Your last generator Maintenance Run

[ultrarunner]

Oh, my, what a beautiful car? How much do you want for it?

Thanks.... it's a keeper.

My biggest problem is storage for the collection and having 6 cars in a two car garage... keeps them safe but not accessible when a floor jack is needed to shoe horn them in place.

I used to use my Honda 1000 a lot 25 years ago in my Service Truck and then I installed a second battery, heavy duty alternator and a 1800 Watt inverter hard wired to a trouble light extension cord...

The only place I have ever lived where having a genset would be highly desired is Olympia WA... it can get cold... power has been out for days and house is all electric on private well... power is needed even for the pellet stove.

Home is wired for a generator with manual individual circuit transfer... just no genset is included with the rent.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Yeaaa, the artesian just keeps on keeping on,

And I have three bigger spring fed ponds, here's one of them,

SR

Do you still pick and store corn in a crib? Beautiful place.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

I no longer plant field corn, so to answer your question "no", but I still have the picker...

SR

 

[3930dave]

Yeaaa, the artesian just keeps on keeping on,

And I have three bigger spring fed ponds, here's one of them,

SR

Fishin' just out the back door ! :thumbsup:

Nice backup for fire suppression too.

Rgds, D.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Saturday night, heavy wet snow was coming down fast. I thought it would be good time to excercise the genset so I ran it for about an hour. Two hours later, we were watching TV and the weirdest thing I have ever seen the hydro (power) do, happened. It was strobing on and off.

I jumped into my boots as fast as I could and ran the couple hundred feet (through the snow) to the garage where the 200 amp service panel is and shut off the main switch. That strobing can't be good for a lot of things. Anyway, fired up the genset again, which was still warm, and ran it for a couple of hours til I went to sleep around one o clock. Power came back around two. Nothing seems to have been damaged.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

Fishin' just out the back door ! :thumbsup:

Nice backup for fire suppression too.

Rgds, D.

I do have fish in them, in fact at one time we raised rainbow trout. Here's another of the ponds,

SR

 

[3930dave]

It could be generational...

I've come to know a lot of older people and some of the 80+ year old widows know more about home care than 95% of the younger population... and this is in the city.

One of my senior friends would clean all the burners on the Wedgewood gas/wood stove she bought new after the war... she also kept wood on hand to cook... simple things like lighting a pilot are beyond most or knowing how to shut off the water...

I had a chat with one of those ladies, in an auto parts store near home recently. She was picking up Stabil, to put her lawn-mower away for the Winter. She knew what it was, and how to use it..... said her husband passed away 15 years ago, and she "had to learn how to take care of all of these things herself".

I think of the generational differences now and then..... that generation grew up with manufactured goods being really scarce, relatively expensive, and designed to last for a long time. Few people back then wanted to buy things "On Time", and IMO, tended to take a lot of personal responsibility, period - partly because the consequences of doing otherwise were often dire.

Things have changed in many respects. Young people coming out of school with 10's or 100's of thousands of debt, into a society awash in easy (and, at the moment, cheap) credit grew up with very different priorities and thinking.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Saturday night, heavy wet snow was coming down fast. I thought it would be good time to excercise the genset so I ran it for about an hour. Two hours later, we were watching TV and the weirdest thing I have ever seen the hydro (power) do, happened. It was strobing on and off.

I jumped into my boots as fast as I could and ran the couple hundred feet (through the snow) to the garage where the 200 amp service panel is and shut off the main switch. That strobing can't be good for a lot of things. Anyway, fired up the genset again, which was still warm, and ran it for a couple of hours til I went to sleep around one o clock. Power came back around two. Nothing seems to have been damaged.

Line switch-gear will often attempt a couple of re-connects automatically, before locking-out off. Technically pretty normal, but nothing I want to see at home either.

The automatic home-generator systems I've seen have a Manual mode - nice for days when the grid is bouncing on and off; you can force the generator to keep running until the grid settles back down.

Good to hear that those line excursions didn't smoke anything.

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

I had a chat with one of those ladies, in an auto parts store near home recently. She was picking up Stabil, to put her lawn-mower away for the Winter. She knew what it was, and how to use it..... said her husband passed away 15 years ago, and she "had to learn how to take care of all of these things herself".

I think of the generational differences now and then..... that generation grew up with manufactured goods being really scarce, relatively expensive, and designed to last for a long time. Few people back then wanted to buy things "On Time", and IMO, tended to take a lot of personal responsibility, period - partly because the consequences of doing otherwise were often dire.

Things have changed in many respects. Young people coming out of school with 10's or 100's of thousands of debt, into a society awash in easy (and, at the moment, cheap) credit grew up with very different priorities and thinking.

Rgds, D.

I remember going shopping with my Grandmother as a very young child... each Thursday market day would start at the bank and sometimes end at the bank... unless Grandma had cash in hand... she did not buy... said it keeps a person from getting into trouble.

In college I got a Sears credit card and boy did she let her displeasure be known... said easy credit ruined a lot of good people... had to promise to never carry a balance and to this day I have not.

All this talk of generators has me thinking of giving mine a once over this Friday... get them all running and up to temp...

 

[3930dave]

All this talk of generators has me thinking of giving mine a once over this Friday... get them all running and up to temp...

While I do enjoy in general talking mech-tech with like-minded folk, this thread in particular has been a help to me in terms of keeping my generator ToDo activity on track.

Do let us know how those runs go.

Rgds, D.