Generator Price Heads Up

Where?

Newegg.com

I checked-out their inverter generators - the B&S Q6500 with a 240 volt outlet at $ 1300. US caught my interest ! .. then I checked their Canadian site - only the lower model available P4500 < no 240 volt outlet > $ 2500. Canadian. Ugghh. John T.

Ebay has several of them for $ 739 and free shipping.

Not sure about any generator brands other than Honda. I went through about four generators in the past before the Honda, which I've had for nearly 20 years now. They cost more, but last significantly longer than most of the other brands.

I've been lucky with my 13 year old Power Boss with Briggs and Stratton engine and Generac generating part. Has worked reliably but it is noisy. Honda's I've seen run quietly but are pricey.

I note this Pulsar has electric start and is twice the power of mine. If I had one like that I would power the whole house. I also note there are units today that can power the whole house without much attention to what you are using. Mine has a transfer box and only picks up critical needs like my well, furnace and refrigerator and freezers.

You really don't need 13KW to power the whole house. It just depends on what you mean by powering the whole house, what the actual loads are and if you're willing to manage the loads. You could easily power a house with furnace, a fridge, a freezer, kitchen, lights and other small stuff, with just 5KW or less. If you want to run central AC, then that's another story.

I also note there

And you can do that with 5KW or less, it just takes some smarts, unless you insist on running central AC or similar.

Mine has a transfer box and only picks up critical

Unless he has natural gas or a very large propane tank that large generator will burn a lot of fuel that will cost lots of money. It may mean many trips to hard to find fuel.

I have a heat pump and don't know if even a 13 kw generator will power that. I am thinking it has a 10 kw emergency heating coil.

I have a 5 kw gas generator and just bought one that puts out around 3.5 kw but is a dual fuel unit. The 3.5 is enough to run most everything for a short period of time. I plan on using it on propane only and if the outage is over about half a day, will switch to the 5 kw unit and use it on gasoline. That way I don't have to worry too much about having old gas in the generator that has caused me many problems in the past before I switched to ethanol free gas.

I do have a wood stove in the basement for backup heat.

It would be pretty nuts to try to run the resistance coils. But there would probably be lots of times when the power is out and you could use some heat or AC without resistance heat.

I agree, unless you need to run heat pump, AC, or similar, something in that range is all you need for a typical home.

Yea, it is mostly nuts to run resistance heat, but if that is all that one has, one does what he can. I would probably try and stay warm with those roughly 1500 watt portable heaters if that is all I had.

At one time I lived in a small rental unit and it had oil heat. I forgot to order some oil and ran out in the winter. Put one of the electrical heaters in the bedroom to stay warm for a night and day while waiting on the oil man.

One winter in another house the electricity went out and the generator would not gin. Lucky that I had an unvernted natural gas heater in one room that I could stay somewhat warm for 2 days and 2 nights.

That 5KW disappears pretty fast when you turn on the oven, start up the dryer or the water heater kicks on, even if the A/C is off. I ran my house on 5.5kw for 8 days but no dryer, no hot water and everything was cooked on the gas grille. Fortunately it was warm enough that we didn't need heat.

Yep, that's the down side of the larger generator. I've got only about 20 hours of run time fuel on hand. Two 20 gal propane tanks and about 5 gallons of gasoline. But since its primary purpose is to keep my basement from flooding during heavy rain I don't expect it to ever run it that long. I need 30 amps total for the pumps. The price was right for this one, and it has the benefit of powering everything.

snip

When I find the right price for a NG space heater or two, I'll bite. BTW, the power went out for 3 hours today, first time in a few years. Didn't even think of starting the generator. Probably never need it. C'est la vie.

My Punta Gorda friends who were on a generator for almost two months after Charley called it "feeding the monster". This was a diesel trailer mounted generator that ran everything in the house but it had to eat a few times a week. Fortunately the family was in the heavy equipment biz and they had a big diesel tank on property but they still had to haul it down the hill. I told them they just needed a 900 foot hose ;-)

Might need that much to manage my whole house. I do not have gas and all is electric plus I have a well. Maybe newer systems self manage, e.g. would not allow AC to come on if range was in use. A friend with and automatic system offered to give me his old generator, which I could not use as it was gas, as he needed a bigger one when his daughter and her son moved in and he needed more power for stuff not in use.

Sure the 5 kw is just barely enough. You have to do like the old show Green Acres did with their electrical supply. Just turn on a few things at a time. You could cut off most everything but a few lights and run the water heater to get hot water. Then cut off a lot for the stove, or just use the microwave.

The cost is another factor. Just looking at a 7.5 kw and running at half load the company says about 18 gal per 24 hours on gas and 5 hours on 20 lb of propane. That is going to be around $ 45 per 24 hours of run time. The inverter type will cut back under light loads, but the ones without will consume about that much even without much of a load a load.

My small 3500 kw will run for about $ 25 per day at half power. I can't run as much ,but can burn a few lights and watch TV and heat some things in the microwave. If I want more power, I can fire up the 5 kw unit.

People have to realize that this is a temporary emergency situation. They will not be able to run the whole house unless very rich.

The larger diesel generators seem to be a lot more econimical to run from what I have heard.

The water heater, all by itself tripped the breaker on the generator (5500w). Same with the dryer. I can run the oven but that is 97% of the output. The A/C acts like a bolted fault. I was able to run 2 fridges, 2 well pumps, and then either the pool pump or the mini split in the bedroom so that was my switching. Being careful we used the general lighting load normally. I still tripped out occasionally if a couple of things tried to start at the same time. I was burning 0.5 GPH gasoline or 0.8 GPH propane with no appreciable difference in acceptable load. The difference in energy per gallon just showed up in fuel consumption.

Diesels are great if you have a big tank of it on site. If the stations are closed, you aren't getting diesel either.

I take it you've got an electric water heater. It should be possible to rewire the connections so that instead of 240V it gets 120V. This will reduce the amperage by half, and with the similar voltage cutdown, means the watts it pulls will be only 1/4 of the original number [a].

(Natch, this also means a _lot_ longer to heat up waer from a, so to speak, cold start)

I did this type of rewiring in areas where the electrical utility hit the user with "peak demand charges".

Oh, in regards to getting diesel fuel when the gas stations are closed...

Quite often it's a "ran out of gasoline from the tanks" deal, but they often (if they stock it, of course) will still have diesel fuel.

(Natch, this only works if they have electric power themselves. More and more gas stations are putting in their own backup generators...)

Ralph Mowery snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote

I don't buy that. When I built my very large house on a bare block of land, I chose to move in as soon as it was physically possible to stop paying rent on the flat I was renting. The whole house was wired up completely but I hasn't got around to doing the meter box and fuse box etc. So I powered the whole house from the builder's temporary supply over a long extension cord which could only deliver

Because I relaxed a bit after moving in, I didn't get around to doing the meter box and fuse box for a year or so until the electricity supply operation chucked a tantrum about the house being powered from the builders temporary supply and I did the meter box and fuse box and had it connected properly.

I had the extension cord up in the air from the pole the builders temporary supply meter box was on to the eaves of the flat roofed house auto 15' away with a knot in the extension cord to keep it there.

That knot was a big blob of melted and solidified plastic when I stopped using it but it was still working fine.

Yep.

I could run the big wall oven or the grill in it and the big full sized microwave fine. But not all 3 at once. But I never do that anyway even now.

Sure if in all of the other things you are doing after a hurricane, you want to screw with rewiring a water heater. It also puts that 1.14 KW on one leg of your generator. Bear in mind, if either leg draws much more than 2.2 KW it will trip, even if there is nothing on the other side. Load balancing is a lot easier if all your big loads are