Your last generator Maintenance Run

[ultrarunner]

More and more and more technology "TRAPS".

The generator caused fire taking out 2 high end homes the result of stringing together "Christmas Light" extension cords... the overloaded cord got hot and melted.

Way off topic... yesterday I inspected a single family 3 bedroom home with all 4 smoke detectors disabled.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I think I once mentioned how a doctor customer called me and asked for help with something in his "system" beeping. By the end of it, he was rather annoyed, and I had instructed him to disconnect the entire security system from power and battery. He called later to say, it was a childs toy tucked away (in it's proper place) in a toy box.

I probably have more Diesel backup Generators than socks without holes in them. Yet during an outage, it is amazing how much stuff has to be "managed".

 

[grsthegreat]

I had 1 customer that heard a beep every few minutes and could not locate the source. They were in their 80s and was driving them nuts. I spent about 30 minutes trying to locate it myself, but with one beep every few minutes it was excruciating trying to locate it. I finally found a disconnected smoke detector placed under a bunch of newspapers.

 

[ultrarunner]

Blinking Lights and Beeps can drive the sane bonkers.

In the crawl space ATT located a interface with a battery in the home of a friend... for months it drove the couple nuts and finally hired an electrician who found the source. A week later ATT came out and said it was not known or listed for the address.

A large industrial UPS combined with backup generator might reduce many problems.

 

[Industrial Toys]

You can't tell where high frequency pizano buzzers are located. Working in photocopier pcb repair in the early 80s, I had all kinds of scrap buzzers at my disposal. Used to hot glue a buzzer, pc mount toggle switch, cabinet magnet and 9 volt battery together. Turn it on and stick it on someones car. Impossible to locate. It was funny.

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

Blinking Lights and Beeps can drive the sane bonkers.

In the crawl space ATT located a interface with a battery in the home of a friend... for months it drove the couple nuts and finally hired an electrician who found the source. A week later ATT came out and said it was not known or listed for the address.

A large industrial UPS combined with backup generator might reduce many problems.

Actually the problems increase in step with the size of generator and especially the size of the UPS. There’s a subset of customer that buy generators in the 60-150kw range to run UPSs also in the 60-150kw range. It rarely turns out well.

 

[daugen]

2 million folks out of power due to Beta. Going to be a huge run on generators I bet, not making availability any easier.
btw, got an email today saying HF has a 15 percent off sale on their 9kw portable that brings price down to 1/2 of next size up.
875 Watt Max Starting Gas Powered Generator - EPA
(plus 60 bucks for wheel kit and battery)

I think it will be a miracle if my Westinghouse shows up on time next Wednesday

 

[grsthegreat]

I picked a good time to retire.... generac is now 17-20 weeks out for delivery. I could not run a business nowdays with a delay like this.

 

[ultrarunner]

I picked a good time to retire.... generac is now 17-20 weeks out for delivery. I could not run a business nowdays with a delay like this.

Yep my retired friends with medical need are not going with Generac because of late Spring/early summer install.

Their Honda 3000 is a sweet generator but with neither driving right now due to a stroke fuel is a problem and the thought of natural gas/turn key whole house is what they focused on.

For the interim... I told them I can bring them fuel if they just let me know... my truck has a 34 gallon fuel tank with aux pump to fill portable containers... keeps it simple transporting gasoline.

Maybe it is my circle of friends but many are closing up shop and will not be in business come 2021... leaving a void for sure in the local market.

On a side note... one of the Docs signed up for Tesla power wall with January install... that is January 2020 and he is still waiting...

 

[Industrial Toys]

We are getting a taste of how Soviet block countries existed for decades. However things are in the states, things will be a hundred times worse in Canada. Best to have backups for critical systems that don't rely on any external support. Better a simply motor driven water pump, than one run by a computer and software!