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Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 206
Campfire Member
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Campfire Member
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 206 |
I have had a Generac 15K LP generator for 21 years. It has been flawless. As long as the thing is maintained, just like anything, it works great. Had minor parts wear out over the years, but I expected that. Don't know about the newer units, but my tech likes servicing mine. Not many parts to go wrong on the old ones. The newer ones that talk to your phone and other electronic devices seem more service prone.Just my 2¢.
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999 |
Diesel. When you're on LP, you're still "on the grid" How so? Both would be delivered by a truck.
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Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 67,154 Likes: 35
Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 67,154 Likes: 35 |
Did any of you ask Shiester before you got your whole house generators? According to him, none of those 20K to 24ishK generators will work on a whole house and he's an electrician and contractor. I know our 24 KW diesel powered generator won't run our whole house. It is the reason we have two electrical panels in our garage. One is on the generator and one isn't. It all depends on your house load. In our case, all electric, with a heat pump with 11 kW of strip heat, two 80 gallon hot water heaters, a 3 hp booster pump for water and all of the other electron consuming devices. Just curious Why do you need 160 gallons of hot water? I thought I was overkill with 2 - 40 gallon heaters for 4 full bathrooms and 5 adults under one roof.
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Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 6,888
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 6,888 |
I'm cheaper than most of you. I have to manually throw a breaker, plug in the generator and hit the electric start. Pain in the ass but considering I only lose power maybe 3 times a year and it's an old house. That 12000watt works just fine.
Roughly $1500 for everything including the generator . Ran it last weekend just run it. Everything on including AC and it just purred. The gas thing sucks but like I said, we don't lose power that often.
Our water and septic are gravity fed. NG so I will always have a stove, just manually lit.
I'm good
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Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 821
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 821 |
Since I do not know where everyone lives or their setups i.e Country ,Suburb. I assume not many city folk have whole house generators but maybe they do. Do any of you have a place you are going to bugout to in case this whole [bleep] show hits the fan? What would you recommend for a minimum 3 bedroom 2 bath place with a basement? How about a cabin? if the generator is not portable how do you keep it from getting stolen by crack/meth heads when you are not there?
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 4,580
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 4,580 |
Did any of you ask Shiester before you got your whole house generators? According to him, none of those 20K to 24ishK generators will work on a whole house and he's an electrician and contractor. I know our 24 KW diesel powered generator won't run our whole house. It is the reason we have two electrical panels in our garage. One is on the generator and one isn't. It all depends on your house load. In our case, all electric, with a heat pump with 11 kW of strip heat, two 80 gallon hot water heaters, a 3 hp booster pump for water and all of the other electron consuming devices. Just curious Why do you need 160 gallons of hot water? I thought I was overkill with 2 - 40 gallon heaters for 4 full bathrooms and 5 adults under one roof. Fair question and several answers. Our first house had a 80 gallon natural gas hot water heater and we thought that was great, we never ran out of hot water. Our next house we built in the country on 40 acres. The well was meager and we had a 1000 water holding tank. We had 2 80 gallon electric hot water tanks on the upper floor. One over the kitchen, utility room, garage and one over the master and guest bath area. Electric hot water heaters don't recover as quickly as natural gas and being upstairs they served as supplemental water when we lost power. Our current house is much more rural with many more electrical outages. When we built our house, we each had one surviving parent and so built a small guest wing (600 sq ft.) to provide them a place if needed (it wasn't). So one hot water tank serves that area (small kitchen, bathroom, small stacked washer and dryer), plus the main kitchen and utility room. The other serves our bath and a guest bath. We no longer need them for supplemental water during outages as we have 7,000 gal. of water underground above our house which gravity feeds to our house at 35 psi. So all of that is the long answer. The short answer is that we don't like running out of hot water, we tend to over bulld and the incremental cost of going to an 80 was not that much. I've heard they no longer make the 80s, so when they fail (17 year old), we will scale back.
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Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 67,154 Likes: 35
Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Jan 2012
Posts: 67,154 Likes: 35 |
Alright then
We did similar. Converted 400 square ft florida room to a living space and added a bathroom for the future. Most likely we will move elderly parents in here.
We are in the Sticks too, we get a squirrel/transformer explosion 3-4 times a year or a drunk taking out a pole. Most outages are one day or less.
The storage explanation fits us too.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 15,681 Likes: 3
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 15,681 Likes: 3 |
Diesel. When you're on LP, you're still "on the grid" How so? Both would be delivered by a truck. If you're dependent on that truck making its delivery, you're dependent on a grid.
Z
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 4,580
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 4,580 |
Alright then
We did similar. Converted 400 square ft florida room to a living space and added a bathroom for the future. Most likely we will move elderly parents in here.
We are in the Sticks too, we get a squirrel/transformer explosion 3-4 times a year or a drunk taking out a pole. Most outages are one day or less.
The storage explanation fits us too. Our longest outage was 9 days (snow), on average we usually have a 4 or 5 day outage per year, plus numerous smaller ones. Now we are facing outages caused by the utility cutting power during potential high fire danger days (red flag warnings).
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999 |
Diesel. When you're on LP, you're still "on the grid" How so? Both would be delivered by a truck. If you're dependent on that truck making its delivery, you're dependent on a grid. It is the same with diesel. I don't see the difference in the two and it was why I asked.
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 1,808
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 1,808 |
Diesel for me. In general more efficient than propane, I like the low RPM diesels, I can hustle diesel if needed easier than propane, if you are on natural gas you are depending on a system that could be damaged in a hurricane or overtaxed because everybody is running their Generac.
24kw Low RPM diesel at my new house from M&L Industries in Houma. I am on propane at my current home. My houseboat has an 8kw diesel generator from Central Maine diesel with well over 2000 hours that will keep on running and running. It has an Isuzu diesel and McCaulte generator (alternator).
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Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 343
Campfire Member
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Campfire Member
Joined: Jan 2006
Posts: 343 |
I have gas stove, furnace & hot water heater with NG which is why a 22kW NG unit will run my entire house. While sized for whole house in actual use I don’t run anything I don’t need just like I do when on electric utility power. Was on generator for 72 hours last summer due to hurricane. Cost me $84 above basic monthly gas bill/usage. As hot/humid as our summers are it was well worth it. All I did after utility power was restored was change oil & filter on unit then ready for next outage. I keep spare filters & oil on hand.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 7,988 Likes: 3
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 7,988 Likes: 3 |
I have gas stove, furnace & hot water heater with NG which is why a 22kW NG unit will run my entire house. While sized for whole house in actual use I don’t run anything I don’t need just like I do when on electric utility power. Was on generator for 72 hours last summer due to hurricane. Cost me $84 above basic monthly gas bill/usage. As hot/humid as our summers are it was well worth it. All I did after utility power was restored was change oil & filter on unit then ready for next outage. I keep spare filters & oil on hand. With that much gas service, I would be willing to bet a 12-16 KW generator would be sufficient to run everything you would need to during an outage. Nothing wrong with having the excess capacity at all, but if your budget is something you have to think about you could probably save over half the cost by installing a smaller unit up front and still be comfortable during an outage. I don't think people realize how little load you actually put on your electrical system during 90% of the time but it wouldn't be more than 25%-35% for most people. Even with the newer all electric homes a load calculation is done to determine the size of the electrical service by most reputable electrical contractors, but there is still only so much a person can use at any one time unless you have a pretty huge house and lots of equipment you run at the same time- which in my experience is very unusual. In my experience, at peak times even a large house will seldom pull more than 100 amps on their electrical service at any one time and most people only pull half that or less even at peak times. These are the factors that need to be taken into consideration when considering your installation in relation to your budget. During an outage, most people will scale back a bit on power usage in any case- I've found it's just human nature...
Never underestimate your ability to overestimate your ability.
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Joined: May 2008
Posts: 25,528 Likes: 4
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 25,528 Likes: 4 |
anything better than a generac?? Yes, anything is better than Generac for a home standby generator. Kohler and Honeywell are both better generators
�Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal Democrats are the lowest form of politician.� �General George S. Patton, Jr.
--------------------------------------------------------- ~Molɔ̀ːn Labé Skýla~
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Joined: Nov 2021
Posts: 582
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Nov 2021
Posts: 582 |
Or, you can use your truck to go pick up some at the gas station.
Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999 |
Or, you can use your truck to go pick up some at the gas station. Yes you can and what are the pumps at the station running on? The grid.
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Joined: Nov 2021
Posts: 582
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Nov 2021
Posts: 582 |
Or, you can use your truck to go pick up some at the gas station. Yes you can and what are the pumps at the station running on? The grid. You have the option to drive to the working gas station and buy diesel. In a hurricane type scenario (been there a few times) the LP delivery trucks will be overwhelmed and it could be days, or weeks, before you can get yours.
Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 9,999 |
Or, you can use your truck to go pick up some at the gas station. Yes you can and what are the pumps at the station running on? The grid. You have the option to drive to the working gas station and buy diesel. In a hurricane type scenario (been there a few times) the LP delivery trucks will be overwhelmed and it could be days, or weeks, before you can get yours. I get that, but that wasn't your original comment that a LP powered home generator was grid dependent where a diesel powered one wasn't. They both are to some degree. It is arguable that a natural gas powered home generator would be the least grid (or delivery) dependent in your new scenario, but they all are at some level.
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Joined: Aug 2017
Posts: 9,073 Likes: 1
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Aug 2017
Posts: 9,073 Likes: 1 |
I know a lot of people with whole house generators and none of them have it for a shtf scenario. It's for the constant power outages that plague our grid. Some are 30 minutes, some are 6 days. NG always runs.
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Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 1,808
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 1,808 |
A 25kw diesel generator will burn about 1.5 gallons of diesel per hour at a 60-70% load. A 500 gallon tank will last two weeks running 24 hours per day.
A 25kw propane generator will burn almost 3 gallons per hour on a similar load. Simple math works out to one week of run time with a 500 gallon tank.
Natural gas runs forever until it does not. After Ida hit Houma last year, areas starved for natural gas. Too many home generators and machine shops/businesses were running 500 plus kw gen sets.
Diesel takes a little more maintenance, extra fuel filters especially. My propane generator starts first time every time.
My plan is to have the ability to run my household for two weeks with no outside help after a hurricane.
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