Let’s talk generators...

Yes. We didn’t have a power outage for a whole year/year and a half so everything is fine forever now and people have wasted their money

lol

 

I think it depends on your situation. If yourself or your family need multiple 24/7 life sustaining electronic medical devices, then yes, it's important. Aside from a major storm or freeze, there are also random localized outages for various reasons.

 

It's a joke about how this thread won't die.

 

Are you exercising it weekly? After the battery in mine died 6 months or so after we moved in, I was told I should run it for 10 or so minutes weekly.

 

No, but there is a company that regularly checks it for us.

 

Even though ours is old, there is a way to push on the mechanical auto switch and every week at the day/time you do it, it will run for 12 minutes.

 

If you have a Generac, you can download an app called Mobile Link and add your generator to your app. There you can schedule weekly runs.

 

You pay someone to come out to your house and start your generator. In Florida?

 

No it would start automatically. There is a company that checks/services it periodically (same company that installed it - it was a pain in the ass until the city's inspectors said everything is ok). But there is also an app where I can check everything is ok. The generator is connected to the wifi. The app is called Mobile Link.

We basically "inherited" the generator as part of the house. It was part of the purchase that a new one would be installed. But it was annoying because due to city regulations, some changes had to be made to the way things were set up with the electricity which cost us another 20k.

 

Sorry, just saw this post after I responded to the other one. Yes, that's what we have.

 

Similar to us. We recently had some electrical work done which eventually involved the generator. By code, the electrician had to take it out of commission because the previous homeowner violated code when he installed it. It was too close to a couple of windows.

Fortunately (logistically) we found a place on the other side of the house.... around $5000 to move it.

 

Not when your Generac is 20 years old or so.

 

So after Austin's arborgeddon/treepocalypse, my wife wants us to get a generator. We can't get a built in generac as that's way overkill and we can't afford it.

With a gas furnace, dryer, and water heater, I think we can get by with a portable during the winter. But I'm curious about our central air. We have one unit for our house so I'm not sure how many watts it draws. I read you can get soft start adapters but I have more questions on that.

Also, interlock or starter kit? Main breaker is outside the garage, then subpanel in the garage. I'm fine turning unnecessary breakers off to stay under the generator's load.

 

With a portable generator, you're going to have to think about essentials fridge/freezer etc. Imo Unless you have a small central air system system (probably ~2.5 tons or less) you're going to probably want to consider a smaller AC window unit to use in its place. I haven't looked into this a lot yet but I know my single unit AC that's a 5 ton unit pulls too many amps.

With soft start adapter I guess technically you could do it, but you might be using most of your generator for just AC assuming you run it at 75% for a longer outage. This really depends how long you want/will need to run it.

This video details some of this

But it also details why I'd probably opt for focusing on smaller AC window unit to cool a room vs whole house central AC. I'm pretty sure your heating system unless you experienced a gas outage, your fan circulating the heat wouldn't take much, his calculations have that too.

 

I'd probably opt to install that soft start on the central AC instead of purchase a window/portable unit. Wondering how hard it is to install one, may need to hire somebody (HVAC or electrician?). I'm not at home to see my unit's electrical requirements but I'm pretty sure any generator >7000W startup will be fine. Might have to stay with gasoline in the summer for more power, but could probably get away with propane or natural gas in the winter since my main heating units are gas and they just need a little electricity for the pilot light or blower.

 

I had a soft start installed in 2021 and the HVAC company only charged $120 to put it in. I went with this one: https://www.microair.net/products/e...tart-motor-starter-for-115-and-230v-ac-motors

 

So I just looked at my unit and it's 4 ton 48k BTU. The LRA is 124, so if the soft start works well, it could reduce the startup to around 31A which would require at least a 7500W peak generator, if I did my math right. And that's pushing the generator to full load, which isn't great.

Question on the soft start: the AC will start up slower and take a little longer to start pushing cold air, correct? If so, is there a switch that allows you to turn on/off the soft start so it's only needed when running on a generator?

And is an inverter really that necessary? Will I end up frying my electronics with something that has a higher distortion? The inverter units max out only so much power.

 

With the soft start capacitor the fan will begin to spin for about 10 secs while it slowly powers the compressor. It can be removed but I don’t know of any that can be turned off by the push of a button.

I wanted the power of a regular portable generator but the THD of an inverter so I went with a Westinghouse wpro8500 which is 5%. There are a lot of options out there depending on what you wanna power in your home so an inverter or low THD generator may not be needed. Luckily like you my house has a good amount of gas appliances.

 

Two years ago I got my generator setup and, at the time, I wondered, “Is all this research, effort, and cost really worth it?”

… and, right now, I wish I could time machine back to two years ago and tell myself , “YEEESSSSS!!!!”

My setup ended up costing around $1,500 (the generator alone was $1k) and it was soooo worth it.