Years ago I bought a DR Brush Cutter. One reason I bought it is that they have a generator attachment. Mine is 6,500 watts. Their generators over the years vary in wattage but they are around 6,000 watts.
The nice thing about using the DR to run power is that I run the DR often enough to keep it working and it gets used for other things so it is not just sitting around waiting for an outage.
We have been VERY lucky that we have not had to use the generator. We have underground power but the lines in front of us are going to get knocked down one day. There are at least two big trees leaning towards and over the lines. Every snow, ice, or wind storm I figure those trees are going to take out power.
We have been lucky.
The DR has a 17 HP engine, that once it broke in, uses about 1/2 gallon per hour. The engine far out powers the generator needs.
We have a connection on one of our outside power boxes to hook up the generator. There is also a disconnect switch that takes us off the grid. We can be on the genset or the grid but not both. We will have to use the circuit panels to manage the load which is easy enough. The electrician the helped build our house installed the set up.
I looked really hard a generator/welder setup but it was more money than the DR and while I could use a welder it does not make money sense. The DR gets used far more than I would use a welder.
We also looked long and hard at a PTO genset but in the end decided that the DR generator was a better use of the money.
Later,
Dan
