08-03-2020, 07:10 PM | #23 |
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This.
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08-03-2020, 07:12 PM | #24 | |
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08-03-2020, 08:10 PM | #25 | |
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08-03-2020, 09:01 PM | #26 |
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This. Parents have the 15kW powered by LP. It's a no brainer!!
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08-03-2020, 10:20 PM | #27 | |
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08-04-2020, 07:44 AM | #28 |
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Well I spoke to people who live in neighborhood and apparently they don't loose power here often. My guess is roughly the same as my previous residence....few times a year max and for only few hours. Even if its few days, probably whole house is gonna be a waste of money. I think I'll wait this year and see what happens. Will buy 7.5kw portable
As far as diesel go, they are all very expensive, more then natural gas. Am I missing something, perhaps someone makes relatively cheap ones? |
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08-04-2020, 08:14 AM | #29 |
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If your going to do any work, please try to follow local codes for safety of yours and your family and your neighbors.
The gas line must be buried below freezing point, which is 3ft. I believe for generator, you must use rigid pipe, not flex pipe. Also you need to account for all of the gas appliances you have at the house, your gas line may not have capacity to fire up generator. there should be seperate gas line with shut off inside of the property and shutoff by the generator. do not tee off nearest gas line. |
08-04-2020, 08:43 AM | #30 | |
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08-04-2020, 08:58 AM | #31 |
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Here are pics of my setup:
Transfer switch: Load center: |
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08-04-2020, 09:05 AM | #32 |
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Forgot to add as I look at the pics. My electrician added two grounding rods. You can see one next to the generator. The other is off of my main service panel.
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08-04-2020, 10:37 AM | #33 | |
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08-04-2020, 10:54 AM | #34 |
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Ironically, we've lost power in my hood for ~1 hour this morning. So few generators of various flavors were running around. My personal opinion - they all suck, as even the full house ones are still loud enough to be annoying.
Frankly speaking, if I was to invest $$, I'd go with a power-wall type battery setup, with or w/o solar, big enough to supply the house for a day or two, probably w/o A/C. This would cover 99% of situations, run the lights, fridge, and a portable a/c if really needed. A Sandy-like scenario is just so unlikely in my area to justify a doomsday setup, and likely would prompt alternative solutions like going to a hotel or whatever. |
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08-04-2020, 11:13 AM | #35 |
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I've got a 30kW Caterpillar Diesel Generator for sale if you're interested
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08-04-2020, 11:18 AM | #36 | |
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But a few months ago I experienced a totally different power situation. It took me a awhile to figure out what was going on. The power company was feeding TOO much power to all the homes in the area. It took them hours to sort the problem out. How I found out something was wrong was when my UPS' for my data center went into battery mode to protect everything behind it from the over voltage. Also all the lights in my home were super bright during this period. I measured the voltage at each of the power rails and got 140V. In retrospect, I should have manually cut over to my generator as I now don't know what the long term affects of all that over voltage will do to all the electrical stuff that was not behind my UPS'. As far as the noise issue of the generators, yes, the Generac I have is pretty noisy. If you want quiet, I heard the Kohler generators are pretty quiet but more expensive. And frankly, the noise from my generator is just a bit louder than a big lawn mower. |
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08-04-2020, 12:04 PM | #37 |
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zx10guy so that set up powers the whole house like nothing happened? is it natural gas? what's the $$$
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08-04-2020, 12:21 PM | #38 | |
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20kw will get you everything you need but ability to power whole house depends on what it will be running. We have 2 central ac units. If I recall, a 20kw standby would not run both of those concurrently plus 2 water heaters, fridge, stove, washer / dryer, etc. like you can without an outage. But it would run plenty to be comfortable. The issue I had aside from initial investment was that I came up with something like $1k / week in propane to run it hard for a week (and this was 10+ years ago). And if I was gonna invest in it, I didn’t want to worry about cost of running it because it only made sense to invest in it if we were gonna run it when we needed it. Natural gas is a better choice, but we don’t have it available.
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08-04-2020, 12:45 PM | #39 | ||
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The cut over is pretty quick to the generator. Takes a few seconds for the generator to fire up automatically and then the power switched over. If you have sensitive electronics you keep running 24/7, throw a UPS on it to keep the devices going in that interim cut over period. I literally have a data center in my basement with servers, storage, and network equipment. I have a 6kVA and a 1.5kVA UPS on the equipment. Another thing for you all to consider which I just thought of is to look at the harmonic distortion rating of the generator. If this is powering anything electronic, you want a generator which has low distortion. What I've seen is the large generators have met this spec but the smaller ones are where you really have to pay attention. My 20kW Generac is electronics safe. Cost wise, Rick's post below is correct. I paid about $16k. About $400 to $500 of that was due to a new gas meter I needed to have installed. That was charged by the local utility. I also needed to have a new gas line installed from the meter to the generator as they are on opposite sides of the house. So the cost could be $1k or so cheaper if those things were not needed. Quote:
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08-04-2020, 07:37 PM | #40 |
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My gasoline-powered portable is getting a workout tonight. Tropical Storm E-I-E-I-O knocked out the power all over the area, and (ironically) our power company's HQ is 100% offline due to a power or Internet problem. No working cell phone app, web site, or phone line to call in the outage.
Me thinks that I see a diesel generator in my future.....
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08-04-2020, 09:38 PM | #41 |
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Yeah some people in my town lost power today, we are ok.
Another thing I see now are natural gas conversion kits for portable gas powered generators Edit: I think I made my pick. Gonna get dual fuel portable 7.5k for roughly $1k and run it on propane. Don't need to do any rewiring, everything is done. 40lb propane tank or 2 and call it a day Last edited by Kolyan2k; 08-04-2020 at 11:09 PM.. |
08-05-2020, 08:33 AM | #42 |
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Ironically, I just got a quote on a 22W Generac whole house generator. I have natural gas. Unit plus install is $11,500. And now power is out from this storm! We got hit pretty hard here in LI and nobody has power. I can hear all my neighbor's generators going on all night which is killing me! I'm definitely doing this as I can't stand not having power. With potentially more storms and the winter coming up, I think it will be a worthwhile investment.
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08-05-2020, 09:02 AM | #43 | |
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08-05-2020, 10:56 AM | #44 |
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Its not that common to loose power here. Like I said, last year was the first time I actually knew someone who lost power for a week. I personally was never affected by power loss in past 25 years, or at least I dont remember.
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