Standby generator - recommend source?

[BlueRidge]

<font color="blue"> Blue, How often and how long does your area suffer outages in general? </font color>

Wow! Long time no post! [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Anyway, to answer the question, "I don't know."

Will that get me on the news tonight? [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

We've only been here since July, and have had one so far. Lasted about 3 hours. Neighbors tell us to expect several during the winter, and also during hurricane season (we get spin-off storms), and they may last for a few days, worst case. 5 days once, IIRC.

Excellent info on diesel vs. gas, Pat. Makes sense. I'm hankering for a low RPM diesel, but that may not be my best choice.

It's CERTAINLY not my budget!

[Pat]

Blue, Your usage expectations certainly won't justify the extra expense of buying a diesel even if there was no maint involved and diesel fuel were free.

Depending on how handy and resourceful you are or want to be you might look at the surplus outlets available over the net. Another possibility, especially since they offer low cost free replacement warranties is HARBOR FREIGHT. They have been selling a 10KW (peak capability but less average power) generator head with control panel for some time now. It is set up for belt drive and requires 20 HP. Would be real easy to run it off of a PTO like if you had a small D I E S E L tractor or other power source.

It looks to me like it could be mated up shaft to shaft and not use a belt. The couplers for that might cost as much or a little more than a belt system but less chance of failure and it reduces or elliminates side loads on bearings/shafts. You'd have to get an engine that rotates in the correct direction as I don't know that the genny head can be reversed.

A clever person could probably go to a decent salvage yard and find an appropriate economical engine, perhaps with manual tranny to permit easy matching of HP and torque curves to the RPM requirements of the genny. Who knows maybe a riding lawnmower engine or... There are conversion kits for converting gasoline engines to LPG. The genny in my RV was built for gasoline but was converted when new and unused to LPG for installation in my rig.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]