[David Jones]

OK, now you guys have me thinking about doing this.........

My house is only 2000 sq feet heated cooled. Whole house wouldn't be to bad.

[Dblkick]

The thing that need to be considered is.... Is it an EMERGENCY generator or a convenience generator? If you want to live life seamlessly in a power outage then spend the money to get the best system money can buy, but if you understand that this is a short term outage ( 1 hr to 2 weeks ) than a simple Generac system will do the trick. Lighting, fridge, heat, that's all you "need". But people's needs are all different.
I've installed several systems & you always get that one customer that simply cannot have enough.

Dave

[wytnyt]

Originally Posted by Dblkick

The thing that need to be considered is.... Is it an EMERGENCY generator or a convenience generator? If you want to live life seamlessly in a power outage then spend the money to get the best system money can buy, but if you understand that this is a short term outage ( 1 hr to 2 weeks ) than a simple Generac system will do the trick. Lighting, fridge, heat, that's all you "need". But people's needs are all different.
I've installed several systems & you always get that one customer that simply cannot have enough.

Dave

i think other than myself everyone is thinking of a long term solution.,even tho the thread didnt seem to start as so
i do know a couple of weeks ago when there was several hundred thousand here were out of electricity for nearly 2 weeks in 95 + heat,finding a generator was near impossible let alone installing a permanent one.
i dont regret back feeding mine as doing so probably kept my mom from having a heat stroke.
either that or move where i can get a stand alone installed the same day a major power outage occurs

[Cliff R]

Thanks for the link Mike, that's exactly what I installed for my neighbor.

http://www.interlockkit.com/

We came out of the panel from the 30amp breaker with a heavy 4 strand cable and went thru the exterior wall to a weather proof box for the generator plug. Then we built a heavy duty short cable to connect the generator to the wall box.

The second consideration is the cord size and length. It MUST be rated high enough for what you are doing, and the shorter the better, as distance is your enemy when it comes to carrying a lot of load (amps) with these sort of things.

Many appliances rate nearly 3 times the starting amperage as what is needed to run them, so factor this in when selecting which breakers to turn on and what items you need to power up from your standby generator......Cliff

[ace61]

as an electrical contractor the recommended size is correct. i've installed generac standbys over the years but poor customer support found that the problem we were having was an intregal factory grounding problem but no help from generac the last ones we've been installing are milbank brand with an auto transfer switch. i recommend going for that type of if funds are available.

[hellerods]

I had the electrician install all needed parts to meet local building code for a back-up generator (portable 6000kw?) transfer switch, etc. while we were building the house because of the delay for temp. power. After twelve years still works great but hardly ever use it. I would caution anyone interested in using any gen. to think about what would happen if you needed to file some sort of insurance claim, any issue with gen installation not being up to building code , could cause denial of claim from the insurance co. when you need it most.---- just a thought--- sob insurance companys will weasel out of anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[PonchoV8]

I've got one I've never installed. I got it from a vet clinic that bought it for Y2K. It's just a gen-set with no enclosure made by Gen-Pro with Kleen-power. The power is "Kleen"(so you know it's good). It's 9K watts, is powered by a Vangaurd Briggs engine and uses NG or Propane. Unfortunately it's a high RPM version. My AC draws 5 amps. Not sure what surge is at start up though. I don't use electric heat, but have it as a back up.

[arbys]

I put in a 15KW Generac in about 12 years ago due to the numerous outages that we were having. One July 4th weekend we experienced a 72 hour outage and it was in the 90's. I had my 3 1/2 ton AC going and then turned on a bunch of things and finally our electric range. All operated fine. I hooked it up with a 200 amp auto transfer switch that feeds my entire panel. It has a watercooled, natural gas Mitsubishi engine and other than the $420 gas valve I haven't had any other repairs. About $10K to install 12 years ago.

[Cliff R]

This is the unit my dad bought several years ago, and it's been nothing but trouble:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TITAN-INDUST...item3378d13820

At a glance they look like a really nice unit, and it has nice features including electric start, and large capacity metal fuel tank, pretty high "surge" and running amps, etc.

Underneath all that it's just some sort of "knock-off", I suspect of offshore manufacture, or at least that's where most of the parts come from.

Here are a few more I found with a quick Ebay search:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-P3-POWER...item4d02d6c389

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Powerland-85...item1c293b96b4

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pentagon-Too...item4845fbe6eb

I've worked on this thing at least a dozen times for a variety of problems, mostly fuel system and wiring related.

Underneath the nice paint it's just a "cheezy" POS, IMHO. The reason I brought this up is to not only "bash" this particular machine, but I have noticed that there are dozens of nearly identical machines offered under different labels. Close inspection shows them to be exactly the same construction as this unit, just different pretty colors and different source of supply......Cliff