Your last generator Maintenance Run

[3930dave]

One of my frien have a well like that that have decebt pressure and that been overflowing in the ditch 24/7 since it was dug, decade ago.....
The other day he was cleaning his ashpalt driveway with a pressure washer and sone*ｻnew in town*ｻ neighbor stop by to give him **** about wating water ..... he had a good laugh at him and showed him the 3:4in pipe that been wasting all the water in the ditch !! Lol

How To Make Friends...... move somewhere and immediately start lecturing people.......

Good example of how "citidiot" became a word.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I eventually ( but is is far on the to do list) want to have a 50 or 100 gallons feah water rank in the basement, with a sureflo 12v on demand rv pump. So I can fill it up using the pto genset and then be good for a few days for qater need, and run the basic in the house qith either the pure sin qave inverter and the 60kwh battery from the electric car or the honda eu2000.

Why reinvent the wheel..... good point about off-the shelf RV pumps.

Even with a modern efficient/quiet generator, batteries are a nice addition....... much of the time we only "need" to run relatively light loads - perfect match for an efficient DC/AC inverter + battery bank.

A good example of this hybrid approach (commercial application predates "hybrid" usage by quite a bit.....) is what 90cummins has assembled at home.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

They are even moving away from nat gas, which I thought was cleanest option.

The other aspect of this demonizing process (recent viewers.... I am a fan of appropriate use of alt NRG.....) that doesn't pass the smell test for me is reducing usage of hydro-electric. If we ever run out of either gravity or water, the planet is done either way.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I bought my pto generator waaaay back when my mom was still with us, she had to have electricity for medical reasons 24/7/365 and the power went out for a week. I had a brand new Kohler powered welder/generator and I ran it all that time, talk about drink gas!!!

SO, I was on the hunt for a pto generator and when farm a store was going under, they had two Winco's, I bought the bigger one (15kw) for $1,200.00 and even though I haven't used it all that much, it has been handy. I exercise it by powering my welder when welding up small projects.

As for my water, no I haven't had it tested lately. I live on a gravel road waay out in the country, and around here, it hasn't changed all that much. This is farm country and half mile east of me, starts over a thousand acres of orchards, everything right around me is pretty much like it was when I was growing up.

Water is the least of my problems, I have three bigger ponds, here's one of them,

all spring fed, with a pretty nice stream crossing and leaving my place, so I really don't have to worry about water here.

SR

A # of years ago, I was chatting with a counterpart at a conference in the USA. He described his brother as living in a remote part of Kansas, in a nice log-house he built himself, with his family and horses.... and "had never been in a shopping mall". Compared to the gogo tech world I was in at the time, I meant it when I said to him "Sounds like heaven to me".

You're maybe not quite that remote Rob, but it's nice to see some remaining areas that aren't getting over-run with development....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

The eu7000i is amazingly quiet. I had to deploy it when we had a major house remodel and house addition (we doubled the sq footage) when commercial power went out on two or three different occasions. We ran a couple of long extension cords for their saws and air compressor. The guys were amazed how quiet it was compared to the cheap open frame gen sets. It's very miserly on fuel, I think the specifications are eight hour run time at full load. I've never documented fuel usage but that would be fairly easy since it has an hour meter.

It's electric start and if the battery is dead or even missing, it can be started with a pull rope which I used. The battery was kaput and I needed to use the genny, I was surprised how easily it manually started.

There is one switch on the left side, Off & Run. Turn the switch to Run and push the button. Yup, it's that simple.

It's a great generator, well worth the $4k.

The big (small portable world) gens seem to pull-start easier than many of the older smaller ones..... well designed, and perhaps they don't want to get sued for non-performance during an emergency.....

I'd have been surprised if you said otherwise about your 7kw, but the largest EU I've heard running was a 5kw, supporting a food-truck, so wanted to ask.... I should look at how those FI units breakdown..... likely no worse to change a filter than the MC tanks I've seen service videos for.....

I'd still be treating the fuel anyway, but the hopeful gain for FI in this application is less no-start-plugged-carb problems......

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I don't have a generator....got laughed at by the wife when I brought it up.... then, one year she was preparing to go to work (Christmas Eve and she worked at a fancy jewelry store) she was all soaped up in shower when BAM, power went out. I had to go get all the ice cubes, kerosene heater, LARGE stainless bowl....melt ice in bowl over heater so she could rinse herself off.

She's not laughing so hard now!

That said, couple years ago, in winter and still without generator, her wheelchair bound niece with some medical issues came to visit for a week. First day visiting, power goes out. We have no water, no way to heat the house, no lights, oven, fridge....anything AND we have someone here for a week with medical issues.

My brother in law put his diesel generator in back of his truck, drove over and hooked it into my panel (he's an electrician AND we disconnected from the grid)

Ran this for about four days when the power came back on.

Brother in law came back, picked up his truck and generator and THAT VERY NIGHT while his stuff was parked on his property (away from the road) and in front of his house..... his truck with generator got stolen.

They found the truck about a week later dumped in the woods. I don't recall if they ever found the generator or not.

That probably wouldn't have happened to him had we not needed it because he wouldn't have had them together, therefore mobile.

Gotta love how low some people are.

Never a shortage of scumbags, unfortunately...... sad to see BIL get handed that No Good Deed Goes Unpunished misfortune......

Good reminder about portable security..... probably worth adding a gps tracker to something as valuable as a portable diesel......

Don't know how bad Winter gets down your way, but I sold my CFO here a long time ago on the value of gens.... something like an EU2200 would make a world of difference the next time you get hit with an outage..... lots of good choices in the market now, compared to when I bought my first one in '98.

That ^ BIL event really sucks...... hopefully insurance covered at least some of that loss.

Rgds, D.

 

[johncanfield]

The big (small portable world) gens seem to pull-start easier than many of the older smaller ones..... well designed, and perhaps they don't want to get sued for non-performance during an emergency.....

I'd have been surprised if you said otherwise about your 7kw, but the largest EU I've heard running was a 5kw, supporting a food-truck, so wanted to ask.... I should look at how those FI units breakdown..... likely no worse to change a filter than the MC tanks I've seen service videos for.....

I'd still be treating the fuel anyway, but the hopeful gain for FI in this application is less no-start-plugged-carb problems......

Rgds, D.

Maintenance access on the eu700i (Honda fuel injected gen set) is quite well thought out. At about 25 hours I did the first oil change, I'll do that every year or so. I always treat my gas (Stabil) and diesel (Biobor JF) out of habit.


I'm such a fan of fuel injected engines last year I replaced my old Gravely ZTR with a Deere Z945M - fuel injected Kohler engine. No choke or carb to mess with or worry about.

My two other Honda gen sets is a 35 year-old 850 something or another and an EM3500 which I gave away to my contractor friend. I've diddled with those carbs more than once. I'm trying to be carb free

 

[3930dave]

Maintenance access on the eu700i (Honda fuel injected gen set) is quite well thought out. At about 25 hours I did the first oil change, I'll do that every year or so. I always treat my gas (Stabil) and diesel (Biobor JF) out of habit.


I'm such a fan of fuel injected engines last year I replaced my old Gravely ZTR with a Deere Z945M - fuel injected Kohler engine. No choke or carb to mess with or worry about.

My two other Honda gen sets is a 35 year-old 850 something or another and an EM3500 which I gave away to my contractor friend. I've diddled with those carbs more than once. I'm trying to be carb free

Low Carb diets are popular

Doesn't happen too often, but I could be accused of being short of words in that last post....... I was thinking of the intake filter/sock in the fuel tank. So far I'm assuming a similar setup to FI motorcycle tanks, but may stand corrected once I get a breakdown diagram on these EU FI units.

Typical home use, it's not going to be an issue that comes up quickly...... but I always like to know how things are designed, before jumping in with my chequebook. That, and given how long I usually hang onto things, I want to plan for Spare Parts, down the years.....

Rgds, D.

 

[PILOON]

"Our attitude is that a generator is insurance. Use it as little as possible, but you got to have it."

And you have 2 choices, buy it B4 or after.

B4 and you could just save $1000. worth of food!
After and add the generator cost to the $1000.

I blew mine and immediately bought a replacement.
Good insurance IMHO as so far no long outages.

 

[grsthegreat]

Ya, i didnt mind the cost of whole house generator. We live in boondocks and get alot of outages.

I see people spend small fortunes for snow machines and off road rigs....and hardly ever use those either.

Its just money, snd u cant take it with you