PTO generator vs. Stand Alone

[jmc]

The electician who will wire your house knows about this, right?

 

[JoeF]

Curley

Having just lived through the destruction of Katrina, we learned a lot about generators. I would vote for the LP gas fired. No worry about bad gas or deisel. You don't have to fire it up once a month with a load. The fuel never goes bad. I just contacted my gas company and they are getting quotes together for me with tank. Just my .02 cents worth.

 

[RalphVa]

We bought a Suzuki (Acrtic Cat) electric start 4400 watt generator right after the Isabel hurricane hit here. Wife paid $2,000 for it then. That was in line with Honda-powered units I priced at one time just before that. You don't want a pull-start unit unless it's really easy to start. A friend's that I borrowed once did pull start easily. I had one once in Baton Rouge that was almost impossible to start and to run smoothly without a full load on it. So, get a good one and expect to pay for it.

The Suzuki uses 0.5 gallon/hr and will run for about 8 hours. It's a pain keeping cans of gas around to refill it. A diesel on a tank or a propane-powered unit would be less of a nuisance along those lines. Also, both a diesel and a propane-powered unit would likely be instant start. The Suzuki, like all gasoline engines that sit for a month or so between uses, doesn't start instantly.

The Suzuki powers our family room, master bedroom and bath, kitchen lights & microwave, garage, carriage house freezer, frig down here and computers. The well pump requires shutting everything else off to start it up but lasts with pressure tank pressure quite a while. After Isabel, my wife and I were able to get hot showers with the Suzuki powering a Tiny Titan 2.5 gallon hot water heater I use for my outdoor shower in addtion to the above-named duties. The TT is only 1300 watt.

I've thought about getting a little bigger PTO-driven unit, but I screwed up in building the carriage house where the tractor is parked by not putting a "people" door on the main level. Need power to open the carriage house overhead doors. Can't get tractor out if no power!

I run the Suzuki about 15 minutes or so once a month to around 40 days between runs to keep its battery charged, etc.

Ralph

 

[CurlyDave]

Well, as usual, the plot thickens.

The well is 780 feet deep and is going to have a 5 HP pump. The well driller says he will call me & tell me if I can power this from an 8kW generator, or if I need a 10kW. So, this certainly sets some requirements.

An electric starter is a must for this old guy (me, not the generator).

I am wondering about this little puppy from Loew's
12.5 KW Generac generator .

While it is a lot more $ than the 4kW ones, the 4kW ones won't run the well pump and this one will for sure. I suspect that this one will run the entire house in a power failure. It is about 450 lb dry, maybe 600 with a full tank. This has disadvantagves and advantages.

No matter what, any "portable" generator is going to ride in the back of the pickup to go very far. I can't lift a 250 lb generator into the truck by myself any easier than I can lift a 600 lb generator. But, the backhoe can pick this one up by a chain through its lifting point and load it easily. The small ones don't have a factory-installed lifting point.

And, the builder has had smaller generators walk away from construction sites. Somehow I think this one is going to stay put more easily at 600 lbs. I will probably chain it to something really heavy as added insurance.

Fuel. As far as this goes, as much as I would like diesel or even propane, the cost of a gas generator is less than other fuels. Back when gas was $1 per gallon, $10 for a quart of Stabil to keep the gas fresh for a year seemed like a lot. Now that gas is $3+ per gallon, the Stabil seems cheap. I have had very good luck using this in small gas engines. The cost advantage of gas is very good.

For jmc: The electician who will wire your house knows about this, right?

Actually he doesn't. Not because I want to keep it a secret, but because we haven't chosen an electrician yet. The general contractor knows.

This seems like a lot more generator for the money than the Artic Cat...

 

[Joe1]

I'll admit I know little about electricity, but is the power output "clean" so that electronic things run properly? That also seems like a lot of fuel to burn and to resupply; nearly 2 gallons per hour or 15 - 20 gallons per day if running full time with a large load. You could be hauling 100 - 125+ gallons per week. If you kept that up for long, a diesel generator with probably half the fuel consumption would pay for itself in convenience and savings in fuel used to bring the fuel home. Off road diesel is probably cheaper than regular gasoline in your area like it is in mine and it's safer to handle and store.

The 25 hp Yanmar in my John Deere burns about 1/2 - 3/4 gallons per hour at full throttle. That's less than 1/2 of the generac gas engine.

I just reread your post and I over estimated the use for the generator. Will you use it for construction on the site or just as a back up. As far as for emergency use, you can cycle your appliances so they don't all run at the same time, i.e. 6 hrs on the freezer then 6 hrs on the fridge. You could keep that up for a few days on a smaller generator and still use other appliances in between fridge and freezer runs. Do you anticipate a lot of power failures. No hurricanes or tornados where you live.

 

[Highbeam]

It surely is a bummer to have to buy a single generator for such a split load. When running the pump, you need 10,000+ watts, the rest of the time a 4000 watt Onan would do the job and burn much less fuel. You don't mention a need to run AC in the new home but if you want to the 10KW generator can do it so long as the pump stays off. That's a huge demand for your pump, a typical household service is 200 (110 volt) amps and that pump will suck 100 of them. You'll notice it when that puppy fires up.

I kind of think that the well guy might be off on his pump sizing or at least the power needs. Cripes, the Lincoln website says my welder needs a 15000 watt generator but my little coleman 5500 runs it just fine.

 

[Soundguy]

I see lots of people are really down on pto generators due to the 'what if' factor... What if I need to use my tractor for 5 minutes to pull the neighbor out? What if.. what if.. If you do.. just unhook that little shaft from the back of the tractor and then go pull the neighbor out.. then drive back and hook that little shaft back up...

Being a florida resident.. I've been thru bad storms.. most notably the last couple years. I can certainly tell you.. no one around me ran a generator continously.. they would start them up to do certain tasks.. perhaps pump up some water.. or power up a fridge/freezer for an hour to keep it cold... I don't know of anyone who ran them continously. Seems like that 'level' of use is compatible with a pto gen... use the tractor to do clean up.. or pull the wife's car or the workmans truck out.. then go back to power generation.

And for best case? just have 2 tractors /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

A backhoe mount might make me rething a pto gen though..

Soundguy

 

[EastTexFrank]

I use a 3800 watt/5200 surge no bells or whistles gas generator just to run the fridges and freezers when the power goes out which isn't all that often. The longest outage we ever had was 40 hours. The issue for me is keeping enough fresh fuel around to keep it running if we ever had an extended power cut as I don't use a lot of gas. I think if I ever had to do it again I would get a bigger generator with a tri-fuel kit so it can use gasoline, natural gas or propane. We have natural gas at the house so there would be no fuel storage problem and I could still keep the gasoline to use it away from the house. I actually costed out such a system with a transfer panel and it wasn't too bad but I couldn't really justify it because our outages are so few and so short (so far). I think Bob Skurka installed such a system at his place and was very happy with it.

 

[bugstruck]

Dave,

Couldn't agree more. Many young guys can't grab and load a 250 lb. generator solo. I'm not and I can't. I saw that your going with a 3HP pump in the other thread. That will take about a 10KW generator and be somewhere around 6-8 KW real demand, I think. Here's a link to Goulds submersibles Pump manual . May be of some interest. Somewhere down the manual it references the generator KW requirements by pump HP. Got to looking at their wire size requirements too. Pretty stout for a 3HP at your distances.

Looks like that 12KW unit might be the ticket, so you don't have to shut much load when pumping water. Assuming gasoline, fuel consumption would stop me from anything larger and may make me think diesel if you can keep the generator reasonably warm. Need that fuel around too. For added assurance when I turn the well pump on, I shunt load on my 5KW with a freezer, fridge, oil burner, and lights (AC, stove, and oven are always off), but I know it holds even when I've forgotten to back the fridge out /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif. Actually, that 5KW runs my entire house less the few high demand devices. However, I'm only pulling 1,380 running watts on the well pump.

I'm not big on the permanent residential generator installations. Surely, some have had good service over time with that type of installation, but my experience is they are one level above junk. Commercial grade generators aren't trouble free and they have decent quality controls. They still require routine maintenance and exercise to keep them in good working order. Some commented propane or natural and that makes me think permanant in most applications. Most of the problems I've seen on permanent residential units wasn't fuel related, but controls or accessories, and sometimes shear negligence. So the step up from portables isn't always the reliability increase some expect. Main advantage being capacity and convenience.

Portables do have a way of earning their service demands though. Generators are easy to forget, but one need do it only once........ which reminds me /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Most importantly, I saw the well may be in the 6.5+ GPM range. That is rather good news.

 

[Cord]

Natural gas gives you a virtually unlimited of fresh fuel, however because natural gas has fewer btu's per unit, the engine will need to be larger. The same is true for LP, except your fuel is limited to the tanks capacity. Gas generators are the cheapest, but the fuel is volitile and must be mainatined. Diesel generators are generally a better quality unit and their fuel is exceptionally stable. 10 year old diesel is just as fresh as new diesel. One other item for you to consider is how often the generator will be used. The generator needs to be run every 6 months or so or it will loose it's magnatism. Once the magnatism is lost it can only be restored through a simple proceedure involving another generator or line voltage. Two things you might not have in a power outage.