Posted on 04/05/2010 7:40:19 AM PDT by DCBryan1
Freepers: The new wife has given me a new "honey do" list. Included, in this quarter's budget is to install a backup generator in our somewhat remote home.
We have a 4k sq/ft home in Arkansas, and her criteria is to be able to run everything in the house if the power goes out. We are next to the last connection on a long line down a valley, down by the river and can expect a long power outage if we get tornados, storms, ice, etc.
We are expecting our first child, and I think that a good standby generator would be a good investment given our location.
I don't want to list all of our appliances, normal for most households, but we do have x2 freezers, and I have a small machine shop and a small wood working shop, and a koi pond. I understand that we will not be using everything at once, but would like a very capable generator.
Do you have a well and do you want water?
I do not have a well, however, my backyard is a large, running, creek with numerous natural springs in the rockwork.
Do you want to run a computer or appliances, including a modern well control, that have chips or printed circuit boards without destroying them?
Yes...will need to run modern equipment to include computers and computerized lathe and drilling presses, etc.
natural gas would be the way to go- natural gas is clean and dont sludge up over time like diesel does.(reliable). plus you will have fuel all the time in a natural gas pipeline.. cat gens are not the best gen. package sets.. the best for your home would be a waukesha engine with a kato generator end.( extremely reliable, but kinda expensive).. i buy and sell generators all the time down here in south louisiana. i have about 13 gen sets diesel and natural gas of many differ. kw’s.. all you need to do is get a amp probe and put on your main @ 220 volt feed and turn everything on in the house and it will give you your maximum amp reading-( that will determine the KW you will need)..just guessing at it probally a 40 to 50 kw with 330 waukesha engine, due to starting amps your appliances will draw at start up.. i have several gen sets
We use a Honda EU inverter generator for our sensitive equipment. (Sine wave versus sawtooth or square.) Expensive but worth every penny--quiet and reliable. Only draw back is that it is gasoline powered.
WDWS in Champaign got a 47 KW generator and a little shed for it, with Federal money, around 1968. They were a regional EBS station.
We had to buy ours...
Funny, though...being in the same market as WDWS....we got our alerts and test notification out of Chicago....the station slips my mind. This was in the mid-late 70’s....
Holy crap...that is nice....what/where do you get that monstrosity?
He is all excited about a Milbanks genset, and some sort of Briggs and Stratton Vanguard series.
Any idea about those?
Salesman said that the 17kw Kohlers were there biggest sellers.
Great thread, been wondering about this myself.
Consider water cooled over air cooled.
Air cooled require frequent oil changes which may be very inconvenient in an emergency.
Right after Hurricane Ike two years ago my neighbor had all the kids entertained by having enough generator power to run his TV and game systems as well as his swimming pool pump.
That may seem silly but considering the damage and clean up activities and all the kids who couldn’t go to school, it was nice to have them out of harm’s way and entertained while the rest of us cut trees and mended fences and roofs.
ESPECIALLY if you have kids....summertime camping at home with no power loses its novelty after the first five days!
And having worked commercial hurricane restoration after Ivan, Dennis, and Katrina I have an idea of what hurricanes can do.
Last week sat in a meeting with the director of emercency planning and response for Harris County gong over info for the upcoming hurricane season.
Hunker Down! Turn around, don’t drown! lol
Any generator beats no generator, but your point on service contact holders getting first priority on service is a great point.
Yep, the guys here in HTown are Loftin Equipment, they are pretty big, and the Generators for Kohler are USA Made. The service contract thing is pure experience. And it totally makes sense, help out the people that have helped you first, then on to the people after all of YOUR customers are taken care of... Loftin is a good company, and straight talkers on price and quality. Ask every question before buying and they will answer them all.
I am sorry, but I am no expert. I have 2800 sq ft two story house on a full finished basement. I bought a used Blaze King stove with catalytic converter for the basement flue. I burn mostly oak and hickory, especially in cold weather; elm, ash, and some locust—no pines for burning here in the midwest. As long as the temp remains above 20F, the one stove does the whole house. On the first floor, I have an insert with blower for one of the two fireplaces. When it gets down below 20F for long periods I use it too. We had several days below 0 F last winter and my electric furnace never came on. The Blaze King stove has never failed me and I paid $400 for it. It saves me money to pay for an annual fishing trip to Yakutat, AL to bring back fish (salmon, halibut) for the family—such sacrifices are necessary.
I lived in eastern Oregon many years ago and burned my share of pine and juniper. We left because of the hostile regulations for logging and ranching. We found the Midwest far more receptive to private industry. Also lived in Idaho back in the 80s—another great place to live.
I’ve lived in two homes now where a good backup system was essential: 1) Grand Forks, ND, where overland flooding was an annual possibility, and two, at present, in rural Idaho where remote conditions and an idiot running the country means you always have to be prepared to fend for yourself.
In both places I hired a licensed electrician to add a backup toggle-operated generator panel alongside my regular electric panel.
You also have them install an outside plug-in adapted for a generator. Power goes out, you start your generator, plug it into the outside socket, then flip the toggle on the generator panel in the house to switch from power company electricity to generator power.
The toggle switch assures that you are OFF the main power source and ON the generator, and precludes you from all kinds of dangerous and destructive backsurges, etc.
Depending on the size of generator you have, you can wire in your well & pump, your furnace if you have one, water heater and a fridge or freezer or two, maybe a light circuit or two to make it easier getting around the house during the outage.
If you have a well you are going to have to figure on four thousand or so peak watts (depending on well depth and pump size) just to get your water.
I have a well at 325 feet with a three-horse pump (don’t ask me why so big, the fool before me put the pump in) and I bought a 7,000 peak watt generator, which supplies me enough juice to run all the stuff I mentioned above.
This may bother some people but I went with a Honda engine on my generator and if I had had the money I would have bought a Honda generator period. Nobody-—and I mean NOBODY-—builds a small powerful engine that you can absolutely always count on even nearly as well as Honda.
If you have 4,000 sq. feet and a well, I’d get a nine or 10,000 watt generator, if you can swing it, and I’d get a Honda, no ifs and or buts.....good luck.
All purchased from the cheapest not necessarily best bidder.
More goes into these processes than that, I can assure you. Service, warranty, reliabilty, the whole TCO.
And Kohler isn’t the low bidder. Price alone is a bit more. So NOPE.
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