with are obsolete and discontinued, so I am keeping my eyes peeled on E-Bay.

RF & especially obsolete RF gear always scares me. I'm the bearded one delivering the HAM radio 4 hackers Track 1 15 Ham Radio 4 Hackers Eric Watkins Devin Noel - YouTube talk. It's very easy to spoof any RF devices that aren't well secured & the ones that are well secured are MUCH rarer than you'd expect. You can brute force a garage door opener from 10 years ago with a $50 child's toy (literally) in minutes How to Hack a Garage Door in Under 1 Seconds and What You Can Do About It - ITS Tactical. With a laptop & a $250 radio I can clone that same garage door opener or lots of other RF stuff.

Somebody with malicious intent could do some very naughty things with old RF gear tied into your electrical gear. Range can be a LOT further than you'd expect with a simple directional antenna.

N7HKR

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

All true but the interest isn’t there on even remotely the scale as internet hackers.

Just not many kids in their mothers basements bother with RF when an Ethernet cable gives them access to the entire planet.

Apart from not being connected, the best defence against hacking and viruses has always been having obscure or uncommon devices. Anyone who tries to find devices to hack wants to have as many devices as possible hoping they get into one of them, they simply don’t waste time on something with small numbers.

It worked for Apple for years. There just weren’t enough Mac PCs for very many hackers to bother with them. Why limit yourself to 5% (or whatever share it was) of the possible targets.

 

[daugen]

And for those saying it would have wet stacking, you can clearly see how clean that turbo is, not a drop of oil
Wet stacking - Wikipedia

never understood why there was visual evidence of wet stacking unless a gasket had failed or there was an old crankcase vent dumping somewhere.
Now inside the turbo and the exhaust, you bet. I've owned a pair of DD 8V71TI's in a boat and they were referred to as Driptroits and slobber they did.
Spent a lot of time keeping that pretty soft green color clean.
All somewhat normal for the breed. But you have an engine clean as a whistle on the outside, thanks likely due to location and your care,
yet I still wonder about internal effects of operation at cooler engine temps.

If running diesel, I sure would be more sensitive to having adequate test loads vs cleaner running propane.
Seems easiest to just turn off your main breaker and run the house on gen for awhile. Just know what you are doing and are careful
with sequencing of connect/disconnects. I can also tell you having owned a radio shack for a number of years, all this off and on jolts the heck
out of your electronics. Unless you have a UPS or a serious surge protector, perhaps unplug your pc, etc before testing. This is where the smart electronics
in the Generac panel that, if 400 amp, costs a gazillion dollars, might be faster or "easier" on the system than you throwing breakers. Safer too...

I had a 50amp boat with a 100 amp wife. Pretty much says it all.

 

[3930dave]

Been pre-occupied with various things this week..... came back here to find a whole slew of excellent detailed posts....... soft-start, shedding.... good stuff !

Liking those screen shots grs !

Roy - you have the knowledge and common sense to interact with a potentially lethal situation appropriately..... congratulations on coming through w/o major damage or threats to life :thumbsup:. Your detailed description of that situation had me thinking back to recent discussions of relatively low-cost premise monitoring hardware......

...... Gotta get me a big box of RoundTuIts to eat ........ there is value to remote telemetry....... Your situation Roy has me thinking about "What if nobody was home ?"........ It's then down to a neighbour or passer-by noticing.

My immediate neigbours are often home, and neither would mind a call "Hiya, just wondering if your power is On ?", when I'm nowhere near home.

Rgds, D.