Generator PTO generator feedback

[Diamondpilot]

Chris, I didn't remember who posted about running the gen overnight, and was to lazy to look back. Anyway, I enjoy talking about back up generators and like you said to each his own.

But as far as losing 20 degrees overnight, that would never happen in my house, never even happen in 24 hours at 15-20 degrees out.
Maybe an anomaly but true, and the house was built in 1936.
My thermostat is programmable and at 10 pm it drops to 62 and at 6am it goes up to 68. Maybe twice in the last 5 years has the boiler kicked on at like 5am cause the temp dropped those 6 degrees to 62, but that was with low single digits outside.

For me listening to the generator running all night would be more of an inconvenience than not having electricity at night.
Except for medical equipment or 100 degrees and humid I would definitely not be running a generator in the overnight hours.
/

That must be one heck of a house. I also have a programmable thermostat and mine does just as yours and drops to 62 at 10 pm and back up to 68 at 6 am. I would say right now my furnace is running once per hour for maybe 10 minutes. My house is very tight and can barley hear the genny when on the other side of the wall from it which is on the far south end of the home. My bedroom plus the kids bedrooms are on the far north side with only the guest room on the south side. I would say you could hear it in the guest room and office but would never hear it in the master or kids rooms.

My genny has a good muffler that is nearly the size of a shoe box and is chrome. Not sure about it but is much quieter than say a riding mower with with the same HP engine.

The genny pad is next to the chimney which is the south end. The bedrooms with the exception of the office and guest room are on the north end and all on the second level.

Chris

 

[gerard]

I bought a 6.5KW Chinese generator this year as well. I can juggle the load and run the water heater where I could not with the 4KW Coleman Power mate that I have had since 1991.

The Power Mate has been a very reliable unit starting on the first or second time every time. I just had to use it for a 6 day outage we had and I run more than 35 gallons of gas through it(runs 2 hours on a gallon). I was a head ache because it only has a 1 gallon tank.

The Chinese unit has a 3.5 gallon diesel tank mine is an Aurora and is the same as an Optigenerator. I did a break in run for 20 hours and then adjusted the valves and changed the oil to Synthetic. We will see if it holds up well.

Not sure how you're running a water heater. My electric heater drew 9500 watts (9.5kw). Now since it's resistance heat, I don't think you'll hurt anything feeding it 6500 watts, just won't get as hot as quick, but you're maxing out your generator, all while not being able to run anything else. Don't think you can really use a portable for a house with electric hot water, that's why I changed over to propane. Now it's not an issue

 

[gerard]

Personally I would never run my tractor to power a generator. Last power outage for me was three days. I paid $300 for a brand new 6K, 13HP generator. I change the oil every 25 hours and I'm good to go. It blows up, I buy another, my neighbor ran his for 8 days straight with no issues what so ever. I could not imagine putting that kind of hours on my tractor when there are inexpensive alternative purpose built machines.

A couple hundred dollar generator motor is a lot easier to replace than a $3K tractor motor.

In the end, my purpose built generator was less money than a 3 point would cost.

Joel

Not sure where you got a 6kw generator for $300. Didn't think you could even get a harbor freight thing for that kind of money. Be interesting to see how long it lasts. I know a lot of the less expensive ones aren't really desiigned for extended use. Made to run a few hours at a time at a job site. (I paid $1300 9 years ago for a 13hp 6500/8kw peak generator)

 

[JoelD]

Not sure where you got a 6kw generator for $300. Didn't think you could even get a harbor freight thing for that kind of money. Be interesting to see how long it lasts. I know a lot of the less expensive ones aren't really desiigned for extended use. Made to run a few hours at a time at a job site. (I paid $1300 9 years ago for a 13hp 6500/8kw peak generator)

Pep Boys a couple of years ago during black friday

my neighbor also has one

he ran 8 days straight only stopping to refuel every 14 hours or so and change oil every 25 hours

I've run for 3 days straight and had no problems either

the motor is a 13 hp overhead Valve that starts easy with no smoke and runs great so far

has been a great investment so far

joe

 

[dex3361]

Not sure how you're running a water heater. My electric heater drew 9500 watts (9.5kw). Now since it's resistance heat, I don't think you'll hurt anything feeding it 6500 watts, just won't get as hot as quick, but you're maxing out your generator, all while not being able to run anything else. Don't think you can really use a portable for a house with electric hot water, that's why I changed over to propane. Now it's not an issue

My residential Water (AO Smith 40 gallon) has 2 - 4500W heating elements but only 1 heating element is energized at a time not both. I did an actual test run and it did just fine. The water heater alone pulled a little over 18A at 240Volts. I then tried it with well pump(1/2 HP submersible with 165' of head pressure) was running along with it and it handled it just fine. I wanted to do a test run and see what it would do before I needed it. What size breaker are you feeding your hot water tank with. I have #10 wire and a 30A breaker and I have never tripped it out.

 

[TheGoose]

FYI-head pressure or pressure has very little to do with the amount of amps your well pump pulls. As the water flow goes up the amps go up. If the flow goes down but the pressure goes up the amps will drop. The amps are dependent upon the flow, not the pressure. Of course the pressure is related to the flow and vice versa.

 

[bucmeister]

My residential Water (AO Smith 40 gallon) has 2 - 4500W heating elements but only 1 heating element is energized at a time not both. I did an actual test run and it did just fine. The water heater alone pulled a little over 18A at 240Volts. I then tried it with well pump(1/2 HP submersible with 165' of head pressure) was running along with it and it handled it just fine. I wanted to do a test run and see what it would do before I needed it. What size breaker are you feeding your hot water tank with. I have #10 wire and a 30A breaker and I have never tripped it out.

I'm with dex on this one, what kind of water heater pulls 9500 watts? My 52 gallon has 2 4500 watt elements, but only cycles one at the time.

 

[dex3361]

FYI-head pressure or pressure has very little to do with the amount of amps your well pump pulls. As the water flow goes up the amps go up. If the flow goes down but the pressure goes up the amps will drop. The amps are dependent upon the flow, not the pressure. Of course the pressure is related to the flow and vice versa.

What if it were a positive displacement pump? Are there any centrifugal type pumps that go up in amps when the flow goes down(caution this is a loaded question)?

 

[TheGoose]

Well, generally speaking, well pumps are not positive displacement.

From what I know and my experiences, the amps are dependent upon the flow, not the pressure. Dead-heading the pump will result in the least amount of amps, unless the bearings in the motor are bad, in which case the amps will go up. That is how I used to check for bad bearings in a submersible motor. Dead-head the pump for a short period and see if the amps drop. If the amps go up, the motor needs replaced.

My fluid dynamics class of course covered a lot more topics, but it's kind of foggy after 10+ years. Enlighten me on the answer.

 

[JoelD]

A generator that looks identical to mine is on sale at northen for 450

still a really good price for a 5k 6 k surge generator

they also have a 5 ton electric log splitter for around 250 another great deal

Joel