Let’s talk generators...

Been meaning to get a generac for a year or so now. Was going to buy one before 2020 hurricane season but balked. Then after the crazy season I called about one and it was like a 4 month wait. No worries, I told myself, I will just buy one in March or April after every Texan has forgotten about worrying about hurricanes. Enter Monday...assuming the wait list is going to be even more insane now.

I have had a 5800 watt portable for about 12 years. It has gotten me through Ike, Harvey and now Ercot. It only lets my family stay in one room with either a window unit (Harvey and Ike) or with three space heaters (Ercot) which only bumped the temp to 62 (better than 48 in the house) but it was better than nothing. Yet somehow I still only have 3 5 gallon gas cans which only gives like 24 hours of power. Need to buy a few more Plus I’m sure my neighbors want to murder me due to the sound all night.

also my backyard fence line neighbor has a generac which was last serviced in September. It crapped out 10 minutes into the power outage on Monday. He was beyond pissed and rightfully so. It is a **** ton of money to get one and to have it not work...Andre above may have the right idea. The issue with a portable is the ability to have enough gas...Nat gas fed with electrician wired isn’t a bad idea at a fraction of the price

 

Mine is a Generac, it's loud af, but it ran very well when needed and I never lost power through this whole BS.

Imo if you even need it once a year, it's worth every penny. I mean, my neighbors were without power for days while my main complaint (before my pipes froze and ruptured) was that my generator was loud while warm in my bed.

 

another thought: where do you set/install/put your generator to keep it out of potential floodwater and such?

...and I use the hell out of my trucks, btw, thank you very much for asking.

 

That's partially true. If you have a home office and aren't using that space for anything else then you can write off the related portion, not the entire unit. For example, if your house is 1000 SF and your exclusive office space is 100 SF then you can write off 10% of the unit.

 

I've owned Generac stock, but never owned the equipment. At my next house, I'm definitely getting one installed. I don't foresee staying in my current house for another 5 years (but who knows), so I don't really think it's worth it here. By then, I'll probably look into solar, too.

 

$7500 installed.

 

The noise never bothered us even though it was right outside our bedroom. We could definitely hear it when it was on but that sweet, sweet AC always compensated for the low rumble.

 

Yeah that's absolutely a concern if your property is prone to flooding. I'm sure there's potential solutions that you could look into like building an elevated podium to put it on, but for sure I wouldn't want to spend the money buying one just to put it on the ground in that situation.

Fortunately where I'm at doesn't flood, it would take an event significantly worse than Harvey for that to happen and I'm hoping to never see a flood event significantly worse than Harvey.

 

Take this for what it's worth, but I was leaning towards getting a Generac and was pointed to Kohler by 2 separate electricians because of the reliability of the system.

 

You can always buy a cheap quiet 2K inverter that can run a few things during an outage but also be useful portable.

Turn off your mains, run the cord through the dryer vent and plug into the dryer outlet.

Keeps you on internet, all devices charged, refrige running etc.

 

I meant an inverter generator. It just means instead of 1800 or 3600 rpm constant to get 60Hz it can vary the rpm to meet load demands and use an inverter to make 60 Hz.

Because of that they are quiet and more fuel efficient. Also much more expensive.

 

move heard it both ways. The Kohlers tend to be more expensive and I’ve heard the liquid cooled models are better by Generac

 

A lot of good information in this thread.

After this whole ordeal, we're thinking of buying a generator too. A whole house generator for $10k-$15k that can run on my NG line seems ideal, but also hard to justify the investment for how rarely it would be used.

Does anyone have good experience using a smaller portable generator (7.5k watt or so) and have it hooked up to a manual transfer switch? I think a setup like that can be had for less than $1.5k. (Firman 7500w on gasoline, 5500 watts on NG for $800 at Costco and a Reliance Transfer Switch kit for $330) .

I think 5500w should be enough to run lights, furnace blower, a couple of window AC unit, refrigerator, and small electronics. Not enough for central AC though.

 

Mine was installed in July and it has 39 hours on it already.