Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator?

[MossRoad]

How much larger?

Don't do it. Just purchase the correct one for NG in the first place, or get the tri-fuel. Why by the wrong product and modify it to work, when you can buy the correct product to start with? Its penny wise and pound foolish.

 

[Travelover]

Don't do it. Just purchase the correct one for NG in the first place, or get the tri-fuel. Why by the wrong product and modify it to work, when you can buy the correct product to start with? Its penny wise and pound foolish.

I was just funnin' buick. Normally jets are fairly precise machinings, not just hogged out with a drill.

 

[MossRoad]

Whew! I was losing faith. :laughing:

 

[oosik]

Again - when we lived in Anchorage many had natural gas standby generators. Natural gas was dirt cheap in AK, even the '94 quake did not disrupt the natural gas lines and most who had generators were still OK. If you can call - no house but, by golly, my generator still runs, as being OK.

So..... there are companies that make NG generators. You just have to look.

 

[cdaigle430]

My NG Generator is not portable and it does exercise twice a month-its not a waste but a necessity(especially with cold winter in Maine) All generators should be exercised monthly-for that matter all engines, especially small engines. In the event of an earth quake or NG disruption I can easily switch to Propane. I came from portable generators that ran on gas, used it that way for many years. Two years on my NG generator and I am telling you there is NO comparison....none as a standby. I would have done this years ago but I just got a natural gas line on my road two years ago.

 

[TheMan419]

Thankfully we are not in an area with earthquake or hurricane that is going to disrupt the infrastructure so much that gasoline will be hard to come by. I have a portable that runs on gasoline. Had the electrician put in a sub panel and transfer switch. Of course since that was done power has not gone out.

It is nice that with the tractor I can pick up the genset and take it where I want it on the farm and have power. In two years of living on the farm I have done that precisely twice.

I am of the mind that using the portable type is cheaper and for us such an occasional problem that it is not worth doing more than that. If I lived where power went out more often I would think differently.

 

[MossRoad]

We get pretty frequent outages up here. But they are generally only a few minutes. I can think of only a few times in the past 20 years that it went longer than 3 hours, was getting dark, and I only fired it up because I wanted some lights or to flush the toilet or take a shower.

 

[grsthegreat]

That’s over 3 times the required current for a 1 hp motor.

thats right. the salesman at one of the local well supply houses told me that they did their best year in over 20 years after the wind storms of 2016 up here. power was out between 4 days and 2 months depending on where people lived. over 3500 power poles were snapped off north of us. He told me alot of people tried to run their deep well (750 ft depth many of them) with small portable generators and wrecked the pump. they had months of work replacing pumps. he was in pig heaven. for a shallow well this probably wouldn't be an issue, but the well pump manufacturer gave them paperwork that said....3,500 watt (surge) per 1 HP of well. this has to be available. so if the gen was also powering up referigs and lights, this has to be taken into account. up here, most people have 1-1/2 HP pumps.so a 7.5 kw gen is the MINIMUM i ever recommend (with a 9,000 watt surges). i have installed MANY of these over the years and no one has EVER called me back to complain.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

our local well installer recommends 3500 watts per HP well pump. this allows for startup inrush to prevent pump damage.

Truth. I fried a pump motor once. The generator was big enough (4400w), but I had another load on it and the voltage dropped low enough to fry a 3/4 hp motor. There's nothing like a trek to town to replace a pump motor during a power outage to make a lesson stick in your memory.

 

[bigdeano]

our local well installer recommends 3500 watts per HP well pump. this allows for startup inrush to prevent pump damage.

I agree. My 10KW US made generator would start and run my 3HP well pump where I used to live. It won't even budge the 5HP motor on my air compressor, which starts with no load because it releases the pump pressure.