Home emergency generator

[Kaboomnash]

Anyone have a small gas powered generator for use in emergency at their home?
I am wondering if it would be worth it to have a small generator handy in case of a disaster. In Colorado it would mostly be losing power after a blizzard.
We have a gas fireplace in the basement and I would probably use the generator to power it to keep the house/occupants/waterlines warm in the snow storm.

What brand?
What size?
Approximate cost?
Pros/Cons?

Thanks, Lee

 

[zaphod]

i looked into this after the last bad winter i had (power loss-wise, not snow-wise and the ones that hooked into your naturalgas feed seemed the most clever. you decide which circuits to protect (depending on load and jenny size) and then the thing just sits until the power fails. it kicks in automatically after 30 seconds and supplies electricity, fueling itself from your natural gas feed.

by the by... are you sure that your nat gas fireplace works with noelectricity? some don't ...

 

[Kaboomnash]

by the by... are you sure that your nat gas fireplace works with no electricity? some don't)

I had not even heard of a natural gas powered generator.
We have never lost natural gas pressure in a bad storm, but we have lost electrical power. The generator would need to power the solenoid that opens the gas supply, the electric starter and the blower.

Lee

 

[MotorToad]

The natural gas-powered one sounds like a (pricey) winner. If you go with a portable, I'd say a Honda is worth the premium over the cheapies. Several friends use the smallest Hondas to power their gear at races, I've seen two sitting side by side and it was hard to tell which one was running! You can get generators a lot cheaper, but they get really annoying if they're not as smooth and quiet as the Hondas are.

 

[Beakman]

I don't reccomend anything less than 6000 constant watts for a household emergency generator. Some motors in appliances and wells can use as much as 3 times their wattage during startup and will cause a surge on small generators.
You should get a transfer switch to connect to your main breaker panel.
Cheaper generators will be loud and rattly, the expensive ones quiet. But a decent make cheapo, like "Northern" will be perfectly reliable in a pinch.
Example: We had a 5500 watt "Northern" with a briggs & stratton running for 2 weeks, 24/7 in tropical heat after hurricane Georges. The only time it went off was to change the oil every other day (~40 hours). Change the oil and it will live forever. Put Sta-Bil in the tank, turn off the fuel and run it until it stalls when you store it and it will start every time.

 

[kcl]

My late father-in-law and is wife (also since passed) bought in big time to the 'Y2K' end of civilization thing. Throughout '98 and '99 they would to travel to these Y2K 'shows' where 'experts' were selling all this survival stuff. They had things like 4-5 freezers, 5 years worth of dried food, 50 gallon plastic drums with water and gas in them, and (the point of all this) a really good gas generator.

Well, he passed away about 4 years ago, and I ended up with a couple of the freezers, two drums, and the generator. I've gotten rid of the freezers and drums since then, but have kept the generator. We're city folks, but we've lost power for more than an hour or so two or three times since them, once for about 24 hours. Since my wife is handicapped and needs lift chairs and such, I've been really happy to have that generator. We were one of only two houses in the neighborhood that had some power during the 24 hour outage.

Just my experience.

 

[VanDaRo]

I have a Honda 5500 watt genny. It'll power the whole house, including the furnace, in the winter. I have a 30 foot 6 gauge cable that goes from the genny to a 240v drop (4 prong dryer outlet) in the garage. This setup allows me to effectively "reverse power" the entire breaker box -- the loads don't care as AC is constantly shifting direction. The benefit is that everything in the house operates normally...with a couple of exceptions.

I just have to be sure to open the main breaker from the underground power and be really careful about which loads are switched on simultaneously. The furnace runs just fine, but I can't use more than one burner on the electric stove or the oven. The fridge runs fine and won't trip the genny, but the air conditioning will trip my machine every time. Lights, televisions, computers, HiFi, etc don't phaze the genny one iota.

I haven't had a power outage here since the summer of 2003 (knock on wood), but I used to loose power all the time at my old house (a country home). Many friends have borrowed mine when they have lost power for days or needed it for construction projects, so it still gets run from time to time. I highly recommend owning a genny if you live in a place where the winters are cold and a loss of power would make your home uninhabitable.

I'd say get a Honda at around 6000 watts for ~$1900 if you commonly keep a good stash of gasoline around the house (they'll guzzle around 10 gallons per 24 hrs when moderately loaded). If not, get one that'll run off of whatever fuel you use to heat your home.

~VDR

 

[amey01]

ahhh - generators

ahhh - generators!! They remind me of the stinking hot summer holidays!

At our little beach house at Shoal Bay, during the summer season (with the influx of holiday makers and increased use of air conditioning) the power used to always fail - every second day about mid-afternoon when everyone's air conditioning systems were kicking into overdrive.

Everyone had a generator and you'd walk down to the beach with the humming of generators out the front of everyone's houses! They've since fixed the power to the town, but those senses are burned in stone!

We've still got our generator up there, but it rarely gets used any more. The power supply at Shoal Bay is more reliable than Sydney city these days. It's a Honda and still starts first go!

 

[SteveInNC]

I have a Honda 5500 watt genny. It'll power the whole house, including the furnace, in the winter. I have a 30 foot 6 gauge cable that goes from the genny to a 240v drop (4 prong dryer outlet) in the garage. This setup allows me to effectively "reverse power" the entire breaker box -- the loads don't care as AC is constantly shifting direction.

FWIW, while it works, assuming that you remember to turn off the main breaker as stated, it is illegal (mainly because people forget to turn off the breaker, and backfeed power to the utility, which has the potential to injure or kill linemen working with downed power lines). Using either an automatic or manual transfer switch avoids this issue because it isolates the generator feed from the house supply.

Another general caveat, if you store a typical portable generator for more than about a year without running it under load, it can lose its ability to generate power. The motor will run, but no power comes out. This is a side-effect of how most of these are designed: they rely on residual magnetism in the alternator field coils to jump-start the generation circuit. If the unit sits long enough, this residual magnetism dissipates. You can fix this by "flashing" the coil, a process that should be covered in the owner's manual. You can avoid the issue altogether by cranking up the generator about every six months and using it to light a 60-watt bulb, or some similar load, for a minute or two. Whole-house automatic standby generators do the equivalent test run cycle once every 7/14 days (depends on brand).

Northern used to sell a Honda-powered Northern-brand generator that was tri-fuel (gasoline/propane/NG). Propane and NG are nice because they don't degrade while stored. Gasoline with Sta-bil in it is good for about a year, two if you double the amount of Sta-bil at initial treatment. Untreated gasoline degrades after about three months.

"i" series Hondas are very quiet because they use an inverter to generate power and actually throttle the engine back under small loads, increasing efficiency. They are also expen$ive for equivalent capacity.

 

[VanDaRo]

I honestly never considered the legality of this.

Good point.

~VDR