Do you have a Home Generator? (Hampton: how much, house, transfer)

[NJR]

Just looking to see the common consensus here in Hampton Roads.

[citydweller]

Wishing I had one now!

[froggin4colorado]

We have it for the camper...

[rtandc]

Have an entire home generator.....learned my lesson years ago when I was out of power for 6 days after a storm.....never again

[Freefreq]

Portable that I bought before Isabel hit. Used it for the 2 weeks we were without power. Start it and let it run for 30 min once a month.

[telemonster]

I owned one of those 12KW generac units that was LP/Propane. I sold it during Isabel never installed. Had intended to use it to backup some of my office, mainly the computer equipment. Worst part was I had passed up a 35kw set with a 180 gallon dual walled base tank less than a year prior to the storm. Was holding out for 60kw, as the servers and network hardware would cause the temperature to climb too high without keeping the air conditioning up. Reason I didn't install the generac is there was no natural gas in the office park (would have used it for the core router, switch, and only a few servers.)

I wasn't super impressed with it. If housing wasn't stupid priced in Hampton Roads, and I went to do a generator, I'd probably find one surplus and drop a skid mounted diesel in a detached garage. You can find MQ and similar units used if you look hard enough (30kw and 60kw.) I'm told in-building setups, the radiator air movement will make your ears pop when it lights off. Not sure what code says about running power from garage back into house to meet a large ATS. Guess if your going to do it right, might as well put a whole-house battery backup in place too :-)

Be aware that the natural gas bills can run pretty high. Is being without power a few days worth a $1,000 gas bill? I forget how much the unit I had would have cost to run. It had a baby transfer switch (60 amps or something). I was going to work on building a better monitoring setup.

I guess I'm kind of a generator snob. I LOVE the diesel units, and not a huge fan of lp/ng.

We played with a 5KW garden generator during isabel. High harmonic distortion on the power, frequency and voltage shift, small UPSes rejected the power.

Thinking back, I didn't have the big UPS during the storm. That came later.

Fun stuff.

Remember, it takes a lot of juice to really back up a whole house. Most folks go for the fridge some lights and the tv. Given a HVAC system with a 30 amp breaker for the indoor unit and 30 amp for outdoor unit (both at 240vac), that comes out to 15KW. Although not taking power factor into consideration, so it should be lower, not sure how much. Starting big devices strains the small generator which causes the frequency to skew which makes things unhappy.