The wife wants one. I'd like to hear from folks that have experience with one. How is yours set up, what do you power with it, what do you do overnight when on the generator, etc?

We have propane so the fueling part is not a big deal. Our neighbor at a previous residence has one and had to have it replaced after about 15 years. That hardly seems worth it. I'm wondering if it wore itself out with the pre-programmed self testing (which didn't detect a failure to carry load).

A couple of times a month our power trips off, comes back, trips off, comes back and may stay off or stay on. I don't think I want a generator trying to deal with that cycling. A manual start if the power stays off seems preferable.

Is there any code restriction regarding exhaust location and windows?

We just had a Generac installed this summer. Big enough to do the entire house. Can't speak to longevity, but it does the weekly test run.
There is a delay before it kicks on, so when the power flickers it doesn't start needlessly.

For exhaust, it had to be 5 feet from doors, windows and the furnace intake. Ours is propane powered also.

I like a gas portable 30A unit. Something like this:
https://www.samsclub.com/ip/10-000-...rt-GP8000E/13572122433?classType=VARIANT

Thats rated at 30A... all your plugs and wire and breaker needs rated at 30A.

Get you an interlok kit.
https://interlockkit.com/

Put the interlock kit on your panel, its specific to your panel, it keeps your main off and gen breaker on or main on and gen breaker off... cant' be both and this keeps you from doing that.

Add a 220V 30A breaker to your panel. Put a 30A gen outlet somewhere. Run 30A wire white black bare and red between breaker and outlet. Your cord will have two male ends or some such configuration. I have a short male to male to covert things.

Anyway thats that.

I realized my power feed out to the barn could also be my gen feed to the house. So my gen resides in my barn and I hook it up and get it going indoors (separate building) and when its raining snowing and dark easy easy.

I added emergency lighting to light my panel and gen area while power was out so its not dark when I am hooking it up.

Good luck.

People will complain about this but this is the cheap and effective way of doing it that the people on this site are interested in.

Doing it this way that gen can die and you can go buy another and plug it in. Easy Easy.

They make dual propane and gas gens. You could go that route. If it was me I'd have multiple gens with multiple ways to run them. i.e. gas, propane, pto, deisel.

I've had a Generac 23kw for about 10 years. No problems at all and many times thankful for it.

Have a generac no problems so far. They have a delay so flickering power won’t start it

Buddy has one it sounds like they do an annual maintenance routine on them I’d say the more freezers a guy has the better a generator looks

my great aunt had a generac whole house LP it outlasted her , she had a 70 year head start on it
21 years in my cousin who owns the house now says it isn't right.

so 20 years on small engine , I am not convinced it couldn't be made right , it might be the electronics rather than , last thing I did to it was replace the starting battery , I think in a cold environment it would be best to give it a trickle charger , or it goes a week sitting with no charging , at 20 below that can be enough to freeze a battery with a small electrical drain on it

I think that was the 3rd battery after the original we kept notes inside the cover when maintenance was done and batteries replaced

check oil every 6 months , change oil every other year if no outages and once a year if outages or every hundred hours of outage.
if it only runs the 15 minutes a week it gets 13 hours a year. so as long as it has oil 26 hours should be fine , the oil in it after 20 years looked like new being changed every other year.

I am sure it is either battery and she doesn't want to deal with it or something in the electronics

I bet batteries would last a lot longer with a maintainer on them and a every year check of the water level

We have a 26kw Generac with automatic transfer switch, test runs 5 minutes each week. Besides lights , we can have heat/cool, dry clothes, & bake cookies while the rest of the neighborhood is dark. Highly recommend it.

Local dealers and service make a huge difference.

Mom has had issues with both, Corporate seems to be uninterested in service issues. At least when she was having problems.

Had a Generac w/ auto transfer for about eight years, than the strator went bad, paid 3,300 for the unit new, Generac wanted 2,600 to fix w/ parts & labor. sold it for 300.00 & bought a westing house that runs the whole house, it has a push button remote start & stop, hooked it into the Generac transfer switch. we can not rely on electric service here because of the age of the power grid, so it runs quite a bit.

I was thinking the new ones had a kit for battery charging and heating in cold weather along with some type of engine heater.

diesel vs. propane...pros/cons???

Sold almost all Cummins RS20 20kw to the RS 36 36kw generators . Have friends that work at generac and all said don’t buy them for longevity. Generac makes a lot of dramatic model changes and parts can be a challenge. Anyways, the Cummins on natural gas or lp have been bulletproof for us. Only complaint is access to air filter for maintenance.

For those considering a back up generator, consider a battery backup circuit for critical items that you don’t want the few seconds of delay affecting things

When using a generator w an interlok installed, how do you know when the power is back on ??

My electric company is supposed to call to tell me it’s back on. But they never do.

My closest neighbor up on the hill has a whole house generator. If I stand outside and listen real hard, I can hear it running. When it shuts off, I know the power is back on.

Or, I can just go and look at my meter.

My set up is similar to Ohioboy’s. I run a Generac 5500, it’s a 30 amp unit. It’s the generator I’ve had for 25 years for doing new construction work before the electric company hooks up the power.

I don’t know much about them but had a friend that had one and it saved his house in the Holiday farm fire, that fire burned a couple hundred homes. His generator turned on, he turned on the irrigation, pumped out of the river and had to leave. Saved the house but lost his shop. He died a couple years later.


wws

Wow. Quite the story. Quick thinking on his part.

He have had a Generac for about a year. It runs on natural gas. It comes on for 5 minutes every Monday morning. It has a built in trickle charger that maintains the battery. It has run for several outages and powered everything in the house. It is great piece of mind.