Whole house generator

[jem041279]

I think that the folks that live in hurricane country are more than justified going with a whole house standby generator.

Oh and by the way I was suprised to learn that those propane generators burn lots of fuel, I can't remember exacts but it was at least a gallon and hour FYI

 

[grsthegreat]

There are lots of ways top cut down the size gen set you need.
1. Go to propane water heater
2. Have propane back up heat source if you have a heat pump system
3. if you have a deep well, install a 1000 - 2500 gal shallow holding tank that can be pumped with a small booster pump motor. And be more frugal with water waste.
4. florescent lamps in house.

with these steps Ive installed 5 kw systems in houses that have successfully powered the main items to make it thru a power outage.

Ovens, elect water heaters and elect range/cooktop and elect heat are the worse things on small gen sets. Deep water wells also take their toll.

 

[whistlepig]

Its kind of a trade off. A little bit of discomfort during a power outage or a whole house set up that costs several thousand dollars that just sits there and loses value. For the hurricane folks a whole house system is the way to go. For us folks that deal with a power outage once every five years I would think this would be way overkill.

 

[kenmac]

I totally disagree with these statements. I have had good luck with two generac home standby generators. Both air cooled

I didn't expect everyone to agree. I'm ok with that. I said in my opinion. This statement was straight from generac back when I was a dealer / installer. I didn't make it up

 

[whistlepig]

I am trying to make the home generator thing affordable. We moved to the country 5 years ago and have a couple of horses and a couple of dogs. So where are we going to go with two horses and two dogs for a week? Nowhere. We bought a portable generator and had a manual transfer box wired in to our electric. Total cost for a brand new Honda 6500 watt generator and the transfer box was $2,800. We lost our power for a week during an ice storm this past February. The portable generator set up got us by. We had heat, water for the horses, and water to flush the toilets. These whole house standby discussions can scare a home owner from even owning a generator at all because of the cost. Makes the country life seem unaffordable. Its simply not so. All our neighbors are running the same portable setup and they have livestock.

 

[Pilot]

Did a little more research. Here are some options, depending on how much you want to pay:

Option 1, portable 7250W, run, 8250W peak unit from Costco, $850. 10 circuit, 50 amp transfer switch thru Amazon, $450, plus 50 amp power cord inlet box, also Amazon, $80. Allowing $200 to install the transfer switch (my wild guess) & box, gives a total of $1,580.

Option 2, 10kw running, 12.5kw peak, portable also from Costco, $1,900. Add transfer switch & inlet box & labor & you're at $2,430.

Option 3, the 14kw propane powered standby whole house unit from Costco (12kw natural gas), $2250 after $250 rebate, plus $1,000 installation, $3,250.

 

[jmanatee2]

I didn't expect everyone to agree. I'm ok with that. I said in my opinion. This statement was straight from generac back when I was a dealer / installer. I didn't make it up

Not to argue with you,... However, Per Generac's website, They say this air-cooled generator will power a 4 or 5 ton air conditioning system.
Generac Power Systems - Guardian Series 14 kW

In fact they say the various size AC's that all the Guardians 10kw and bigger will support

 

[whistlepig]

Did a little more research. Here are some options, depending on how much you want to pay:

Option 1, portable 7250W, run, 8250W peak unit from Costco, $850. 10 circuit, 50 amp transfer switch thru Amazon, $450, plus 50 amp power cord inlet box, also Amazon, $80. Allowing $200 to install the transfer switch (my wild guess) & box, gives a total of $1,580.

Option 2, 10kw running, 12.5kw peak, portable also from Costco, $1,900. Add transfer switch & inlet box & labor & you're at $2,430.

Option 3, the 14kw propane powered standby whole house unit from Costco (12kw natural gas), $2250 after $250 rebate, plus $1,000 installation, $3,250.

So you can get a whole house 14k standby installed for about $750.00 more than I paid just for my 6500 watt Honda portable generator?

 

[Pete Judd]

We have long outages here once and a while, I have found that an 800 watt honda inverter genset gets us through just fine. We heat with a pellet stove that uses very little power, can cook on camp stoves, light with white gas lanterns (and they also provide a lot of heat). Get water to flush toilets from the pond or creek. When a big storm is coming, we fill clean milk jugs with potable water and store them in the bathtub of the second bathroom that we don't use. We were flooded in without power a couple of years ago for 6 days, and went through less than two 5 gallon jerry cans of gas. Had internet, plugged in the frezzer at night, It was cold enough outside to move food out of the fridge into coolers. Not much of a ordeal. I don't think that for us a whole house system is needed. The load of the well pump would push the price up to high.

 

[Pilot]

$2250 was yesterday's price at Costco, in the store, good until 9/17, after which it is $2,500. That's an in-store price only; I don't see it at Costco.com. Installation from a couple sources is expected to run $1,000. It's a Kohler unit.

Saw a similar Kohler unit online for $3,900. That's why I love Costco.