What Standby Generator Do You Like

[Willie B]

It's not so much about the sheetmetal, rather the obsoleting the VR board, and then not telling you a new retrofit kit is available until you inquired
how many times ?

In our business, it's called a "supercedure" and the notice goes out on the old part "DO NOT USE, USE XXX INSTEAD".

I like the professional gensets, inline engines, robust electronics (minimal as well).

Not long ago I had a bad port relief valve in the boom lift circuit of a John Deere 410C backhoe. John Deere eliminated privately owned dealers a number of years back. To my knowledge there is now 1 dealer in a 200 mile radius. Boom lift port relief is a different part number from several others on the same machine. If I recall others are 3500 PSIG rated, this is 4500 rated.
John Deere says NLA. After exploring salvage yards, aftermarket sources, hydraulic shops, I was at a dead end. Called Nortrax for the fifth time. I asked to speak to the service manager. I asked him: "If your best customer needed this part would you refuse to help?"
He said: "No, we'd rebuild it, sell a new one, tighten the adjuster screw, or sell a rebuild kit."
He sold a rebuild kit $57.
My previous four calls were a dead end: "Sorry, No Longer Available."

Same tractor, the cast aluminum hydraulic filter can was cracked.
Dealer said NLA.
In time I found a salvage yard half way across the country would sell me a used one for $800.
I managed to weld the one I had.
It seems the bigger the company, the less they care about their customers.

 

[Willie B]

When we did the remodel, we went big:

View attachment 355551

2x 500 gallon propane:

View attachment 355552

Should have gone with a 1000 gallon buried tank, but I didn't know what I didn't know.

Here is a video of the beast:

Bigger than we needed, but it was what was available. Ruh, ruh, ruh

I'm always amazed how many people happily spend gobs of money on a standby generator. I've never had such a customer.
I think Generac has stopped the campaign, years they advertized you can have a fully automatic standby generator for less than $2000. Buying a generator is only part. I tell a potential customer it'll cost $6000.-$7000. 19 out of 20 excuse themselves, & walk away.

 

[Baxsie]

I'm always amazed how many people happily spend gobs of money on a standby generator. I've never had such a customer.
I think Generac has stopped the campaign, years they advertized you can have a fully automatic standby generator for less than $2000. Buying a generator is only part. I tell a potential customer it'll cost $6000.-$7000. 19 out of 20 excuse themselves, & walk away.

In the 30 years we have lived here we have had some doozers of power outages. Weeks in winter, weeks in summer, general flakiness any time the weather is unexpected.

For years we had (and still have) an air cooled 10KW unit, cable and manual transfer switch (enough for fridge, freezer, well, septic, propane furnace, etc). We share it with the house and the business. Always seems to be in the wrong place when it is needed.

This thing Just Works™ - rated at 7 seconds from power loss to full power.

When we did the remodel, we already had rerouting the power underground (trees took out the power lines) and moving the propane tanks closer to the road in the plan, so it was less of an incremental hassle to add the generator to the mix. Relative to the expansive remodel, it was a minor expense:



I must say that this generator is 100% effective -- in the ~3 years since we have installed it, there have been -ZERO- unscheduled power outages. Not only is our house protected, but the entire road of 25+ houses served by the line that goes by our house. So not only is it protecting our house, it is protecting the entire road

This must be some corollary to Murphy's Law: If you buy an automatic standby generator, the power reliability from your power company will automatically improve.

 

[pdeal]

I'm always amazed how many people happily spend gobs of money on a standby generator. I've never had such a customer.
I think Generac has stopped the campaign, years they advertized you can have a fully automatic standby generator for less than $2000. Buying a generator is only part. I tell a potential customer it'll cost $6000.-$7000. 19 out of 20 excuse themselves, & walk away.

Of the consumer type home generators i’ve seen i was totally unimpressed. They remind me of a john deere garden tractor from lowes. My old boss had one installed. 2 pole generator so it had to run at 3600 rpm. It sounded like it was about to blow up when new. By contrast my diesel generators run at 1800 rpm. Sounds almost like a fast idle.

 

[pdeal]

That is good to know about the light towers. I thought that they would be a good deal, but it sounds like they are not made for heavy use. I'd be glad to hear anyone's experience with using light towers as generators. I just got mine going this week. It seems to work good so far. Just using it to power some lights and heater ect.

Do you think the generators from Central Georgia Generator are good quality? I have seen them but don't know what brand they are or where they are made.

About the Central Georgia Generator (CGG) Heads...
I think they are Chinese which isn't a good thing to me. But, the guy that owns is first class and the support is very good. Also, the generator heads are brushless and come with a regulator. My experience with the one I bought was very good and the quality I think is good. I had to buy an SAE bell housing and flywheel too from him since my Miller welder didn't have an SAE mount. This was another part of what made the welder conversion project such a looser. But, I didn't seen anyone else really selling and supporting just generator heads as CGG does so I wouldn't hesitate to buy another.

I think most light plants do have SAE bell housing and flywheels. At least mine with the Magnetek pancake generator did.

 

[skyking1]

I cut the corner on backup with the solar panels and battery, but I can still put in a breaker and interlock for the Genset out in the panel by the meter. Super easy access for that.

 

[Willie B]

Of the consumer type home generators i’ve seen i was totally unimpressed. They remind me of a john deere garden tractor from lowes. My old boss had one installed. 2 pole generator so it had to run at 3600 rpm. It sounded like it was about to blow up when new. By contrast my diesel generators run at 1800 rpm. Sounds almost like a fast idle.

Preaching to the choir. I love the slow variety until I price one. No chance I'll ever own one.

 

[Willie B]

About the Central Georgia Generator (CGG) Heads...
I think they are Chinese which isn't a good thing to me. But, the guy that owns is first class and the support is very good. Also, the generator heads are brushless and come with a regulator. My experience with the one I bought was very good and the quality I think is good. I had to buy an SAE bell housing and flywheel too from him since my Miller welder didn't have an SAE mount. This was another part of what made the welder conversion project such a looser. But, I didn't seen anyone else really selling and supporting just generator heads as CGG does so I wouldn't hesitate to buy another.

I think most light plants do have SAE bell housing and flywheels. At least mine with the Magnetek pancake generator did.

I've only been involved on the outside with bigger, or even off grid generators. I believe you cross into diesel engines, and generators built to specific needs. In those they have to be somewhat standard. One I recall paired a John Deere engine to a German built dynamo. It could be configured to multiple voltage, & phase choices.

 

[pdeal]

Preaching to the choir. I love the slow variety until I price one. No chance I'll ever own one.

There are deals out there for used diesel generators. Some of the military surplus ones are pretty nice too.

 

[Birken Vogt]

I do generators for a living and my current home generator is a 3 cylinder 1800 RPM diesel. Was going to move it down the line eventually, but my supply of free used diesel never runs out so here it sits doing its duty year after year. Have been through a couple of weeklong outages and one fire with it.

 

[skyking1]

I fired it up and run the lamps every couple of months, long enough to get the oil warm. It has not operated in anger for a long while. Now I have grid power.

 

[Mr. Wrench]

I do generators for a living and my current home generator is a 3 cylinder 1800 RPM diesel. Was going to move it down the line eventually, but my supply of free used diesel never runs out so here it sits doing its duty year after year. Have been through a couple of weeklong outages and one fire with it.

What brand of engine and generator head is it? I would love to hear more about your experiences working on generators. They have always been fascinating to me. I have been using my light tower and it seems to be working good. Don't remember if I had all ready said but it has a Mitsubishi L3E engine and a Pancake generator head.

 

[materthegreater]

I do generators for a living and my current home generator is a 3 cylinder 1800 RPM diesel. Was going to move it down the line eventually, but my supply of free used diesel never runs out so here it sits doing its duty year after year. Have been through a couple of weeklong outages and one fire with it.

Used diesel, how does that work? Capture black smoke exhaust and add water to reconstitute?

 

[Willie B]

Used diesel, how does that work? Capture black smoke exhaust and add water to reconstitute?

VTel had central offices in each town. Used to have diesel generators. Typical building had a John Deere engine driven 50 KW generator & 2 275 gallon tanks. They found diesel does indeed go bad. They had a program to pump out the tanks annually, refill with fresh.

Now, I believe all have been switched to propane fueled.

 

[MarshallPowerGen]

Used diesel, how does that work? Capture black smoke exhaust and add water to reconstitute?

Hell the water in it is half the issue! We've had plenty of 'bad' diesel that gets pumped out and replaced, and plenty of good diesel pumped out from sending units sticking in place and tanks getting overfilled and going into alarm.

My old IDI pickup eats what it can and the rest gets hauled off for folks with oil burner home/shop heating.

 

[HarleyHappy]

Almost all large generators around here, try and run their generators weekly, if on a maintenance plan.
There are a few companies that specialize in pumping out and filtering large generator tanks and they end up with a lot of possibly contaminated diesel.
They put adds in CL and FB, trying to get rid of it.

 

[Willie B]

Almost all large generators around here, try and run their generators weekly, if on a maintenance plan.
There are a few companies that specialize in pumping out and filtering large generator tanks and they end up with a lot of possibly contaminated diesel.
They put adds in CL and FB, trying to get rid of it.

When fuel capacity is several weeks, outages are few & brief, diesel gets old. I would surely like to have the "old" diesel. Might be replaced at one year, won't be a problem for two more years.

 

[Birken Vogt]

What brand of engine and generator head is it? I would love to hear more about your experiences working on generators. They have always been fascinating to me. I have been using my light tower and it seems to be working good. Don't remember if I had all ready said but it has a Mitsubishi L3E engine and a Pancake generator head.

It is a Mitsubishi S3L2 engine and Mecc Alte AVR regulated head. SDMO generator. The governor has a problem, engine has plenty of power but gov will drop RPM bad when loaded above about 50%, but I have not cared because my house rarely draws over 5 kw anyway. If you advance the hand throttle it has plenty of power to run full load but the gov is just not strong enough.

 

[Birken Vogt]

I have a lot with medium and large diesels I take care of, I use a company that specializes in "polishing" fuel. First they run it through filters and have clear glass pipes, you can see water, dirt, welding rods, slag, nuts and bolts. Then they switch to fine filters to get the rest of the junk out of it. Almost every tank has a pretty unacceptable level of contamination on it.

 

[TomA]

What is your opinion on the 2 cylinder Onan generators used in motorhomes and campers. I have a couple. I believe they are 3000 watt units running at 1800 rpm. I would think they would be more long lasting than the screamers. Mine are 120v only. Couldn't they be stepped up to 240v with a transformer?