Generac or Koehler whole house generator?

[drizler]

Wow you guys sure do need the big stuff . I thought that emergency meant doing without or definitely less. I know you farmers need a large rig to run your needed operations .
Most folks up north here just keep a 5000 -7000 unit and do well with them. I had a 3200 GENERAC myself and still do though it’s a tad small. Recently I got a 17000 GENERAC from a guy who lives in the deep woods and wanted newer better. So I grabbed it for $100 with 200 hours on it. One thing I’ll say is wow it’s HEAVY and huge. It’s so big I can lay a piece of plywood on it and use it for a bench and weighs like a Harley. When we set it in the F 150 it actually dropped and could feel it back there driving home. As for being so called portable …..it ain’t really .
Mine range fine testing it and I know the guy so no concerned he’s ripping me off. I fire it up a couple weeks later ran it and shut it off. Now I always leave the carb dry if possible for well known reasons. Soooo me turns off the fuel and let it die which it did with a backfire. Yes it has the antibackfire solenoid on the Nikki carb same as on your Briggs mowers. Next month tried to start , nothin. Check around seems no spark , weak spark not sure really. As feared it must have sheared the flywheel key.

Now to get to the flywheel is a true adventure. Just taking the shroud off required everything off the front from the panel past the carb, intake. It sounds easy but it wasn’t. The panel really couldn’t be unhooked due to the way it was wired and and it stayed in the way most of the time. Finally I get to the flywheel and it looked fine but possibly had moved so I had to go bum a massive puller as mines smaller. It came off with the usual tapping and big bang . What do I see but the key is intact but seems a bit smeared. Put flyeel back onpart way and it’s obvious that it was a loose shallow fit and the kerf had just ridden over it. All that for a poorly fitted key. I took the next size up from hardware store and teased it down for a nice tight full fit. Together it goes , another battle with the shroud and panel cleaning out the carb along the way and it runs fine. I’m thinking the flywheel had already started moving which caused the violent backfire I’d seen.
Lesson learned, these things aren’t fun to work on at all. Everything is layered onto other things . If I was in a place where I needed one badly I’d want to stick a propane conversion on there and be safe from the dreaded Nikki carb hassles I know so well from my mower, same exact carb. The carb itself is easy but you have unlike my mower ) to yank all that crap off to get to it. So do avoid if possible the Nikki nightmare with these especially if you are stuck with Booze-Gas . Store that carb dry or better use propane. One more think on Nikki. Those EBay rebuild kits and cheap toss on replacement carbs we all love ain’t so with Nikki. They either don’t have what you need or don’t exactly fit ( been there done that with mower ) . The toss ones you will notice aren’t well reviewed and look how few the selling company has sold, the bad comments ect. It took 3 orders to fix my mower becuse the tiny O rings are not in the kits and those are the usual culprit. Soooo if you do have to tear down ol Nikki do yourself a favor and spring for the OEM kit. It’s worth it in time and hassle.

 

[WM75Guy]

Would be far cheaper to have the electric company install a second meter at the barn to attach to your service box. Even if you have 2 different bills each month. I did that once. To save the cost of running drop poles and lines from the house service to the barn.

The barn is on a separate disconnect from the meter, 225A to the house, 175A to the barn. I am all electric. According to the calculations 40Kw is for electric heat in the house, plus we have a 12,000 BTU mini-split in the barn tack room to keep the pipes from freezing. During the deep freeze in 2022 the wife had to haul water to the barn to water the horses when we lost power for 3 days. Trying to avoid that in our old age.

 

[Chewwy]

If you use a propane generator, consider the size of your propane tank. At full load, a 22K model will use a lot of fuel.

My neighbor found that out the hard way. During the last 7 day outage we had, he drained his 400gal tank in a little over 4 days.

Not a problem if your average outage is only a few hours, but something to think about.

With what we want to power, we need a 22kW machine. Per the spec sheet, the machine consumes about 2.35 gph of propane at 1/2 load and 3.75 gph at full load.

Based on my electric bills for the last 12 months, my average power consumption is less than 3.5 kWh per hour.

Generac does not provide any info on fuel consumption at that load.

 

[nikdfish]

We installed a 22kw Honeywell (Generac) 8 years back, no problems. We sized the unit based on start current for a 5 ton heat pump. Normal average use for us is about 2kw/hr. Guesstimated consumption at that level is 1.2 - 1.5 gph. Arrived at that by graphing out the published consumption points & finding 2kw on the line. FWIW, no load consumption is about a gallon an hour accordingl to the graph.

 

[ponytug]

With what we want to power, we need a 22kW machine. Per the spec sheet, the machine consumes about 2.35 gph of propane at 1/2 load and 3.75 gph at full load.

Based on my electric bills for the last 12 months, my average power consumption is less than 3.5 kWh per hour.

Generac does not provide any info on fuel consumption at that load.

Many (most?) propane generators that I have been around, don't throttle back much from 50%. They have to keep the speed up for the AC frequency, and below a certain concentration the propane (or gas) doesn't ignite.

Diesel tend to use less fuel at lighter loads, but you run a serious risk of carbon deposits, aka "wet stacking". If you do run a diesel often at lighter loads, I would suggest that do it and yourself a favor and run it for a couple of hours occasionally into a load bank that will drive it to 100% load. An old range or two works well for many folks. I have a cheap space heater that is 100% load. (Yes, it is a big space heater. )

All the best,

Peter

 

[Rustyiron]

With what we want to power, we need a 22kW machine. Per the spec sheet, the machine consumes about 2.35 gph of propane at 1/2 load and 3.75 gph at full load.

My 20kw diesel uses about a half gallon per hour. This was only 1 part of my fuel of choice decision. The others are;

In a long weather related outage you can't run out and fill up a bunch of 5 gallon tanks to dump into your propane genny and the propane company will be swamped even if there drivers are able to make it to work.

Never seen a propane co. that wasn't trying to ###k me over.

I always have about 1000g of diesel on hand (especially in the winter) between 3 or 4 tanks.

A diesel engine is perfectly happy running "24-7"

My needs (concerning an outage) are not by any means you're average suburban homeowners needs where the convenient "generac type propane pkg" is an ideal solution.

 

[D&D]

Been awhile since I looked at the generator market. Running rpm’s have a large impact on fuel usage. Some diesel gensets run at 1800 rpm, I think all the propane units are in the 2800-3600 range.

 

[chris the wrench]

I installed my second cummins generator for my personal use(sold previous house). They work great. The transfer switch is so fast most of the lights dont even go out. I would buy a third without question!

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Although I have a few generators, I MUCH prefer to power my whole house generator with my diesel tractor.

I always have it ready to go and if you want, you can park your pto generator near the house in a little house, just like you would have a stationary generator.

It's been working for me for many years now, so I have no plans to change.

SR

 

[grsthegreat]

Ah, another generator thread. There is no one best answer. The very first decision point would be frequency of power outage and length of average outage. If you experience alot of long outages, go liquid cooled, 1800 rpm.

If you rarely get alot of outages that are very long in length, go air cooled 3600 rpm.

On average liquid cooled costs about double the price of same KW output machine. Installation is only slightly more than air cooled. Diesel generators are fantastic units, but be prepared for real expensive cost on repairs if anything goes wrong. On these units generally you need industrial trained technicians to work on them ( i dont work on diesel units).

Air cooled units are far cheaper to maintain in low hour outages. An air cooled unit is kinda like a large lawn motor engine. The liquid cooled units are like a complicated car. Prices for liquid cooled repairs add up very fast.

I service about 300 air cooled customers, and only 3 liquid cooled clients. All generac units, as i no longer work on onan, Cummins or kohler. Not that there bad units, but i dont want to stock parts for 4 different brands. Stocking inventory for just Generac costs alot.

As far as reliability of Generac generators…..i have very few major issues and i have never had generac not honor a warranty repair. I find that any unit produced after about 2012 to be VERY solid and reliable (older units do have alot more issues). I have several customers with over 2,000 running hours on their machines. With proper maintenance they prove very reliable. Most of my customers are in the 200-300 hour range though.

My own 22 kw home unit (3600 rpm) is 8 years and only has 119 hours. The unit I resurrected from a lightning strike (2008 10 kw) has 518 hours when i repaired it. This was a complete wreck. All control wiring melted into a bundle of wires. Owner wanted newer, larger unit. I was in the process of demolishing this old unit when i decided to try and fix it as a winter project. Now it sits behind my shop and is configured for manual start and manual transfer to shop. It works great once more.

As for fuel loads, generac charts are misleading. I happen to have the opportunity to have use of a wifi recording fuel monitor attached to my unit during a summer storm power loss. Generally, i would manually shut down my generator during what was expected to be a multi day outage, during the middle of a warm, summer day. But the wife had 6 friends over during a quilting club get together. So i let it run and power house and barn. While entire basement was in use with a 5 ton ac load to boot, meter showed only 1.2 GPH average load. Meter showed highest load when ac fired up, and dropped drastically when ac shut down.

If it was a winter night power outage, it could have been up to 3 GPH propane use as i have 6 stock tank heaters running, heat tape, heated steps, etc. heat load is the most expensive loads to run. My house is propane and wood heat, propane water heater and propane cooking appliances. I have a 1000 gallon underground propane tank.

I also manually shut my unit down when its bedtime. I personally dont want to waste the fuel. All freezers and refers will maintain cold temp overnight. If its below freezing, i will restart unit after 4 hours off to maintain water troughs though, to keep from freezing over.

I have lots of customers that want there units to run the entire outage though, mostly people on medical devices. The only caveat is i recommend they shut down and check oil every day on air cooled.