schmism
Super Member
The peoria area was hit with 1/8" of freezeing rain (ice). We had had 2-3" of rain before that and the ground was well past saturated. Then the morning of the ice we also had 30mph winds. That combo (soft soils, heavy trees and wind) ment power lines, poles and trees came down.
We were ultimately out of power for just shy of 48hrs. Temps were at or just below freezeing for most of the 48hrs.
I have an old Coleman generator, about 5Kw but its loud enough to wake the dead and its always had carb issues. I had looked at generators for the past 2 years thinking about what i might upgrade to knowing ill eventually need one. Well of course you never finish that buy before you need it.
So instead the morning the power went out (just an hr or so into the outage) we headed out to sams for supplies. I knew they had several sizes including a honda 2000i "silent" knockoff on the shelf. I had wanted one of these type units for a while as the portability, quietness and small form factor would make it easy to use around the farm as well as in more portable jobs I do once or twice a year.
We came home with a Black and Decker "Black max" 1700w 2100w surge genny.
It would power the fridge, 1200w startup load ment it would grunt durring starup, but only a 260w run load ment it purred along fine.
I have a cat door i custom installed into a porch window and we used it to run the extension cords into the house leaving the genny outside on the non-enclosed porch. (chained to the railing) This ment it was easy to reach right out the door generally opting not to put shoes or a coat on to refuel.
I disconnected the furnace from the "service disconnect" and wired on a plug pigtail that got pluged into an extension cord that ran right to the genny. Fired up the furnace, again grunted while the blower motor came up to speed but then would purr along fine.
After running for the afternoon we went down to hang out at a friends house for the evening. Came home fired things up and after settling in decided to run on autoidle mode. In hindsite this is were things went bad.
Im up late and refuel at 2 am before im off to bed. Thoughout the night i happen to notice the furnace trying to cycle on but not actually comming on. By the morning i cant get the furnace fired up and its 50 in the house.
Call to the furnace people and a service guy is at the house by about 1.
Eventually we figure out the "board" in the furance is bad, and a replacement is installed. Likely cause, low voltage from the generator likely fried it.
Gennerator ran all that next day running the furanace and fridge.
lessons learned.
1) if you have a autoidle genny and are running large wattage items that have electronics in them, DO NOT use the autoIdle. It just takes the genny to long to "catch up" when a load cuts on.
2) if you have a 1500-2000w UPS (like for a computer) use it infront of the genny. It will clean up those low voltage conditions when startup loads hit. Problem is if you were to invest in a UPS that size you could just as well buy a genny that is 2-3x larger. (although any genny that is running at 80% of its rated output is going to have the same issues)
3) the little 2000i clone used about 1qt per hr on high idle. It did run for 7+ hrs on autoidle running only a few hundred watts.
The safety police would tell you never full a generator running. I developed a method to pour fuel into a 1 qt mason jar, then pour that down a funnel and then note the fuel level in the tank. allowing me to track quarts of fuel usage per time. FYI the 2000i clone has a gallon fuel tank like most of them in that size. Durring the day/evening i was fulling about every 2 hrs to track usage. I could see how an extended tank with an aftermarket cap would be a nice addon to the setup but then again most are $150.
4) I was useing a Kill-a-watt meter to track my actual watt usage (something ive had for some time) It also reported a even 120v and an accurate 60.0hz
TLDR - Dont use autoidle when useing the small inverter style generators to run backup power to your high watt household items that have electronics that you can blow up. Autoidle did do fine when just running some lights or the computers etc. Genny used 1qt/hr. Was perhaps slighly more loud than a true honda but still plenty quiet that outside on the porch it was a quiet hum.
We were ultimately out of power for just shy of 48hrs. Temps were at or just below freezeing for most of the 48hrs.
I have an old Coleman generator, about 5Kw but its loud enough to wake the dead and its always had carb issues. I had looked at generators for the past 2 years thinking about what i might upgrade to knowing ill eventually need one. Well of course you never finish that buy before you need it.
So instead the morning the power went out (just an hr or so into the outage) we headed out to sams for supplies. I knew they had several sizes including a honda 2000i "silent" knockoff on the shelf. I had wanted one of these type units for a while as the portability, quietness and small form factor would make it easy to use around the farm as well as in more portable jobs I do once or twice a year.
We came home with a Black and Decker "Black max" 1700w 2100w surge genny.
It would power the fridge, 1200w startup load ment it would grunt durring starup, but only a 260w run load ment it purred along fine.
I have a cat door i custom installed into a porch window and we used it to run the extension cords into the house leaving the genny outside on the non-enclosed porch. (chained to the railing) This ment it was easy to reach right out the door generally opting not to put shoes or a coat on to refuel.
I disconnected the furnace from the "service disconnect" and wired on a plug pigtail that got pluged into an extension cord that ran right to the genny. Fired up the furnace, again grunted while the blower motor came up to speed but then would purr along fine.
After running for the afternoon we went down to hang out at a friends house for the evening. Came home fired things up and after settling in decided to run on autoidle mode. In hindsite this is were things went bad.
Im up late and refuel at 2 am before im off to bed. Thoughout the night i happen to notice the furnace trying to cycle on but not actually comming on. By the morning i cant get the furnace fired up and its 50 in the house.
Call to the furnace people and a service guy is at the house by about 1.
Eventually we figure out the "board" in the furance is bad, and a replacement is installed. Likely cause, low voltage from the generator likely fried it.
Gennerator ran all that next day running the furanace and fridge.
lessons learned.
1) if you have a autoidle genny and are running large wattage items that have electronics in them, DO NOT use the autoIdle. It just takes the genny to long to "catch up" when a load cuts on.
2) if you have a 1500-2000w UPS (like for a computer) use it infront of the genny. It will clean up those low voltage conditions when startup loads hit. Problem is if you were to invest in a UPS that size you could just as well buy a genny that is 2-3x larger. (although any genny that is running at 80% of its rated output is going to have the same issues)
3) the little 2000i clone used about 1qt per hr on high idle. It did run for 7+ hrs on autoidle running only a few hundred watts.
The safety police would tell you never full a generator running. I developed a method to pour fuel into a 1 qt mason jar, then pour that down a funnel and then note the fuel level in the tank. allowing me to track quarts of fuel usage per time. FYI the 2000i clone has a gallon fuel tank like most of them in that size. Durring the day/evening i was fulling about every 2 hrs to track usage. I could see how an extended tank with an aftermarket cap would be a nice addon to the setup but then again most are $150.
4) I was useing a Kill-a-watt meter to track my actual watt usage (something ive had for some time) It also reported a even 120v and an accurate 60.0hz
TLDR - Dont use autoidle when useing the small inverter style generators to run backup power to your high watt household items that have electronics that you can blow up. Autoidle did do fine when just running some lights or the computers etc. Genny used 1qt/hr. Was perhaps slighly more loud than a true honda but still plenty quiet that outside on the porch it was a quiet hum.
