Need advice on whole-house generators

[newbury]

<snip>Just need to change oil in engine and put new plugs in every few hours.<snip>

Few?
As in "many are called but few are chosen"?
"I'm having a few friends over"?
"I only run the generator for a few hours at a time"?

Or did you mean days of run time?

 

[nybirdman]

This thread has got me considering which route to go with a generator. I just about decided on a propane gen set, but now thinking about a PTO. Everyone has made very valid points considering each one.

What is the longest any of you with a PTO gen set has kept their tractor running? I don't think I'm comfortable letting my tractor scream at PTO rpms for hours on end. Also, do they make good PTO gen sets that produce clean power for electronics?

Our last outage was Jan.13,2012(Friday the 13th!),we were down for 26hrs.,my tractor ran for 12 hrs and burned 14 gallons of fuel.10K ran the whole house/garage.We do have back-up heat source. I can't be without power do to my business.With the new generators the power is very clean..everything including computers work well.Tractors are made to run at PTO speeds for days on end if needed.

 

[newbury]

Our last outage was Jan.13,2012(Friday the 13th!),we were down for 26hrs.,my tractor ran for 12 hrs and burned 14 gallons of fuel.10K ran the whole house/garage.We do have back-up heat source. I can't be without power do to my business.With the new generators the power is very clean..everything including computers work well.Tractors are made to run at PTO speeds for days on end if needed.

Can you tell us what size tractor and brand of generator please?

 

[Storm56]

We built a new home in 2007. Went with hot air propane furnace, propane stove, hot water heater and dryer. I have a Kubota Low Boy 6500 watt diesel generator, works just fine and handles all our needs. We just last fall lost power for 11 days from tropical storm Lee. Never missed a beat. Other than filling the unit once a day, (I shut it off at night), we lived pretty much just like normal. We are on a well, no problem with pumping water either.

I generally keep a couple hundred gallons of fuel around so that is not an issue. My point is that since you are building a new home you have the opportunity to set it up for a generator and can select your heat and appliances accordingly. Propane is as a rule less expensive than electric around here and as a bonus I can get by with a smaller capacity generator.

PTO units are great, I just like having my tractors availble for other uses should I need them. Everyone has different needs, just sharing with you what works for me.

 

[nybirdman]

Can you tell us what size tractor and brand of generator please?

Kubota L4240 ,Tiger Power 10k

 

[doxford jim]

Hi Guys,

Just stumbled across this thread (Sat. afternoon and it is snowing outside )
and thought I could throw a little bit into the information mix. I am very interested in what everyone says and am learning as I read.

When I bought my place seven years ago, it already had a 12kW Kubota diesel standby generator installed - with a manual changeover switch. However, the previous owner never ran it - it was not set up to be run properly. I did what was needed and now it runs flawlessly when needed.

Where I live, winter temperatures can go down to around -40F/C and lower. The standby generator sits inside a wooden shed without electric services. A starting battery is used to heat the glow plugs and start the generator. The fuel tank is a 250 Imp. gallon house oil furnace tank sitting on blocks in the next door leanto shed.

We occasionally get outages lasting a few days and this generator has saved us lots of problems - especially during the winter outages. The 12kW gives me 100 amp service which is enough to run our heat pump heating system, stove, fridge, freezer and laundry stuff. We also have a propane backup heating furnace in the event of the heat pump going down (which it has twice in the winter ) but it runs off 100lb propane bottles - APITA.

Anyway, to get back on track - the diesel generator works great and I have had no trouble starting it in cold weather. I run it every month or so - sometimes no load other times full house load for three or four hours. It has to be serviced of course and the fuel needs to be treated. As I have diesel tractors and trucks, there is always spare diesel around if I should run low. It uses approximetly 3/4 gallon diesel per hour on full house load.

If I had to do it from new, I would go with propane for the standby generator and back up furnace - also stove for cooking; filling the propane late in the fall for plenty of fuel storage. I am looking at putting in a 250 gallon or bigger propane tank for the back up propane heating system I have.

Of course everyones situation will be slightly different. Up here in central BC, winter conditions play a major role in considering this sort of equipment. Having a wood burning stove/furnace isn't always a good idea due to house insurance requirements here. Propane and diesel seem to be the optimum choice.

The tractors here get used a lot for snow clearing so a PTO generator would not work too well if you have only one tractor and a 1400ft gravel driveway to clear. A PTO generator would be very handy to have to make portable power - instead of lugging a gas generator around.

HTH

Cheers

Jim

 

[Gauntlet]

I too am planning a new house and have selected an air cooled Guardian LP generator for the new house. I decided on this because the house will be located in an area that normally receives 250-300 inches of snow per year. I will have a LP fired forced air heating system with AC unit, a "on demand" hot water heater, cooking stove and a clothes dryer. My primary heat will be a pellet stove and the furnace will become my backup. But in the event of a power failure, everything will still work. I have a camp that is off the grid and it practically runs on propane. Heater, cook stove, refrigerator, lamps, a "on demand" hot water heater and the generator. So I am incorporating some of those into the new house. We bought the camp and it had a gasoline 4000W generator. When it finally pooped the bed, we ran out and bought a Honda EU6000is inverter generator. Runs super quiet at only 65 decibels and we run it in our shed to make it even quieter than it is. A neighbor told me about swapping out the carb for a propane kit. Now we don't have to haul 5 gal. gas cans and it basically burns a little less per hour on propane. My maintenance costs went down as I now only change the oil once a season instead of four times per season and it is now safer to breathe in the shed, compared to the CO2 emissions caused by a gasoline unit :confused2:. Because the generator is now propane, I had our LP supplier add an additional 100 gal tank for a total of 3 tanks which now get filled once a year. The "on demand" hot water heater is very cost effective as a pilot light is lit continuously and it only fires up to heat water when needed, saving us more money. Just make sure the generator you to purchase has a self test feature. I goes on and off automatically once a month to ensure it is working properly.

 

[looch]

Looking into it here, too. Rural setting, no NG. I have an LPG range, but the consumption on whole home LPG gensets has put me off that option. Everyone and his brother has a tractor around us - diesel is readily available and for me, that is key. When/if the big nasty comes around - like it did in 1998 - hoping on that delivery truck... well, you know what they say about hoping.

I had considered PTO units, but I heard there may be problems with frequency variances, depending on load. Not so much anymore? Otherwise, Aurora Generators in Ontario have some reasonably affordable stand alone units. I would do a 10Kw unit with manual transfer switch, giving more control on which circuits I could light up at any given time.

 

[strum456]

Our last outage was Jan.13,2012(Friday the 13th!),we were down for 26hrs.,my tractor ran for 12 hrs and burned 14 gallons of fuel.10K ran the whole house/garage.We do have back-up heat source. I can't be without power do to my business.With the new generators the power is very clean..everything including computers work well.Tractors are made to run at PTO speeds for days on end if needed.

That is a little more fuel consumption than i would have expected. Do you have a lot of draw on your gen to where it is constantly loading the tractor?

 

[nybirdman]

That is a little more fuel consumption than i would have expected. Do you have a lot of draw on your gen to where it is constantly loading the tractor?

You have to maintain constant pto speeds to run the generator,close to 540 to maintain 120 volts.Load has little bearing on fuel use with this combo.
Like I said ,I am happy with mine,when you need it you need it,it doesn't matter about a little fuel.
I purchased mine not only for my house but to run my incubators and hatchers if we lose power during that season.I would loose my business if I lost power during this time.
I hatch and raised ringneck pheasant.