Who Should I Call For Installing Generators? (appliances, house)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Due to the weather forecast for this week in this region, I want to ask questions about installing a generator. I know money will be involved to a certain degree. From what I gathered, it costs a lot to buy and install one. I have been saving up a few hundreds, and can put together some more with my family.
I want to know who should I call for this? Who is good in the area for installing? How long does it take to complete?
Does anyone here have good results with a generator?
Right. I meant to be more specific. Cause if someone throws the prices at you, they could be asking more than what’s really worth. So I wanted an opinion on what prices are legitimate for installing. Any ideas?
Right. I meant to be more specific. Cause if someone throws the prices at you, they could be asking more than what’s really worth. So I wanted an opinion on what prices are legitimate for installing. Any ideas?
So while I am all for getting recommendations from strangers on the internet, in terms of pricing the only thing I would ever trust is to get at a minimum of 3 bids from contractors for any project. I have used Matt Darcy of Darcy Electric Corp. (914) 329-8655 for many projects, including putting a charging station in for an electric car and installing a generator. But always get multiple bids. Also, I understand that supplies are somewhat difficult to find now and depending on the size of the generator you may have to wait for cut off switches and some materials to be ordered. Its getting better, but still slower than pre-covid due to demand outpacing supply. Best of luck to you and I hope it all works out for you.
Also, on the pricing, there are MASSIVE variables. The first being the generator itself. Portable or permanent placed; natural gas, propane, or petroleum; How far from the house; underground or above ground wiring; do you have existing fuel lines; amperage/wattage; brand ...
To buy a portable gas generator you can spend from $500 to $2000. To add a cutoff switch and back feed your panel with an outlet fed line, probably $500 to $1000 for an electrician. This is probably the cheapest. You can get it cheaper if you break code and back feed it directly into the panel, but lets not discuss violating code. Materials, ~$300. This is the minimum for a portable job where you pull it out, plug in the lines, flip the switch from the house main off, start the generator and flip on the generator fed switch. Fill up the gas and change the oil as needed. But 4 or so 5-gallon gas cans. Or buy a propane fed model and buy 3 or 4 bbq style portable propane tanks to store with it. On most generators 20 gallons of gas or 4 propane tanks will get you almost 2 days on a small load. You want at least 12,500 watts start up and 11,000 watts running. Feed a 50 amp line to the panel and run a cord to the generator for your fridge and if you have another big draw that you can plus into the generator, like a pool filter/heater. If you are conservative, you can feed your house with that for a few days and be fine. Its too much to run your whole house as max capacity, but if you are limiting it, 50 amps to the panel should be fine, especially if you draw off the fridge/pool.
Once you get to permanent the prices can go up a lot, but it is a lot easier and the power is way bigger. The units are minimum double to triple the price. A plumber to run the gas lines and black pipe for gas lines is crazy expensive now. Like 25 feet installed can run you over $1500 crazy. The electric lines and material is closer to $700. The electrician work is easily double. So it can be much much more, but its hard to say exactly with all the variables. Get at least a 100 amp panel feed. This will have a simple one switch cut off/back feed option. It does everything from one spot. You start the generator and switch the power at the same spot. No wires to worry about. It should hook up to your gad source, so no running low on fuel. You can get as much power as you want to buy, it can duplicate the 200 - 400 amp service you likely have from the power company, but its all about the cost. This can easily run over $10k.
My house came with a whole house generator but the seller left their paperwork from when it was installed not too long ago. He was the GC on the project, so he hired a plumber and an electrician himself, and bought all the parts. The generator was about $2k, the propane tank was $1k, the installation parts were another ~$1k, and the labor (electrician + plumbing) was $2k. So that's $6k all-in. I think the only manual labor he did himself was to dig a small trench of about 15 feet for the wire, though seems plausible you can get someone to do that for $200 or so.
Separately, my neighbor recently got a quote for a similarly sized generator and the all-in price was $20k. So just understand that there is a lot of profit/cost by going with a GC vs controlling the project yourself.
Check out ElectricGeneratorsDirect.com, they sell whole home generators to the public and that's where the prior owner of my home bought our Generac. My model sells for under $2k but you can go much bigger for not much more money.
Last edited by NYCresident2014; 08-24-2021 at 08:22 AM..
There's needs and there's wants. You don't really need an automatic. For your home, what's so bad about activating it manually? You don't really need a whole house generator. Just one to power basic, needed appliances, like fridge and some lights. 8k plus or minus some seems good. Keep it simple and inexpensive. Don't be talked into oversizing unit.
There's needs and there's wants. You don't really need an automatic. For your home, what's so bad about activating it manually? You don't really need a whole house generator. Just one to power basic, needed appliances, like fridge and some lights. 8k plus or minus some seems good. Keep it simple and inexpensive. Don't be talked into oversizing unit.
Also be aware of how the generator is feeding your home. Less expensive generators can often only deliver a maximum of 30 amps at 120 volts through its highest receptacle. This is usually fed through a high voltage line into your wall panel through a switch. This means that no matter how many watts the generator is capable of producing, the maximum you can feed into your panel is 30 amps at 120 volts. Most mid and high priced generators can produce dual voltage, so a 30 amp outlet can feed 30 amps at 240 volts, using more wattage and increasing the amount of wattage you can use in your house. But if you are only feeding 30 amps at 120 volts, you are not using anywhere near 8000 watts and are just producing energy that you have no way of drawing. While you can add an extension cord or two like I mentioned above to get some more bang for your buck, you are far better served by buying a generator that can give you 40 or 50 amps through a higher end output receptacle at both 120 or 240 volts and feed that into your wall panel. A few hundred on the generator can let you live far more comfortably in an emergency. I agree not to buy an oversized unit, but also don't buy a unit meant for tools on a jobsite to try to feed a panel in a home. 8000 watts may be enough, but try to find one with a 50 amp output, or at a minimum a 40 amp, and that is capable of dual voltage, so you can output your available energy at 240 volts. So in other words, do not buy an undersized unit either. Also remember when its on to be aware that many appliances use more energy at startup than during running, so you may have to turn off a few things to do a load of laundry, but once the washer is running turn them back on, and the figures for wattage on a generator usually have two numbers, one for start up watts and the other for running. My washer needs 2400 watts at startup but only 1000 to run for example. So an 8000 watt running generator might give you 9750 startup watts. I also agree that most can handle the manual switching, but if you cannot, and you can afford it, buy what makes you comfortable. There are a bunch of free calculators when you can type in what you plan to run in an emergency and get the voltage that you would need. Anyway, all these post have lots of great info for the OP. Best to all!
Surprised with all the comments here. I thought it would be a walk in the park to set up a generator, not so simple after all.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
