Anyone here have experience with Generac generators in terms of reliability, problems, etc? Most interested in the Guardian whole house standby type that run on nat gas.
A friend has a 12KW one that is about 5 years old. It apparently has a bad rotor, possibly more wrong with it. Trying to figure out if it's worth fixing or if they are inherently cheap crap.
TIA
I installed and have a 6 year old Generac natural gas 7KW model, and have been directly involved in selecting and assisting in the installation of quite a few other Generac units up to 16KW size. They were all installed directly as a result of a freak October ice storm which took nearly 2 weeks to restore power.
All of the Generacs I follow are all working properly and each does a weekly exercise of approx 12 minutes to confirm that the unit is working properly. There have been no outages in the ensuing 6 years since they were installed, so I cannot confidently claim that they will do the job when actually called upon. Any simulated outages I have deliberately created have immediately switched the generator on and transferred power correctly so I do have some confidence that the Generac will do the job when actually needed.
Sort of ironic that in the 3 years preceding my installation, there were
4 outages including the extremely long one I mentioned above of nearly 2 weeks duration.Since the Generac was installed, I have never had an outage and thus feel like somebody who has purchased insurance but never had a claim.
Smarty
rience with Generac generators in terms of
On a yearly basis, what is that "insurance" costing?
Do you know which engine it has? I think Generac has been using their own V twin air cooled in that size in that time period but the older gensets in that size had liquid cooled 4cyl engines. O_o
TDD
experience with Generac generators in terms of
This is a very good question and one which I had not previously considered. The depreciation of the equipment per year I would guess is roughly $200 per year based on my installation cost of $2000 and a guesstimate of 10 years life expectancy.
Add to that the maintenance cost of $30 per year for the recommended oil change (synthetic), oil and air filters, spark plug, etc. Add another $10 per year to allow for a battery replacement once every 5 years. Finally add maybe $60 per year fir the natural gas used in the weekly exercise program.
Totals up to $300 per year for my do-it-all-yourself approach.
If I had to pay for professional maintenance, and had to pay originally for a professional installation, my initial cost would have been $1800 higher and my annual maintenance cost would increase to $150 per year. Thus my total annual cost would rise from $300 per year to $590 per year. The additional annual cost of $290 would come from $180 additional of depreciation and $110 of additional maintenance cost.
Bottom line is that this "insurance" costs me $300 per year but would be as high as $590 if I had it all done by others.
Is it worth it to me? Absolutely!
Smarty
It's air cooled. Here is what concerns me. I did a bit of googling on reviews of Generac Guardian whole house units and there sure are one hell of a lot of people with major complaints about the high failure rates and the way that Guardian has responded to them. This includes some from places like Amazon as well as some I've seen from pros that say they are junk and they won't have anything to do with them. Some of the stories appear similar to what's gone wrong with this one, ie, it's relatively new, well maintained, worked fine for weekly scheduled test runs, then died in the middle of a power outage after a few hours. Others are reporting new unit with major problems upon installation and Generac refusing to do a replacement of a new unit, only fix it, etc.
Here are the Amazon revies.. Of 20, 8 are big negatives. I know you can't necessarily rely on these, but if you read them, there is a lot of detail and specifics, not just "They suck..."
The other aspect of this is that these 12KW go for about $3K. You could spend more than that on a top of the line portable, eg Honda?, that's only 4KW. It leaves you wondering....
Position we're in is it looks like at least the rotor is shot. Would do the work ourselves, but the parts are still min $350. And I can't fully test the stator either. If that is shot, it's another $450. Voltage regulator module is $100, etc.
Another data point is that the company that sold it, installed and maintained it diagnosed it as a bad generator section and with that told them that it was not worth fixing, just buy a new one, despite the fact that it's not that old. Neighbor then gave it to my friend, and here we are. So, deciding whether to fix it and use it or part it out. Leaning toward the latter....
I installed a lot of Generac units back in the 90,s when the 8kw units used the Brigs & Stratton Vanguard engine and the larger units used a Turkish manufactured Fiat 4cyl liquid cooled engine and I believe a 4cyl liquid cooled from Nissan. I've seen other liquid cooled engines in Generac gensets but I don't recall the OEM manufacturer. I've only installed one Generac genset with the Generac manufactured air cooled V twin engine but only serviced it a few times before the owner passed away and his brother removed it and I lost track of it so I have no long term experience with the Generac manufactured engine. I'm suspicious of the air cooled Generac units in the sizes larger than around 8kw because it seems to me they have to push the limits on that engine for that kind of power output. My experience with properly maintained Generac 4cyl liquid cooled 1800rpm gensets was that they were very reliable. The only air cooled 15kw gensets I found tank like in reliability were the Onan flat four natural gas gensets. They reminded me of a light aircraft engine. I don't know what to tell you about the 12kw Generac air cooled V twin since I prefer a liquid cooled 4cyl genset in that size. I'd love to have one of the old Onan flat 4 air cooled NG gensets for my home. ^_^
TDD
This is really very disturbing. I have never needed toi actually rely on my Generac since it was installed 6 years ago, so my only basis for recommending it has been the fact that it starts reliably each week. Apparently the use of the generator to actually provide long term power is another story based on the horror stories reported on Amazon.
*Based on thesese comments from other users, I would be extremely reluctant to recommend Generac, and would, in fact, consider replacing mine with a more dependable brand. I am going to research other vendors.Consumer Reports did recommend Generac not too long ago for stand-by generators, but that endorsement isn't neccesarily based in any way on actual reliability data.
*I am not so familiar with generac generator but I do have a Solar Generator. Looking forward to see what others would recommend.
At the present time, solar is too expensive...but it's getting close.
And what good does a portable solar generator do you when it's night,
20F outside and you need to run the furnace, hot water, etc? Or you need it at a job and it's cloudy? WTF?
Simple. You go into cave man mode. At night you sleep. If cold, build a fire in the cave/living room.
Seems they would have very limited use. The battery could keep a light going and could charge a phone or your computer for a while. The puny output won't run your heating system or refrigerator.
Even camping, do you want to lug that extra weight just for a phone charge?
There is a perfectly viable generator in every driveway, sufficient at least to run a fridge every couple of hours, and you can listen to the radio as the same time. Might even be sufficient to run the air handler in a gas furnace, depending on furnace size.
Get a quality 1000W 12 volt inverter and use your car/truck as an emergency generator. Large, mobile tank of fuel, far more fuel efficient than typical portable generators. Useful in an emergency, and relatively inexpensive.
Your car alternator is not enough to run a 1kw inverter (roughly
100a). I have an 1100w in my golf cart and it will kill all 6 deep cycle batteries pretty fast. (each with much more capacity than a starting battery in a car). I am also pretty skeptical of the claims that some car alternators have since they are connected with 8ga or even 10ga wire. It certainly is not going to produce 80a, some even say 100a for long without that wire becoming a toaster. You start playing with these inverters and you find out 12v needs a lot more than 10x the 120v output amps. They run hot and heat is watts wasted.Oh BTW, isn't your car burning that evil fossil fuel?
Actually you need to check your facts. Running your car is NOT more fuel efficient than most portable generators. At idle they (most) can not keep up with a 1500 watt inverter - may keep up with 1000. Also fuel burn at idle is better than .6 gallons per hour per liter displacement. That is about 2 GPH for a 3.3 liter car idling with no load. A 5kw gasoline portable generator burns about .75 GPH
Don't let physics or the instructions from inverter manufacturers influence your thoughts but my 1100 inverter instruction manual says I should be using 2 ga conductors if it is right there and going up pretty fast from there.. There is no way an 8 ga conductor from an alternator is serving this inverter.
The inverters rated for close to 1000 watts are almost useless for the average person.
I bought one rated for 700 watts and 1500 watts surge from Harbor Freight. I doubt I will ever use it for much. The main reason was I had a gift certifice for $ 50 and I thought it would be good enough to open the garage door to get it open and shut during a power outage. Used it once to try it out and once due to a power outage. Worked fine both times. I know I could pull the cord and open the door, but just like the thoughts of pushing a button.
I did check it out under a very light load of around 100 and 300 watts. Seems like it draws very little current under no load and is fairly efficent with the smaller loads.
I would guess that even if you did run # 2 wire to the inverter it would drain the car battery in just a couple of minutes even with the alternator running and maybe burn up the alternator.
a 130 amp automotive alternator CAN put out 130 amps into a dead battery and load - for a few minutes. The #4 or #6 cable from the alternator to the battery can handle it for that short time - being about 3 feet long and direct air cooled. There is no way the average vehicle alternator puts out more thanan average 55-60 amps steady state - and if asked to do so will burn out relatively quickly - GM had a lot of trouble with their 135 amp units when batteries failed .
And then what happens? The alternator burns out? I would think they would be designed so that's impossible and if it was, there would be a lot of alternators dying when trying to recharge a dead battery. Instead people have a dead battery, get a jump start, drive away and no apparent problems.
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