Is it time for the generator thread again? Maybe past time for the Gulf
Coast/hurricane-prone folks....
Anyway, I am going through my annual quandary whether or not to replace my
old Hobart 8KW welder/generator. I live in the rural PNW and just about
every year we get at least one snowstorm that takes the power lines down
for a while. Last year it happened three or four times. I have two
manual transfer switches, one for the pump house and one for the house, and
I run the well pump, propane furnace, fridge, freezer, microwave and some
lights. We also have a big woodstove, and so things go along fairly
normally once I get the generator fired up. The generator has a big Onan 2
cylinder air cooled engine, and it had just been rebuilt from the block up
when I bought it about 10 or 12 years ago. It has never failed me (yet)
but it's starting to get old, and it uses a LOT of gasoline, which is the
main problem.
The generator uses more than a gallon an hour, and it has a seven or eight
gallon tank, and uses a crankcase pressure/vacuum operated fuel pump
(potential failure point). I also keep three or four five gallon gas cans
filled up during the winter (w/Stabil), and so far I haven't had any
trouble refililng them on my way to work. However, a widespread power
outage could also take the local gas stations out, and once I went through
my fuel stash, and the fuel in the motorcycles, I would be stuck.
We had considered a diesel, as I also have a couple of diesel tractors, and
diesel is a lot easier to store (and probably...er..."find"... in a SHTF
situation), but low speed (1800 rpm) diesel generators in the 10Kw size are
hard to find and very expensive, $10K on up.
Yesterday I saw this in the Northern Tools
catalog:
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_398826_398826
Honda engine, gas or propane fueled, way more compact than the Hobart, and
probably has better fuel consumption, too. I could run it off my shop
heater propane tank for quite a while, and still have gasoline for a backup.
Any thoughts or feedback?
Thanks
Dave C
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