Whole house generator

[Ridgewalker]

What brand diesel are you looking at?

I keep thinking LP for me since I already have a tank on site. It would be easy to tap into it.

We had a power outage for 3 full days recently. I thought I was protected with an 8kw Dyna (Winco) genset. I was, sorta. However, if you happen to have a number of motors starting up simultaneously, the instantaneous current draw can do some bad things. I lost my expensive dehumidifier and my oil burner and refrigerator sounded a bit weird at times. Most likely due to low voltage at that time. I felt 8kw was ample, but keeping that genset would necessitate my taking some things like our freezer, dehumdifier, and a couple other things off to make sure I don't have a brown voltage situation again. It is also why I'm considering a 14kw unit now. It's a commercial diesel, very well built, and if I project another 10 years ahead with it, it will still have low hours and be worth nearly what it's worth now. It does not seem like a bad investment for me now, all things considered. Still, 3600 bucks ain't cheap, but as I said, it's not gonna lose much value and no function with whatever in the next decade.

 

[Mighty Dodge]

I might lose power 2 or 3 times a year. I use a Lincoln Weldanpower G8000. It won't run the whole house but keeps the fridge, freezer, well pump and lights on.

M.D.

 

[tmajor]

Here's a link to another post of mine, which has a few links, which might be helpful.

 

[daBear]

I am in the middle of Mississippi and lived with two females (wife/daughter) for three weeks without power in August which is hot. When I built a new house in 2006 I was certain to include a NG generator. I bought a 16KW Generac which up until last week had less than 100 hours on it. I noticed it did not start for the weekly exercise cycle and to make a real long story short the stator was fried. The Generac service rep, said well they just do that every once in a while. My unit being about 42 months old was out of warranty and a new stator will cost $2,000 with labor.

I will have a 20KW Cummins/Onan delivered in about a week. Beware of all the bells and whistles and low prices associated with Generac. Cummins is made in the good old USA and that is for me. Plus they have a 5 year/2000 hour warranty. Generac does not even come close.

 

[grsthegreat]

Like i said before my Onan generator was purchased USED in 1994, not sure how old it really is. It electric start and has run flawless (cept batteries and oil) since i bought it. Its propane fed

 

[ayelvington]

I'm looking to install a whole house auto start up unit before winter myself. I'm trying to decide between 14kw and 17kw being run on NG. It will be either Kohler or Generac. Any pro's or cons of one brand over the other?

I'd be inclined to go with the Kohler. I don't want to open a can of worms with why. I'll just say that opinion comes from friends that do large commercial power systems.

 

[coobie]

I thought I read some where that Onan was out of business is that true??coobie

 

[daBear]

I thought I read some where that Onan was out of business is that true??coobie

I am not coobie, but I talked to the Cummins/Onan regional rep and local residential rep only last Friday about 20KW residental units and load management quesitons. Onan has always been big in RV gensets and now its Cummins/Onan so maybe they got married.

 

[coobie]

I am not coobie, but I talked to the Cummins/Onan regional rep and local residential rep only last Friday about 20KW residental units and load management quesitons. Onan has always been big in RV gensets and now its Cummins/Onan so maybe they got married.

OK,thats a good thing since I have a 20hp Onan motor in my 1996 ingersoll lawn tractor.Hopefully I will still be able to get parts.coobie

 

[msjanket]

I've been looking at a Ruggerini diesel, air cooled, around 22 HP. Should put out 14k electricity. Air cooled, very nice unit that has BlueDiamond generator end.

 

[hr3]

I am in the middle of Mississippi and lived with two females (wife/daughter) for three weeks without power in August which is hot. When I built a new house in 2006 I was certain to include a NG generator. I bought a 16KW Generac which up until last week had less than 100 hours on it. I noticed it did not start for the weekly exercise cycle and to make a real long story short the stator was fried. The Generac service rep, said well they just do that every once in a while. My unit being about 42 months old was out of warranty and a new stator will cost $2,000 with labor.

I will have a 20KW Cummins/Onan delivered in about a week. Beware of all the bells and whistles and low prices associated with Generac. Cummins is made in the good old USA and that is for me. Plus they have a 5 year/2000 hour warranty. Generac does not even come close.

2006 to last week was just a bit over the 2 year warranty.. If in fact you had problems after only 42 months you would have had it fixed by any reputable Generac service rep.
Are you getting the air cooled unit from Cummins/ Onan,, the 993 cc unit ??

 

[techman]

I will throw in my 2 cents. We lost power Saturday night with Irene. Decided not to start my 9.8 KW Kubota powered genset, but to wait till morning. Got up at 6:00 AM and attempted a start, but just got a starter chatter. I always run it every Saturday morning for 10 minutes to exercise it. I have a float charger on the battery and it always kicks over, but with no charger overnight during the storm the battery was shot. Jumped it with the Kubota tractor and ran two full days, with the night off since it was mainly a waste of fuel. Got a new battery and swapped it out and found a warranty slip on the old battery: 7+ years old, so it was due.

With a manual transfer I run the whole house. I kill the hot water heater (but I did run it on the second afternoon to get some hot water in reserve), but it runs my 2 geothermal heat pumps (air con this time of year) and one air heat pump for the latest addition. I don't think I could start all together, but they all run at the same time without a problem. Since it is 3 zones, they never start exactly at the same time. Total of 5 tons of cooling. Only issue is my modern stove which gets upset on gen power. I am not sure if it is power quality or just frequency not being exact. It beeps and flashes so I shut it down. Everything else works fine. We cooked with the convection/microwave. Genset is an 1800 RPM with a fully electronic regulated brushless alternator, rated at 11.5 KW.

In total burned about 9 gallons of diesel in 2 full days of operation, and shutdown overnight. Family was happy with A/C, water, TV and all of the amenities.

paul

 

[daBear]

2006 to last week was just a bit over the 2 year warranty.. If in fact you had problems after only 42 months you would have had it fixed by any reputable Generac service rep.
Are you getting the air cooled unit from Cummins/ Onan,, the 993 cc unit ??

2006 to now is about 5 years bro? countem again. Yes, air cooled. We do not lose power often and the price of the liquid cooled is not worth it. The RS20 does load sheding nicely and I have three AC's but will only hook two into it, but both will be able to be dropped if necessary.

 

[hr3]

I stand corrected.. there are only 12 months to a year not 24,, Keep us posted on the Install of your new generator,, with pic's of course..

 

[robs660]

I have a 30kw MTU Onsite Energy gen. MTU is the new name for Katolight. I installed a whole house 200amp auto transfer switch as well. Yes the up front cost was high but living a normal life while my neighbors were wondering when peer would be back made my wife and daughter feel real good. My gen has a 210 gallon diesel belly tank that will run for 7 days at 55% load. I have actually run my TIG while on gen power before. It cost me about $12K for everything and I know when I sell the house i will get every Emmy back.

Gen has a 3 cyl John Deere motor in an outdoor enclosure. It's super quiet and exercises for 1 hr every 2 weeks

 

[daBear]

Techman that is a fine looking liquid cooled unit. It looks like it is in a shop or something like that, so what do you do about exhaust fumes?

Robs660 that sounds sweet. How about a picture or so of that unit and if you got all that for $12K you hit a home run because a 30K has got to be liquid cooled also. Come on now, pony up the pictures.

Here are some pictures of my dead one. I have it listed on Craig's list for $750 including the transfer switch. (but might take less). I plainly stated in the ad the stator was bad and I have two emails already asking if the genset runs. Go figure.

 

[dmccarty]

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

 

[GPPlink]

I am moving to a rural location where I will be back to having powerpoles.
I am one of the last houses on a 1.5 mile road leading into our new place and
have been looking into whole house generators.

What are you guys using?

Has anybody used this one?

Briggs & Stratton 40305B Auto Standby Generator Air-Cooled 20KW

if you have the money then i would go with an automatic whole house generator. a good one will run around $5k to $7k depending but if you have a good portable generator putting out about 8000 kw ( sams has the best deal i have seen Honda Black Max 8450 Generator - 6.75KW - Sam's Club ) and to connect it to your house and prevent backfeeding look into a generlink transfer switch

 

[techman]

Techman that is a fine looking liquid cooled unit. It looks like it is in a shop or something like that, so what do you do about exhaust fumes?

DaBear:

It is loacated in my shed, which is about 50' from the house. I have the exhaust piped outside (see pix).

paul

 

[wh22366]

I've had a portable and transfer switch for 25 years now and only bought a 7.5 KW unit after finding it took most of the previous 5 KW unit's output just to run my (deep) well pump. So far my arrangement has been enough to handle outages brought on by the spotty consistency of my local co-op's power service (in the 1980's & early 1990's) and the elements. But I do look admiringly at the auto-start propane units some of the neighbors have!