Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire whole house generators??

I had to go with LP, no gas where I live. When I built my home I had to also purchase 7 eletric poles. There were no eletric supply for almost 1/2 mile where we live. Now being the last home on the line, the power is out 7-10 times a year. And always the last to be restored.

Only bad thing about a pto generator is, you have to be home when the power is off. The standby and transfer switch does it all. Being that I’m gone for 3-4 weeks every spring chasing gobblers, and 3-4 weeks in Sept chasing elk. Makes it easier on the wife.

During the outage after Hurricane Laura NG went down in this area. Propane trucks were running. In the Texas freeze outage NG went down. If you run a Generac on NG most can be also run on propane by the turn of the built in adjustment.

Our Generac 22KW is 5 years old and hasn't given any trouble at all but it will use a pint of oil every 2 or 3 days when running hard. Several people I know ran them low. One neighbor kept restarting his when it apparently shut down for low oil pressure and ended up doing an engine rebuild. After that I started calling folks and warning them to shut down and check oil. If I remember correctly mine holds 2 quarts and a pint puts me down to the add mark. I'm guessing 2 pints will put it below the stick.

Most common reason around here is 2-10 day power outages due to hurricanes. Although with more power underground its getting better. NG isn't common here so people get a large LP tank buried in their yard. Personally I wouldn't want be in a four hour line at the gas station. I think how I would go would depend on my location and how easy it was to source any certain type of fuel during what ever type situstion I was planning for. But unless your producing your own fuel or electric power your on the grid to some degree.

I have the same size/vintage Generac on LP. Ours has been very reliable. Replaced two batteries in the 12yrs since we bought the house. We probably put 72-144hrs/yr on it due to mostly summer outages. 1000gal pig that we keep topped off.

Question for you guys who store diesel for whatever use you have - generator, farm vehicles, long haul trucker, etc... how long do you store diesel and what do you do to treat it for long term storage? Will it be usable after a long and very cold winter?

That sounds problematic. Never had NG go down here.

I have the same experience as Gypsy Wind, Generac 20-k, runs every thing on Ranch when Power out, my Dads house and mine are on end of line, we have gone as long as 12 days w/o power, they are LP. I bought both ours from Northern 12 years ago with switch for 4,300 a piece, with switch . Don’t know about the new ones, but have had great luck with ours, literally life savers, at 20 below and 18” of snow on ground.

16 kW unit would have done it if not for the starting load for 5 ton AC unit - that was actually limiting factor requiring 22kW generator. Even at that I had to put a soft start kit on AC unit.

I've stored diesel for up to 3 years with no problems. Since my pickup and equipment is older, I treat the diesel with Optilube XPD for a little more fuel lubrication. I try to rotate the diesel so it doesn't get too old. It pains me to be using $1.89 diesel, knowing what the refill costs will be. Some of my neighbors are using 5 and 6 year old diesel in their tractors.

Diesel will stay good for years with no special treatment other than keeping contaminants out of it.

I don’t know if it’s the heat or humidity here in the South but diesel will support biological growth without biocides added.

Right, algae of some type will form in diesel.