Home generators

Emil · « **on:** 23 Aug 2021, 12:38 pm »

Good morning
Sweated thru hurricane Henri here on Long island. Fortunately not as bad as predicted.
Our local electric company warned that power outages could have last up to 2 weeks if it made landfall.

Time to get serious on a home generator. Gas powered. Enough to power fridge and HVAC system

Any words of advice would be appreciated

mikeeastman · « **Reply #1 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 01:12 pm »

Based on my 25 year in the solar business ,what ever you do stay away from Generac or the new Koler standby gens, they are total crap.

TomS · « **Reply #2 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 01:29 pm »

Quote from: mikeeastman on 23 Aug 2021, 01:12 pm

Based on my 25 year in the solar business ,what ever you do stay away from Generac or the new Koler standby gens, they are total crap.

I do get that and have heard the same, so your recommendation would be? Approximately 17-22kw, propane on an auto transfer switch

Emil · « **Reply #3 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 01:32 pm »

Thanks Mike
So what brands would you recommend?

Reading my Condo regulations, I'm only allowed natural gas powered generators

NIGHTFALL1970 · « **Reply #4 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 03:33 pm »

I and my family and friends have all had good luck with Generac.

bnut311 · « **Reply #5 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 03:49 pm »

I would give Sean at O'Neill Outdoor Power Equipment a call.
He's a Briggs and Stratton Platinum dealer located in Riverhead.
The new 20kw units have a 6 year warranty.

JLM · « **Reply #6 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 05:16 pm »

By the time you power central air on natural gas you might as well get an automatic whole house generator. Installation cost $4000, and up to 24 kW all run around another $4000. Over 25 kW they go water cooled and jump up in price but are better built and run slower. I went with a 22 kW air cooled propane powered Generac about 6 years ago (after a 6 day winter outage, in Michigan). The 5 kW gasoline manual start generator died after that experience (ran it 1.5 hours x 3 times a day). The Generac does a weekly 6 minute test run at idle (can barely hear it from inside the tight/well built house and has run 3 times under load, the longest being 13 hours. No problems, but do have an electrician do preventive maintenance whenever the service light comes on (roughly annually). It's all about peace of mind and safety if any of your loved ones need power 24/7.

Craig B · « **Reply #7 on:** 23 Aug 2021, 06:45 pm »

My brother and his family, and my wife's sister and her family both use Generacs and have had no issues with them. I worked for several years for the guy who built our house, and when his customers wanted generators, they were always Generac, too, and I never heard of any of them having problems either.

Throughout the 16 years we've been in our house, the power has had a tendency to fail at the drop of a hat, so we finally bought one for ourselves earlier this spring and are waiting on it now. It didn't ship until July, and the dealer's installation crew was backed up until October.