No Heat For 13 Hours

[WVwoodsman]

Due to the severe snow storm yesterday, I had no heat at my house for a little over 13 hours. I heat with an OWB and I'm not going to be without heat again. I'm going to buy a whole house natural gas generator. I have looked at a few cataloges and see an 8kw generator for around $2000.00. Would this be enough to power my whole house? My requirements consist of two heating/cooling zones (central air). One furnace up stairs and one down stairs in addition to 2 air conditioners plus all the household appliances outlets etc. Does anyone have any experience or suggestions?

 

[highpointtree]

I bought a honda eb11000 gen. with 1.5 hours for $1,800.00 like new. new price is over $4,000.00 another 400.00 for the transfer switch. it runs my house garage, well pump, air compressor etc. I hook it up to run everything not just dedicated breakers. antural gas is not an option for me and propane generators burn too much.

 

[bluscout]

Depending on how big they are an 8000 watt generator won't even run one of your air conditioners. When a motor starts the power (amp) consumption is many times more than when the motor is running. The generator breaker will trip before this starting current decreases.
If you want to run your whole house with the air conditioners and not be forced to leave anything off you need to look at a larger generator. Something along the lines of 20,000.
The one you are looking at would more than likely run most or all of your house without the air conditioners.....Unless you cook or heat your water with electricity.

 

[RacerX]

In order to properly size the generator you'll need to know the exact amount of load that it may need to supply. There are a few ways to accomplish this, one would be to turn everything on and take amp readings at the service with an ammeter. Another would be to perform a load calculation based on Article 220 of the NEC.

What will you be using to transfer from utility to generator power? If you use an automatic transfer switch the 2008 NEC will require that the generator be sized to carry the entire connected load.

There are several ways to configure household generators. At the very least you'll need some sort of interlock so that the service cannot be connected to both the utility and the generator at the same time.

 

[Wirenut2266]

Here's a reality check fellas:

I bet my 2500 watt generator would do all I need it to do. For $750 for a good one. Why would I care about ac, garage, whole house etc? Run the heat, frig, freezer, and living room for lights or TV, what else do you need? What about fuel consumption? A 8kw will chew some serious fuel, plus noise is much greater than a 2.5kw....Do yourself a favor, buy a smaller one 2.5 kw to maybe a 4.0kw , more portable, many more uses. Just as long as it is a good quality, with stable output, you will be in good shape.
I install 10:1 smaller gen sets than larger ones. If you have livestock or other animals, then I would look into something larger with propane/Natural gas fuel.

Bruce

 

[coyotencuttin]

what you should do is to find how many watts you are going to need then size your generator for the load. most appliances/equipment will have the amp draw listed. convert it all to watts and see where you come up to. the easiest thing to do is not to put he whole house on it but put on the essentials like heat, refrigerator/freezer, some lights and things like that. unless you are an electrician i would ask for professional help due to possible back feed from your generator into the power grid and the possibility of hurting the power workers thinking that the power is shutoff and your system electrocuting them.good luck, harold

 

[mga]

go big, or not at all.

price the ones that are 15k or above. better to have too much, than not enough.

when the power goes out, your house will be lit like a christmas tree.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Many generators produce "dirty electricity" which electronic things do not like.

Like many furnaces these days which have *electronic* controls!

But I have seen "electronics friendly" generators for sale lately. Might want to get one like that...
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=o...onics+friendly"+generator&fp=baa94940edcea411

What "dirty" electricity looks like...
http://www.jkovach.net/projects/powerquality

As to how large of a generator you need, add up the watts (amps) of everything you need to have the generator power. You can convert amps to watts at the following link. Use single phase...
http://www.jobsite-generators.com/power_calculators.html

 

[Baldman]

I sent you a PM... wasn't too sure about posting links on here... it should help you

 

[rtrsam]

I can only speak from the experience of having lost my power for weeks at a time before. Items with a big current draw are gonna be the things that heat or cool: heating coils draw a lot of juice: electric heaters, electric water heater, electric dryer. Big motors also pull a lot of juice: Air conditioners come to mind especially.

If you can get along without those things, most likely a 8k generator will do you. Simply having lights that come on at the flip of a switch is huge. If you're on a well, you might check to se how much current your well pump requires. Also refrigerator and freezer, probably not a big deal over the short term but for multi day outages it's sure nice not to have to worry. Of course, at this time of year you might be able to just set stuff outside in a cooler to keep cold.

For reference, I have a 4.5 k generator that will easily do what I need, but I have gravity water and a gas water heater and stove. My elctric dryer does not work at all on the generator, nor my little floor heaters (they probably technically "would" work, but they pull down all the other stuff). Refrigerator and chest freezer and washing machine all work fine, as do all lights and electronics (I've been trusting my power strips to protect those things, none of which are real high end items).

My generator is over fifteen years old with a Briggs and Stratton engine, a real howler. I park it about a hundred feet from the house and feed through a chunk of 10-2 romex (underground feed) to power up both bus bars in my panel (through my dryer outelt).

For other reasons I had to have a "hard" disconnect switch plumbed into my elctric hook up from the pole. Once I'm certain I won't backfeed into the circuit and kill a lineman, I live a pretty normal life on about 5 gallons of gas a day.

 

[gwiley]

I have a 15Kw generator and have often wished it were smaller. We can't run the AC off it, but it does fine with a fridge, freezer, well pump, septic pump, lights, OWB pump and furnace air handlers.

I know that I could get away with something a lot smaller since we don't run the AC, the real kick in the jewels is that with a 2 cylinder 1 liter gas engine it burns 1 gal/hour minimum.

In the next few years I will be replacing the generator with a diesel, but I certainly will not go larger.

The one upside is that this thing can deliver enough current to run a good sized 230V welder when I am not running the house with it.

 

[Sparky8370]

The smallest suitable generator for just about any house would be a 5k. And that would be only using select circuits and no AC or heat other than an oil burner pushing FHW

 

[KsWoodsMan]

Maybe I'm a bit more fugal than most. 4500 watts would be about double what I'd need, until I go to weld.

During blackout's our 1000 watt camping generator returns 90% normality here. Lights, TV, computer, microwave, fridge, even the washing machine can be run from it with a little bit of budgeting. That 10% of normality lost is due to making sure we keep everything under budget.

Without a complaining woman in the house , our needs are quite simple.

YMMV

 

[MotorSeven]

WV, do you have a tractor? If so, look into a PTO generator. I have a 24KW(I know overkill, but it was cheap) & can hook it up in a matter of min on the 3pt hitch. I just didn't want another engine to maintain & my diesel tractor burns a little over a gallon an hr at 2K rpm.

RD

 

[Steve NW WI]

Here's my recommendation. Pretty biased admittedly, I have a bunch of friends that work there, and the company I work for does a lot of business with them.

Onan Generators

There's a lot of information on their site on sizing, transfer switches, etc as well.

 

[A. Stanton]

WV,
I ran my whole house on this Honda 5K generator for 2 and a half days one time due to a heavy wet snow that took down surrounding trees. Ran 220 volt water pump, furnance, and refrig fine. If I were to buy again, I would go a click bigger, say 6-8 K range. Also would like to use one that used LP. But those usually aren't portable. Also a note on Honda quality: this generator will be 23 years old this year. Only time I had it in the shop, was to have the valves adjusted.

 

[Mike Van]

And don't forget the double throw switch! They are pretty pricey too.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

This is the trade off for not having the mess in the house. When I bought my stove, the power was out and had been for a week. Next time the power goes out, I will not freeze. Won't have a hot shower, but at least I won't be cold again.

Ian

 

[brushbandit]

I have a whole house 11k LP generator. Runs the heat, well pump, septic pump, family room, my office, kitchen, microwave, garage door openers, master bedroom. It's great, power goes out, wait 10 seconds and the generator kicks in, automatic. Electronics have no problem, big screen TV works, wireless internet and computers still work. Won't run the AC, I think I read that you need to install a capacitor to power the start up for AC.

 

[Taxmantoo]

If you're talking about a NG fueled standby genny, your limiting factor is likely to be the number of circuits on the transfer switch. My dad's 7k is marginal in that respect, mainly because a couple of freezers had their own circuits, and we wanted lights in the basement where the furnace and transfer switch were, and so on and so on. I think it has six 110v circuits and one 220v circuit. The well pump is on the 220, then there's two freezers, the half of the kitchen that the refrigerator is plugged into, two circuits for bedrooms, and the bathrooms. I think we put the utility room light in the basement on the same circuit as a freezer to make it work. (the freezers run about 200W each, so they really don't need their own circuits)

Then there's the stability issue. The computer UPS beeps a lot when on generator power.