Dave, I live in MI and we get outages fairly often, mostly dependent on when
they trim the power lines. I struggled along with a 4KW ,lug it around to th
back of the house, gas generator. Then I got a little more affluent and saw
the Generac 12KW natural gas, fully automatic generator, about 10 years ago,
I think. At the time it was about $2500. I bought it and never regretted it
a second. It runs the whole house sans A/C. Not a lick of trouble. Of course
we have natural gas, so there's no lugging anything.
Good Luck
Brian
On 9/30/07 1:52 PM, "David C." <cavanadd@verizon.net> wrote:
> 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_3988
> 26
>
> 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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