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

What ya got?

Im seriously considering investing in a Generac 26,000 watt home standby system. They’re kinda spendy, about 12k from start to finish.

Piece of mind is worth it.

Why do you want a 26k?

I run my entire 2000sq ft house on a 12k and that includes the air in the summertime.

30k runs the whole ranch. Both houses, and water well.

Just got a PTO generator because I already had the tractor. Generator was about $3400, and I mounted it on the frame, welded legs so the PTO shaft is level when it sits on the ground.

Running the generator in 540E PTO gear with my 75hp tractor, it'll run a couple of days on 25 gallons of diesel. I could put it on my big tractor, but wouldn't get near the mileage.

Central Air?


I talked to an electrician, he suggested it. Electric furnace, electric water heater…. He said the furnace draws 80 amps at start up. If the water heater kicks in at the same time….brown out.. remember this will be NG, it takes more..

Yeah, yeah.. if you’re home, yeah you can throw breakers and shut stuff down. I’m talking about not being home and not have to worry.

Yes central air. My water heater is gas and so is the furnace, IIRC you need about 15% more for NG, 10% more for Propane.

With the electric furnace and water heater you just may need 26k.

We’ve been lucky at our current house we built about 7 years back. Seldom have we lost power. 54 inches of rain with Hurricane Harvey few years back and lights never flickered and that was before they built the elementary school in the back of our subdivision. Texas likes to keep power to schools and hospitals. It’s almost like we on on the same line section as a critical care hospital, but not one anywhere close. Now our lake place on Rayburn, another story. Lost power quite often cause it’s in the country.

Now watch next tropical storm we loose power for weeks.

I have a 7000 watt run, 9000 peek portable generator in the shed I’ve never had to use. Have a 5700 watt and 2000 watt at the lake place on Sam Rayburn.

If I had outage issues, I’d put one in and a dang big one at that.

I am about to install a 26k generator for my whole house. 2 central ac units, 2 fridges, 1 freezer, 2800 sq ft. 2 gas water heaters, 1 gas furnace, 1 electric furnace, gas oven and cooktop, gas dryer. Anyway, peace of mind if/when power goes out. Don't want to loose food and meat. Stay cool in very hot summer. I am in a place where sometimes we have ice storm in winter, yet near gulf coast where we sometimes have hurricanes get far enough inland to knock out power.

Also, with the push to go electric cars and to go all-electric, the grid in 5 years or so is going to be taxed and they predict rolling blackouts. Nice to keep power on.

get'em before democrats outlaw them

We are due for more and more power outages in the near future. At least that is my belief.
I had a transfer switch installed and bought a 12000 watt Duramax dual fuel gen. Runs my whole 4000sq foot house.
Was out 22 hours in Feb with an ice storm. Ran it on gasoline. It also runs on LP. Perfect unit!
I tested it last summer with every light on, both A/C units running and got the well pump to cycle. Performed flawlessly.
Power goes out, I'm back on in 5 minutes or less for about 10% all in of a giant generac.
Generator itself is sold by Amazon for $1,000-1200.00 delivered. I bought a spare!

What liberals don't realize is natural gas produces about 35% of power in my state, about 20% nuclear, 10% hydro, the rest coal. Most of the natural gas replaced coal power.

In NYC they are ripping out gas fired appliances in apartments and installing electric. More strain on the grid. Less efficient use of gas.

Also, in Germany they are taking excess wind power in the North Sea and producing hydrogen gas and blending 20% hydrogen with natural gas to cut imported natural gas. We could do the same here with excess wind power, especially on days the wind is blowing and power use is down. That is one quick way to store the power instead of expensive large commercial battery banks. Germany is also thinking of using hydrogen gas in automobiles instead of electric vehicles, with hydrogen fuel cells which can make a car go over 900 miles on a fill up vs 200-300 with an electric.

There are other solutions besides knee jerk reactions. Nuclear replacing coal fired using the old land at coal facilities because it is already tied into the grid. No need to run new transmission lines. Only 22% of the power from windmills in west Texas gets to east Texas where 90% of Texans live, because of problems acquiring land to build the transmission lines.

Have a 20kw Kohler, many power outages due to us being remote. 2100sq foot home, and my 1800sqft shop chug along like nothing ever happened when the power is out. One bad thing about a PTO generator, you have to be home for it to work. My Kholer fires up 7 seconds after the power goes out.

We looked into it recently. Had the Generac guy come out. Turned out the best (and really only) place to put it was six inches too close to my property line fence. Applied for a variance, but the city turned it down. Also, because we have two furnaces and a tankless water heater on NG, they'd have to replace the existing gas meter and run bigger lines. Ironically then, it would have been gas draw and not electricity draw that controlled whether it would work for us. All told, it would have been pretty spendy.

If I could get somebody to put in one of those Duramax units without going to the city for permission, I might reconsider.

I had a 36 Kw Quiet Source single phase installed at our 4,500 sf house in Colorado. In over 14 years it has run less than 100 hours, most of it during the monthly test.

One of my friends in VT has Generac, not sure which model or size, that ran 24/7 for nearly a month when their power was out after Hurricane Irene back in 2011 and it ran for an extended period again when they had torrential rains that uprooted trees and blocked roads earlier this month, July 2023.

As to your fuel, natural gas is a lot less expensive than propane. Make sure that you have a good dealer to do the installation and maintenance. The dealer who we have in Colorado did a good job with the installation, but the annual maintenance has been irregular and if there was another dealer in the area I'd give them a try.

Generac guy said I need 24K for my home--1800 SF---$12 k

That's what we've got viking. It's been good. Runs a lot, we have a third world power grid, so it gets a work out, approx 110 hrs/year.

We haven't had any issues.

Got the nat gas 24k Generac installed earlier this year, already a few short outages where it kicked in effortlessly. Totally worth it and I don't know why I waited this long to get this peace of mind. It feels good to have a bit of independence from the electrical utility.

You won't go wrong getting one bigger than you need. 26KW should run almost any house. Mine runs fine on 22KW but we only have 1872 sq. ft. air conditioned with a 4 ton unit, 2 freezers, electric stove, and hot water heater. Winter heat is with firewood. I would seriously consider getting at least a 150 gallon propane tank as backup if you are attaching to NG. NG is notorious for going down in weather disasters. With 150 gallons at least you can keep the essentials going. Such as freezers and hot water for Mom to take a bath.

I know I sound like a broken record but shut your Generac down every day or two and check the oil. They run at high RPM and use some oil.

IMHO... 26k is way way more than you could ever need or use.

You might want to hire someone here to do you some hard calculations on actual needs... and/or study your power bill.

26k x $0.155 (per K) x 730.5 hours (in a month) would imply your current monthly electric usage is $2,944 (before taxes and fees).

Seems about every three weeks this topic comes back around.

20 kW Kohler here.

Do your homework. Don't just fall for the company with the best marketing.

13.5kw generac runs on propane. Installed in 2019 w/transfer switch < $7K. runs everything except I shut off the water heater when AC is running. If winter, I shut off the bathroom's floor heat. AC is old and sometimes would kick off the gen until I replaced the capacitor. Ran for 6 days after our last storm outage. I chose that size b/c the fuel consumption was about 1/2 of the 22kw. Would not want to be without it now.