...or at least the central heating and fridge running?
Obviously I realise that a "rock bottom bargain basement" generator could turn out to be a false economy but I also don't want to spend too much on an insurance product I may never need.
Suggestions?
Tim
One of the "little stinky" two stroke jobbies will do that, though may cough and struggle a bit if one is already on and the other starts. They are a little noisey though, in fact all open frame sets are noisy, some more than others. Our 2 kVA diesel is very noisy (PARDON!! CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE GENERATOR...).
If I had the money I'd get a Honda 2 kVA invertor type, they really are very quiet and you can link two together to get more power. The power is also nice and clean and a decent waveform, so electronics don't object. The Kipor chineses clones seem to get decent reports.
Only the fridge, no freezer? Or is it a single fridge/freezer unit (one or two compressors?). Currently keeping the fridge going isn't required, it's colder outside than it is in the fridge. It's not (yet) colder than the inside of the freezer...
Put a tetrapak or 2 in the fridge's icebox if it has one. Solved. Use the gas hob/oven if you have one. Solved. Gaslight beats batteries.
All far easier, cheaper & more reliable than a genny
NT
For a day maybe, depending on how often you open the door. How many days have several thousand customers on Arran and Kintyre been off supply now?
TBH even in the summer I'd not be to fussed about the fridge, make up an evaporative cooler of some kind and stick it outside in the shade and breeze. The freezer on the other hand...
Don't have, well not mains gas. The backup for the lecky cooking is a gas camping hob & grill.
Agreed.
Genny keeps the freezers and CH running. When it's -4 C outside and blowing F5 this place loses heat very rapidly. It was 19.5 at 2200 last night, 6hrs later it's down to a decidedly chilly, 15 C and the heating is about to kick in...
I have a Kipor IG2000. It will happily run c/h, fridge, freezer, lights, TV and computers. We get a lot of power cuts.
You will also need a transfer switch - about 60 on ebay.
The problem with a generator is keeping enough fuel to run it to hand (bearing in mind you might not be able to get any more) One solution is to have an arrangement to get petrol out of your car and keep two stroke oil handy (If a 2T generator). The fuel goes off (volatiles evaporate) after a while in store.
However you need lots of fuel for continuous running & some of the el- cheapo generators aren't intended to be run for hours and hours.
And a proper installed earth spike, discconect the suppliers earth, make the correct bondings to the genset and still treat it as TT.
Simpler to leave the phases from the generator floating and run extensio n leads to the appliances you want to maintain.
Really? Oddly enough, we had an 18 hour power cuton Saturday and I had to drag our generator out, which hadn't been touched for a couple of years. Once I'd persuaded the starter to actually turn the engine, it started straight away and run without problems on the 2 year old petrol. I then refilled it with petrol that had been stored for at least 6 months and it ran on that without any issues. Maybe you should use containers that don't leak.
Dreadful reviews on Amazon
Assuming you have a genset and car(s) that run on the same fuel... We do but it's not petrol. Red diesel for the genset is considerably cheaper than road fuel and can be bought and stored in sensible quantities. B-)
IIRC the limits on petrol within 6m of a building (ie most homes) is 2 x
10l in suitable metal containers and 2 x 5l in approved plastic. That is total so if you have 5l in the back of your car that is included but not the petrol in vehicle fuel tank. *Never* store petrol inside the home.How does that happen with a decent sealed container? Can't say I've ever had any proplems with "old" stored petrol or even that left in a fuel tank (and thus has a breather) of the four stroke mower or two stroke strimmer. I have a sneaky suspiscion that this "stale petrol" orginates from the US, their formulation(s) of petrol and doesn't apply to the UK formulations.
My 2 kVA diesel uses less than a litre an hour running the CH(*), upright freezer and twin compressor fridge/freezer.
Many small 4 stroke engines have runtimes between oil changes of 25 hrs or so and "full service" intervals of 100 hrs.
(*) Oil boiler and up to four circulating pumps plus valves and timers/stats etc.
On Tuesday 26 March 2013 09:06 Dave Liquorice wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Or install a generator fed radial to sockets next to each appliance (3 perhaps, CH feed, internet stuff, gas cooker, maybe a coupel more sockets for lights). Arrnage the CH to be plugged in rather than hard wired, so the plug can be removed and reinserted into the genny circuit.
However, the point of having a TT spike still stands - you cannot rely on the supplier's earth during failures. The slightly trickier problem is that your TT earth needs to be main bonded to water pipes etc while the generator is running - but I *really* cannot answer if it is permissible to bond a local TT rod to the supplier earth. Perhaps one of our more knowledgeable folk could comment?
Obviously the circuit should be RCD protected as well.
But this is a fairly simple arrangement. The RCD and earthing problems remain even if using extension leads, if you are trying to do it properly and safely.
True. But I would have thought keeping things frozen isn't an issue for them ;)
I wonder whether some of the issue is "wrong time of year" petrol?
That is, using summer petrol in cold weather; or winter petrol on hot days.
Not quite as either phase from the genset is floating so, in theory, doesn't pose quite the same shock hazard as the live does in a conventional system.
It does get complicated if you try an emulate the conventional mains supply system from a genset. You need a local earth spike, that needs to be bonded to one of the gensets two phases and to the genset frame. As you say you can't rely on the suppliers earth being earth during supply fault conditions so you need to isolate that and of course the live and neutral of the supply. Putting an isolation switch into the supliers earth connection to the local distribution opens up a "fail safe" can of worms... And it's still a TT system so really does need a 30mA RCD.
It's far simpler to have the phases from the genset floating and run extension leads, or completely independant, genset only, distribution wiring. A RCD at the genset would be additional protection but not quite as important as a system with one phase bonded to the local earth spike.
It's not freezer cold (below -15 C) up there! Not sure I'd be happy about stuff that had been allowed to warm up to -3 or -4 C for several days...
On Tuesday 26 March 2013 10:21 Dave Liquorice wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Whilst that is true, it is not in the ELV band that a centre earthed 110V site transformer would be.
I'm also not sure I'd be prepared to consider it fully floating either - it depends if the generator has its neutral tied to the frame or not[1] and if that frame is earthed, even superficially by sitting on wet ground.
[1] Not seen many generators close up - but I wouldn't want to make any assumptions.At least with an RCD (and this must be a 30mA 40mS type, not a time delayed type), the risk is much mitigated...
True enough but still floating and thus any connection to either phase (one at a time...) will drag that phase down close to earth.
The alternators that I've looked at produce two phase wires with the voltage 180 degrees apart. There is no "neutral", that is created (if you want to) by connecting one of these phases to earth and the gensets frame.
Agreed but not essential on a floating system like it is with a one phase bonded to earth system. Swapping the two pole isolator switch on my genset to an RCD is on the tuit list but as I run floating and with known "fault free" appliances and extension cables not a particulary high priority.
There is "summer" and "winter" diesel but I don't think they fiddle with petrol on a seasonal basis. Petrol doesn't wax...
It doesn't wax but its volatility is the issue.
First quote I found:
"Petrol has a higher volatility in the winter in order to enable cold starting. For this reason it is better to fill the tank with a winter grade fuel (16th October - 14th April) rather than a summer grade."
I have believed this to be the case since I was in my teens - but, of course, belief does not always reflect reality!
I would agree. We ran a cruiser for many years with a Volvo V8 petrol engin e and we never had problems with the fuel, even if she had been left idle f or over a year.
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