Your last generator Maintenance Run

[ronjhall]

Got a little extra time on my generator yesterday. Power company decided to do some equipment upgrades. 25 minutes of run time. Checked oil after. All OK. Still have one clock to reset time on.

 

[3930dave]

Throwing in some laundry to increase the load. Kicked on a 1500 watt oil filled space heater I haven't used in a while. Throwing everything at it including the kitchen sink ... hot water to run the water heater.

Heavy Run. Nicely done.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Funny thing about human nature...

Have new tenants in a nice single family on an acre which is rare in the city.

They came from a 1,000 square feet rental with a broken wall furnace... but weather here is mild.

Moved in December 1 and so happy and commented several times on the beauty of central heat and how much they love not being cold anymore... high efficiency gas furnace, well insulated and double pane windows...

Just stopped by yesterday and house cold and all wearing sweats...

I asked why so cold and they said at their old house the natural gas bill was never more than $20 a month... their first gas bill at the new house came with a gas bill of $220

Sometimes having what you think you want isn't the same as having it...

That's insane.

That 220 USD gets crazy close to 300 CAD. I live in a modest (today's standards) 2 storey house, built in the early 80's, by somebody else - meaning - wall insulation would have been better under my watch..... still, my last natgas bill was $86, heat (70F usually) and hot water..... maxes at about $100 dead-cold of Winter.

IIRC, Mark Twain's said something about the coldest Winter he'd seen, was one Summer in SanFran.... or something along those lines

All kidding aside..... can't imagine Oakland sees anything sub-zero like....

Multi-million $ properties w. no Heat or AC..... can't make this _____ up.... Rgds, D.

 

[PILOON]

I might be repeating, but when I exercise my generator I use an old 220 baseboard heater as a dummy load.

 

[ultrarunner]

That's insane.

That 220 USD gets crazy close to 300 CAD. I live in a modest (today's standards) 2 storey house, built in the early 80's, by somebody else - meaning - wall insulation would have been better under my watch..... still, my last natgas bill was $86, heat (70F usually) and hot water..... maxes at about $100 dead-cold of Winter.

IIRC, Mark Twain's line was something about the coldest winter he'd seen, was one summer in SanFran.... or something along those lines

All kidding aside..... can't imagine Oakland sees anything sub-zero like....

Multi-million $ properties w. no Heat or AC..... can't make this _____ up.... Rgds, D.

What are you paying pet therm?

Will have to check but I've paid 34 cents a kW here in SF Bay Area.

Home built in 1957... Attic heavily insulated... wall insulation?

 

[3930dave]

What are you paying pet therm?

Will have to check but I've paid 34 cents a kW here in SF Bay Area.

Home built in 1957... Attic heavily insulated... wall insulation?

I don't see a bill out at the moment..... will try to remember to get better-half to pull one out later to check.

Natgas here is really important. -26C here this morning, and that's not all that cold for some parts of Canuckland....

Last I checked, we are 20 some cents kwh here, once all the fairy-tale fees are considered. I couldn't afford to heat just with resistance heaters.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

I might be repeating, but when I exercise my generator I use an old 220 baseboard heater as a dummy load.

Low or no-cost, high-wattage, and with a little bit of cold-start in-rush...... a budget friendly test-load

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Has anyone tried putting a foot long pipe on
the exhaust on their generator??

Mine is not very loud but really don't want to
hear it run

willy

Sound..... pretty subjective topic..... so it's difficult to say (even being real-world present) what will be a "Best" solution for a given situation.....

If you are not that bad to start, then some of the folding panel insulated surround barriers (open on top, directing sound Up) that have been built (search Youtube) may give you the attenuation you desire.

But, a couple of feet of basic pipe is much lower cost, than building a full panel to try.....

Piloon's comment about using the ground reminded me of brief comments I've seen from oilfield guys - engines running pumpjacks, they'd duct the exhaust into a buried barrel of water or ?

Using water, you'd have to be careful not to create any siphon potential.

Significantly changing exhaust back-pressure can have big impacts, some of them potentially not good. Some people don't want to monkey with an expensive generator for that reason alone, and if you aren't comfortable/experienced with engines, then a $4k generator might not be the place to start. IR guns are inexpensive, and a good way to monitor head, exhaust, and oil-temp on air-cooled motors.

A tour of youtube will yield many experiments on generator exhaust mitigation. Some present data/results/costing better than others, but you can get a pretty good idea from many of those. Some people will take sound-level measurements, but even a couple of people talking to each other xy feet away is a pretty good indicator (based on yelling, or lack-thereof).

My Must-Do projects keep coming ahead of my Want-To projects..... on my Want-To list is one I'd like to try when I have that RoundTuIt handy:

For how > I < would use my gen, the cleanest external-exhaust project I found was a guy who took a muffler from a 600cc supersport-bike, and mounted it on a tripod pointing up.

^ Good attenuation, compact vertical firing design, using a low-cost (takeoff) well designed factory muffler.

But, that's just what caught my eye..... other people have different Needs, Wants, Budgets....

Rgds D.

 

[ultrarunner]

My uncle's cabin was off grid and 4wd or hike in...

He had a WW2 surplus WinCo... maybe 1500 Watts or less.

He built a concrete bunker into the hill with really only the metal door visible... was to be a root cellar.

Generator ran happy as can be 40 years and whisper quiet with only what he called a snorkel for combustion air

Had a wire so he could turn off from bed... rope start only where you had to coil the rope.

 

[3930dave]

I'm no prepper but having some of the pre-electronic stuff might come in super handy. Some of these electric grids
clearly have some issues.

Having just posted (in another thread) a tribute to 30 Years of Fireblade (Honda supersport jet-fighter for the street) Design, I can hardly pretend I'm not a fan of great engineering.

A parallel track in my mind (crazy , perhaps....) that's been growing for years, is an attraction to Simplicity of Design.

I might have posted here, or maybe just in the now-closed EV thread, a reference to a relatively recent US Congress inquiry (Inquiry may not be the official word, but close enough....) concerning the vulnerability of the US grid. There are about a dozen or so key sites in the US, that if they were compromised in a significant way, could take a very long time to correct.

One factor is the massive transformers at those sites. IIRC, they are only manufactured in Germany, and I think South Korea.

A modern portable inverter-generator is a wonder of engineering.... but if things really went off-the-rails, bigtime, then a heavy,smokey, slow, low-specific output Lister-Petter clone that could run anything this side of grease might start looking attractive....

I've never dealt with these guys below, and have no affiliation........ just an example of a hand-crank monster, that doesn't even use/have glow-plugs.....

Eco Diesel Solutions Canada

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

This popped up during my listeroid search..... seems somebody else has the Deviant Duality of Design disease too.....

Haven't seen this guy before, but I suspect this is not his first rodeo with PLCs.....

I've never signed onto youtube, but getting him past 399 subscribers might be a good reason to.....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

My uncle's cabin was off grid and 4wd or hike in...

He had a WW2 surplus WinCo... maybe 1500 Watts or less.

He built a concrete bunker into the hill with really only the metal door visible... was to be a root cellar.

Generator ran happy as can be 40 years and whisper quiet with only what he called a snorkel for combustion air

Had a wire so he could turn off from bed... rope start only where you had to coil the rope.

Going to Earth (properly done, like that) has advantages, beyond Electrical.....

Out of sight, secure, fireproof - Check.

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Needed something around this capacity of charger for Work; got one this week.

12V 10A ProSeries Rapid Charger - Schumacher Electric

This one has a fan - nice and quiet though. (I have a 15A Schumacher of my own that does the job, but it has a noisy-from-new fan).

If you don't need waterproof, or digital voltage/current displays, it was about $90 CAD for a 10A that will throttle down to maintenance mode.

(Model is Schumacher DSR117, if link is a nogo).

Rgds, D.

 

[grsthegreat]

I have this….awesome charger, but got it on amazon for about $100. Charges all different kinds of batteries.

NOCO GENIUS10 10 Amp automatic battery charger and maintainer - SLC10165

GENIUS10 is a 10 Amp 6-volt and 12-volt battery charger and battery maintainer rated for all types of lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries. Capable of repairing damaged and old batteries.

www.batteriesplus.com

 

[3930dave]

I have this….awesome charger, but got it on amazon for about $100. Charges all different kinds of batteries.

NOCO GENIUS10 10 Amp automatic battery charger and maintainer - SLC10165

GENIUS10 is a 10 Amp 6-volt and 12-volt battery charger and battery maintainer rated for all types of lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries. Capable of repairing damaged and old batteries.

www.batteriesplus.com

Nice that it does automotive Li, and it looks like they've considered the "microcontroller won't turn on with a sub ten volt battery problem".

I see a lot of Noco around, and haven't heard anything bad about them. I have a Noco Li jump pack that I like, and have read plenty of descriptions of that pack from people that are way harder on it than I am, with good outcomes.

Like hammers, I like to have more than one charger available...

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

I don't see a bill out at the moment..... will try to remember to get better-half to pull one out later to check.

Natgas here is really important. -26C here this morning, and that's not all that cold for some parts of Canuckland....

Last I checked, we are 20 some cents kwh here, once all the fairy-tale fees are considered. I couldn't afford to heat just with resistance heaters.

Rgds, D.

Paid as much as 2.72 per therm on last bill for natural gas...

 

[3930dave]

Paid as much as 2.72 per therm on last bill for natural gas...

^ reminded me to visit the paperwork I requested.

Excluding final taxes, when I take all the fees and divide by consumption, I'm at $0.495 CAD / m3.

Looks like 1 therm = 2.85 m3 . Convert Therm (British And American) to Normal Cubic Meter Of Natural Gas (Natural Gas Energy Equivalent)

Your peak then is over twice my average, once converted to CAD. Chances are my 80's Canuck house has better wall insulation than your 50's example, so that will be part of it, but still..... that tenants bill seems high.

One reason I don't look at bill details too often...... of the fairy-tale fees listed, before the final VAT is applied, one is a Federal Carbon Tax, that is about 1/6 (at the moment) of the Fee total. So, I'm looking at Taxes, applied on top of Taxes......

Small wonder that Western countries are OK with STEM knowledge sliding....... wouldn't want the peasants understanding the Power of Compounding....

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

Paid as much as 2.72 per therm on last bill for natural gas...

Same stack 'o paper, so crunched the electric bill too....

Before VAT applied, last bill was $0.187 CAD / kwh.

If I do these calculations more than twice a year, then I have to add-in extra $ for increases in BP Meds....

Rgds, D.

 

[ultrarunner]

Yes... the add on fees is why I divide total charge by therms or kW used.

I know Hawaii is more but California with hydro, geo, wind, solar, nuclear, gas, bio-co-generation, etc... seems always around the upper end for utility cost.

An all electric future is the charted path forward so only look for costs to increase.

Those with grid tied solar are facing significant increased cost for the privilege both in minimum fees and reduced rate received for excess power generated.

Time of use has shifted the highest tier later in day with my guess to capture some of the time after sunset.

Afternoon was the most expensive tier but looks like solar changed that.

My 6kW array is circa 2008.

 

[3930dave]

Yes... the add on fees is why I divide total charge by therms or kW used.

I know Hawaii is more but California with hydro, geo, wind, solar, nuclear, gas, bio-co-generation, etc... seems always around the upper end for utility cost.

An all electric future is the charted path forward so only look for costs to increase.

Those with grid tied solar are facing significant increased cost for the privilege both in minimum fees and reduced rate received for excess power generated.

I've been interested in OFF-grid, long before these ^ games became common.

Some of that ^ $ play, is nothing more than the Franchise Game..... corporations getting individuals to take on some (ideally, all) of their capital/build-out costs.....

IF/when I attain significant off-grid capacity, THEN I'll get seriously interested in an EV.

Rgds, D.