portable generators or other emergency power type things

[crackboy]

So with not having power for 3 days this past weekend, i have been seeing the merits of having some sort of backup power in case of extended power outages. Especially since by the last day it was 37 degrees in the house and we lost the entire contents of our fridge/freezer

I really know absolutely nothing about generators. really would only want to at most power a fridge (possibly 2) and be able to run some chargers and a room heater. Though it would be nice to have some breathing room in case of future demands on it.

I may not even need a generator persay and am open to other options. Considered going for a battery/inverter route but don't think that that would cover the wattage needed to run a heater

would probably want to go used as money is tight

[ACH]

The first thing you will need to do is to asses the draw from the items you want to run, and try to figure out many watts that will draw. From there you can pick out a generator based on output. FYI, anything that generates heat is going to suck a lot of power...

[haydukelives]

if money is tight,you might want to consider a few other things. our power frequently goes out for more than 3 days several times per winter.

a coleman box or 2 covers the fridge contents. if its 37 deg,just put it outside,thats colder than your fridge. if its warmer,add block ice.

37 deg inside doesnt really bother a skier,does it? if it does, buy better outdoor gear.we have -10deg bags,down jackets,etc.

[Alpinord]

The best bang for the buck is a gasoline generator. A PV system will be more costly, but the energy source (sun) is free and can be used year round and there will be a payback over time.

When our power was out for almost 4 days two years ago, I borrowed a friends Honda generator (2000 watt, 120v with built in inverter) which ran our boiler, refrigerator and a few lights with extension cords. At the time I looked into all options in the event I decided to purchase and the Hondas kept being the best option as far as I could see at the time. Other advantages included portability for other activities. It can run power tools remotely or camping appliances, etc, and IIRC jumps start cars or charge batteries.

Obviously, with colder temps you can keep food outside in coolers or containers and not use the fridge.

[Crampedon]

+1 for the Honda. They rock, start on the first pull after years.
Ask an electrician but I think as AlpenChronic said add up watts.
Most gear now will tell you in the manual what they will draw.

And did all your food freeze or go bad? Frozen lettuce sucks, eggs, milk, not so much.

[Boddysurfer]

Your heater is probably 13 Amps X 110 Volt dc current in your house = 1430 Watts, for example.

1Ax1V=1Watt

So check the amperage on the back of each device and do the math.

Buy a generator large enough so that it only runs at 50% to 75% capacity.

Honda probably makes the best, and most expensive, but any quality small motor company(say Briggs & Stratton) will be good. It's fine to buy used. Ask how many hours are on it, and check the color of the oil. Bring a heater along to test out the unit.

Quite generator = more expensive.


Even a 4000W generator is loud as fuck, so you might want move it some distance from the house. This requires a large gauge(10 or 8) cord which could cost $100-$200.

There heavy, so you probably gonna buy local.

Good luck.

[Shredhead]

A natural gas 20 Kw generator will run 7-10k installed and will run most of your stuff. The best thing is it's automatic, so if your not home, it could save your ass.


I live in a low area and my sump pump runs all the time. I have a battery backup that's good for 18-24 hours. Longer than that, I use a 7 Kw portable gas that I can plug into my homes electrical system and limp by on. I only have about a grand into it and the wiring, but I have to be there to hook it up.
I've only had to use it 3 times in 10 years.

[Boddysurfer]

A natural gas 20 Kw generator will run 7-10k installed and will run most of your stuff. The best thing is it's automatic, so if your not home, it could save your ass.

Nat gas is the way to go for sure. Clean burning, so the motor lasts forever, and its actually cheaper to produce a watt with nat gas than it is to buy from the electric co.

[spanghew]

I don't know about nat gas, but propane doesn't work well in a cold climate on a generator. I used to caretake a place in the hills above Tuolumne, where a part of my job was to heat water in the morning to pour over a rag on the regulator of the landlady's generator, so it would start up again and she could finish watching the teevee.

[cbrpaul]

The best way to make sure your power doesn't ever go out again is to buy a generator.
Honda generators are worth the money. They are quieter, start easily, and are easy to use. Shop around because the price varies significantly. Also, 1 hp is about 750 watts, so if your engine and generator were 100% efficient, which they aren't, a 5000 watt generator would need a minimum of a 7 hp engine. An 8 hp Briggs & Stratton on the typical Home Depot 5000 watt generator is just a big noisemaker. I think the Honda 5000 watt generator has an 11 hp engine on it. My Onan has a 13 hp for 5000 watts. If I were doing it again I'd buy a Honda, mainly for noise reasons.

Get one with a big fuel tank so it will run all night. Even if you don't get a Honda, their generator website has lots of useful info for sizing a generator to your needs.

[bodywhomper]

bump. trying to figure out decent price/need/sufficiency. currently, i see (locally) a honda em 7000is w/ 58 hrs of use on craigslist for $2300. claimed to run great. thoughts?

bare minimum generator use at my place is for the well and filter. but it'd be nice to run most or all of the house on it. my wife and i often work from home on computers, so apparently a clean output is good.

there's high likelihood of loosing power a few times in the winter, at least for a little while. three or four winters ago, a few hundred residents in my area lost power for 9 straight days during a good frigid weather run. i lived in town back then, and we lost power for 2 consecutive days. we had no generator but no well at that place.

that used honda 7000is seems pretty hefty in cost for a used machine, but i'm not sure how to compare it to others in the used market. via the honda site, the current equivalent is $4500 MSRP.

tia

[BigDaddy]

I have a Honda 2000 that I spent a little over $1000 for new. It runs great, starts first pull and has powered many a party, and work site just fine. It's also super quiet and easy to carry around.

Why do you need such a big one... Whole house? Sounds like a great deal for a very well made machine.

[bodywhomper]

yea. whole (or most of) house would be good. up to now, i was thinking about a 5kW-ish would work well running at half-load. the 7kW just came up in my CL search.

[LightRanger]

From what I know about generators, that'd be a good buy.

You know the analog phone trick, right? And filling the tub when you think it might go. Things we learned over the years during outages around the corner from you. I think the longest we went without power was a week in January 2008. I peaced out to Utah and skied the same storm cycle. On when I came back.

[Todd Zander]

Theres a reason honda voltage regulators are expensive, they do a great job. Also most hondas are quiet at 1800 rpm instead of screaming at 3600.

[Snow Dog]

20+ years ago I bought a Honda 5000 to power the house. It was the smallest size with 240V for the well pump. I run a single 15A circuit to the house to power everything I need. I put the gas boiler on a plug so when the power goes out I run a line to a power bar in the garage and run extension cords all over the place. (The generator sits by the barn where the well circuit is.) I never put in a separate sub-panel and transfer switch.

The generator is old school and probably generates a nice sine wave. Newer inverter style produce a square wave or stepped sine wave. You'd have to look online and see if people have posted a picture. Does it matter? Some computer power supplies do "power factor correction" which makes them a little more efficient but means they need a clean sine wave. I would guess most consumer electronics (TVs, AVRs) don't.

[Shredhead]

A natural gas 20 Kw generator will run 7-10k installed and will run most of your stuff. The best thing is it's automatic, so if your not home, it could save your ass.


I live in a low area and my sump pump runs all the time. I have a battery backup that's good for 18-24 hours. Longer than that, I use a 7 Kw portable gas that I can plug into my homes electrical system and limp by on. I only have about a grand into it and the wiring, but I have to be there to hook it up.
I've only had to use it 3 times in 10 years.

Couple of months after this post, we lost power for five days. We just made it by with the portable.
If it had been winter, it would have been tuff.

I travel a lot, so I popped for a 20kw
NG generac for peace of mind.
$4000 and my bud hooked it up.

[Tuckerman]

I got a generator from my grandparents last spring, the thing is huge and on wheels. I would like it to run my pellet stove when we lose power in the winter. Thing is I have no idea how all this shit gets plugged in. Anyway I was talking to a buddy his theory is he will check into a cheap hotel for a night or two and still spend less then buying a nice generator. He might be on to something, although when the power goes out at 2:30am and I hear my neighbors generators just kick on that seems pretty nice.

[SB]

I popped for a 20kw
NG generac
$4000 and my bud hooked it up.

Did you have to use oven mitts when you touched it or was seriously used?


Hondas are nice but way over priced, the smaller units are fine for portable juice at remote locations.

If you only need a once in a awhile backup a less expensive unit will do. Its a different story if there is a family member with health issues that has to have power at all times.

[Shredhead]

I got a generator from my grandparents last spring, the thing is huge and on wheels. I would like it to run my pellet stove when we lose power in the winter. Thing is I have no idea how all this shit gets plugged in. Anyway I was talking to a buddy his theory is he will check into a cheap hotel for a night or two and still spend less then buying a nice generator. He might be on to something, although when the power goes out at 2:30am and I hear my neighbors generators just kick on that seems pretty nice.

What if you're not home and all your pipes freeze?

Did you have to use oven mitts when you touched it or was seriously used?

Price came down when a bunch of new manufactures entered the home market.

http://www.norwall.com/products/Gene...FSsSMwodUSoAFg

This one runs everything.
No tax and they deliver in a couple of days. My install was easy because I already had a gas line going to a pool heater right next to my power inlet.

[NmbrdDays]

The options you have for standby power are mainly batteries and generators. Batteries are nice and quiet but you need a good amount of space to store them plus depending upon how many you need that job could be very pricey. I've only done one install of them. Now generators are a great standby system. Gasoline or either nat gas / propane. A simple valve is all the difference between NG and propane. I've installed many of these at work and as well for friends and family. They work great but they are slightly noisy and you have to keep filling them. Depending on the size of your house and what you want on the standby system will decide how big you need to go. Generally your boiler, a fridge, a few lighting circuits and a few outlet circuits are all you really need. Do you own a fish tank? The last decision you'll have to make is if you want an automatic or a manual transfer switch. Automatic systems are generally permanent and the generator will stay put outside and when power goes out everything will automatically turn on the generator and switch the power itself. A manual system requires a lil bit of work. You'll have to roll out the generator and start it, then run a wire to an outlet and switch over your panels yourself. Obviously the manual systems are cheaper, that's all something you'd want to consider depending on how much you lose power. I can't remember how much they both burn fuel wise but that all depends on the draw. A lil thing to remember is if you oversize your generator you'll have better fuel consumption but that all depends in how much you want to spend.

Honda generators are amazing, they start very easily and are very quiet. Big Daddy's lil Honda works great for parties and you hardly know it's running. Hondas are a lil pricey. My patents have a generac with an electric start. It's a ill noisy but the thing is a beast, not terrible on burning gas, and my mom can fire it up with out having any of us around to do it for her. There are some decent transfer switch options as well panel lockouts. I pieced together the transfer switch myself and made it with legit panels and breakers. I would steer away from the transfer switched that use glass fuses, like the ones you see in northern tool. Hope this helps any questions concerns feel free to shoot me a pm. As you can probably tell electricity is my job.

[bodywhomper]

bump.

currently experiencing our fifth multi-hour power outage so far this winter, into our second night tonight (about 18 hrs so far). currently, we're running cords from the generator to the house and running a few thing and the fridge. we have no water from our well. the well is wired via a subpanel. i'm thinking seriously about manual transfer switch(es). and am trolling for advice.

our generator has 2 circuits, each running max 22.9 amps. one is 240/120v, the other is 120v. our well system has two pumps, each at 230V/6.5A, they have their own subpanel. If it's possibly, I would like to run most of the house (excluding some appliances like the dryer) on one generator circuit and the wells on the other circuit. Is this possible? how?

more details of the house wiring (based on today's observations):
main on its own box/panel-> subpanel inside house (includes all of house and one or two for "under house" - i can't tell if they are both live w/o power to the house and i haven't opened the panel)->subpanel under the house (breakers: water heater, plugs/lights, well (double 240v), garage)->subpanel at well (240v breaker for each pump plus exit wiring to a live 120v plug. i haven't opened that panel).

i'm not opposed to a backfeed scenario, but would prefer a more straight forward switch.

tia and cheers

[Todd Zander]

Your generator has 2 "circuits". Your well pumps need both. Its a math game but either way youre "running" amps are 6.5 but the starting is higher, so you need some spare wattage to get those going.

You gotta do the math, but you dont mention the type of heat you have.

[bodywhomper]

The math for the well system: two pumps at 230v. One max amperage is labeled as 6 and the other is 6.5. To me, the math is 12.5A max and a little under 3000W max. That sounds like it would work on the 240v 22.9A circuit of my generator, right or am i missing something?

We've been heating with wood. Madrone, lately. We have a forced air heat system, too. the water heater is on demand on propane (120V). We finally got power back (almost ~46 hrs later) before the bigger and badder AR is about to roll-in.

If things need to be prioritized, well system and water heater are the top.

[bushman]

I got 8750 watt with electric start for a power outage. It runs pretty much every thing I need.