Whole Home Generators

[msj]

I’m all electric so if the power goes out, I’m SOL. After an ice storm in March '91 that had my power out for almost 3 days and some people for almost 2 full weeks, I bought a portable generator. Kept it going for years but finally decided after the pictures of those people in N Jersey after Hurricane Sandy not being able to get gas for their generators I decided the expense of a whole house generator was worth it to me. That, plus I really didn’t want to have to get up and keep filling it with gas IF I was able to get gas.

I’ve got a 20KW Generec that does my entire home and barn. I’ve got an electric furnace and a heat pump and initially the guys didn’t think it would run the entire house and barn AND the heat pump and furnace. I figured IF we did have a serious power outage in the winter, I could get by with multiple small portable electric heaters, enough to keep the pipes from freezing and the house at about 55 F. Well, when they installed it in January, they did test it against the electric furnace and heat pump and it worked just fine. Needless to say, I was very happy.

It runs once/wk for about a 15 minute time period and they told me it uses about a gallon of propane/month to do that.

I did buy a 500 gallon propane tank and had it buried. While they did recommend only one or two 100 gallon tanks, I did the math and figured if we didn’t have any significant power outages, there would be enough propane to last me 12 yrs and propane doesn’t go bad. If we did have an outage there would be enough propane to get me through for about a wk and by then the propane tanker should be able to get here. Also, if I ever decided to put in a propane gas fireplace, there would be plenty of propane without worrying about running out.

I did this in 2013 and so far we’ve had one 2-3 hr outage within 1 wk of installation and a 10 hr power outage in the spring. It was warm enough that I didn’t need the heat on and cool enough I didn’t need the air conditioning either so was able to leave the windows open. It certainly was nice though to not have to water the horses and clean stalls by flashlights! :yes: :yes:

I think the entire cost ran about $12K but the peace of mind is certainly worth it. I was 45 in 1991 when the ice storm came through and going over to my neighbor’s pond to get water for the horses and to flush the toilets for 3 days was a PITA to say the least. Not to mention carefully draining water from the hot water heater just to brush my teeth and do a sponge bath! :eek: Now I’m 69 and, while there aren’t any horses, I’m sure glad I don’t have to lug water to flush toilets. :yes:

It’s not cheap to have it serviced annually (~$100+) but if you can afford it, you cannot beat the peace of mind feeling you have knowing you will always have heat, air conditioning, water and light.

[McGurk]

We have a large, portable, gas fired generator that we have to go through the process of starting, connecting to the house, and selecting things in the breaker box to run.

It has been a life saver as we lose power frequently, but it is a lot more work and inconvenience that the whole house propane one.

There’s a couple of serious disadvantages - one, as someone already mentioned, during a long outage, you may have trouble buying fuel. two, you have to stop it and add fuel about every 8 hours. Three, you have to be comfortable with the whole process of fueling, starting and connecting, most likely by flashlight. Four, and this is a big one - risk of fire! Neighbor of ours burned their house down during an outage: generator was under the deck, generator backfired and caught the leaf litter under the deck on fire, they had left the gas can next to the generator and it ignited and blew up.

If I win the lottery or something happens to DH, a whole house automatic propane generator is one of the first things I would do.

[bathsheba8542]

We have a large, portable gas generator as well. Looked at a backup system, but since we have a few wells around the house, no gas for a mile, and other kinks in the plan, we did not move forward with a whole house generator. The costs for installation of the tanks and generator was around $25k. YIKES. Instead, we went for solar, which allows us to greatly reduce our electric bill each month (August went from a usual of $425 to $22) and get payments for the electricity we don’t use (same period we got a check for $125!). BUT, you have to have a battery back up system to make it useful when the grid goes down. We are having that installed soon.

At the end of the day, we are really using clean energy, and the system will pay for itself in under 5 years, even with the back up batteries. It just made sense as there were no federal/state tax incentives for house generators.

My 2 cents…

[DHCarrotfeeder]

[QUOTE=McGurk;7787856]
Neighbor of ours burned their house down during an outage: generator was under the deck, generator backfired and caught the leaf litter under the deck on fire, they had left the gas can next to the generator and it ignited and blew up.[/QUOTE]

Wow. No offense meant to your neighbors, but that was a risky situation they put themselves into.

If you take care of horses you should by now have some semblance of common sense for handling fuel and running small engines. I should hope that we can agree this means you have to take reasonable safety precautions, rather than assume the risk.

David