anything better than a generac??

I did a ton of comparisons between Generact and Kohler. Kohler was built better, every component was built heavier. Found many bad reviews on the Generact and only several on the Kohler. Wanted a Cummins but was way out of my price range and closest service/ tech was 200 miles

I bought my 20kw Kohler, built the pad, bought and installed a 500 gal lp gas tank and ran the line.

Had to have a Kohler tech wire it to receive the 2000hr 7 year warntee.

Have had the generator since Feb, it had 48 hours of run time. All good

I had a 22Kw Generac installed when we build our house 6 years ago this month. It runs on natural gas and like all generators I guess, tests itself at prescribed times. Oher than the testing, ours hasn't run for 3 hours over that period of time and we've had no issues with it. I suppose the Kohler is likely rated higher, as is the Cummins. You're buying peace of mind.

Generac here and most around us also have Generac. On NG.

No problems. Good to have when you have a third world power grid.

Ask any service technician - Kohler.

The Cummins/Onan generators are mostly used as RV generators and are only available AFAIK up to around 12.5 KW, but they are possibly the best stand by generator going IMO. If you need something bigger, the Kohlers are the best rated, though a bit more expensive than the Generacs. Where the real cost usually comes in is the options that are available - most of which are part of the Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) . Automatic excercising, battery charging, block heaters, low oil alarms, fire alarms connected to your alarm system, etc. are all good options to have but can get expensive..

When I retired from the power company 7 years ago about 40% of my neighbors, including me, bought generators. They knew that response time to outages was going from minutes to hours.
There was a local Farm COOP that had a deal on the 22KW Generac, about $5000 for the generator, pad and transfer switch. I'm about the only one thats had trouble. First off, it had a bad circuit board and would not program. Two weeks later it was replaced under warranty. Next, it threw a rod the first time it started under its exercise schedule. (and yes I put oil in it) It was replaced under warranty about 4 weeks later. Next, it started surging when under load. They replaced the throttle body, again under warranty. Next a factory connection in the transfer switch failed. Again it was replaced under warranty in a couple of weeks. Its run trouble free since then!!!

If I were to do it again I probably would go with something else. The same guy did all of my repairs. He says that he has problems with other brands too!

For the air cooled engine units I’d get a Kohler over the Generac.
I spent the extra $$$ for a 22kW Cummins with 2.4L liquid cooled engine. They no longer offer that model now the smallest Cummins offers with liquid cooled engine is a 25kW though it’s the same engine I have in mine.

Basically twice the price as an air cooled engine model but it also runs at 1800 rpm versus the 3600 rpm the air cooled engine units run.
Unit doesn’t get as hot, oil lasts longer before you have to change it, etc.

I do live in an area that has been and could be impacted by hurricane caused power outages which is why I spent the extra money for liquid cooled engine.
If you’re not expecting to be out of power for more than 2 or 3 days I’d get the Kohler with air cooled engine.

Timely thread. Ready to pour a pad for a generator now. Want to run on propane if possible.

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.

Nope - had my house checked by an electrical contractor with everything running so I’d know what the full load was, then checked starting load requirements on central AC unit which was the highest starting load then sized generator accordingly. When literally everything is running my 22kW generator is pulling a 60% load.

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.

Any of you wankers with a tractor/pto might give consideration to a PTO generator. Hook it up to the tractor, plug it into the house and run it. Relatively small units with a lot of output, and easy to tuck away when not in use.

Apparently, your reading comprehension skills are severely limited. I said the Onan were the best of the ones I'm familiar with, but they top out at 12.5 KW. If you can get by with a 12.5 KW generator they are a great contendor. After all, the topic of the thread was whole house generators... and more people than you apparently realize could get by just fine with a 12.5KW generator for quite some time ....

But you just keep spouting off nonsense- it makes the threads interesting and no doubt draws the attention you so desperately crave...

Cummins makes whole house units.

https://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/power/cummins-onan-home-standby-generators.html

Sounds like you got yours sized just about right for your purposes and went the right route IMO. Way too many people just assume they have to run the biggest generator they can find or one their buddy told them about- until they find out how expensive they are and then the install and upkeep on top of it. That is when you start to talk about what their budget is, how much equipment they really need to run during an outage, how long their outages are, and what fuel they are prepared to store onsite... there is a huge price difference between a 22KW diesel unit with an automatic transfer switch with all the options and a 12.5KW propane unit with a manual transfer switch panel with no options. And 90% of the people I talked to could get by quite nicely in our area with a 12.5KW or smaller unit for a couple days to a week our outages usually last. Especially considering this area is served by Natural Gas and most people around here have gas water heaters, heat, and sometimes ovens and dryers....

As a contractor, budget is always a consideration when discussing a job- which is why there are so many Generac generators being installed. They are the cheapest alternative in almost all markets- but not always the best if you read the reviews on line....

You're right Steve. I haven't been around the generator installs since I closed shop in 2010 so I just peripherally kept up with the market. If I was in the market the Cummins would be what I would be looking into. At the time I was doing them Onan was only offering the RV units but the whole house units were just being developed. Looks like they are finally getting competitive with their pricing also. They used to be way more expensive than almost everything else on the market...

Price of diesel these days, I don't know if that's a very good idea! LOL!

I've got an older Onan that I mounted 6 gallon fuel tank on.
Our retirement home is small, so it's not like we have to maintain an all electric home.
Summertime, we need A/C, some refrigeration, TV, charge phones and a few lights.
Winter, we heat with wood and cook with propane, so, it's not like we need TMI in the backyard! LOL!

Yeah, it's getting common for newer all electric homes to need more than the old standard 200 amp main.

Diesel. When you're on LP, you're still "on the grid"

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¢.

How so? Both would be delivered by a truck.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

If you're dependent on that truck making its delivery, you're dependent on a grid.

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).

It is the same with diesel. I don't see the difference in the two and it was why I asked.

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).

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...

Yes, anything is better than Generac for a home standby generator.

Kohler and Honeywell are both better generators

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.

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.

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.

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.