Dave, Thanks for bringing up the delayed restart. I'm sure there are lots of folks who wouldn't think of it.
My thoughts exactly on the combo welder generator. They are good for running tools when not welding but not what I would prefer or recommend for domestic electrical backup.
Dave, think HUGE flywheel on the 4 stroke. Decades back I had a three cylinder two stroke Suzuki so have an appreciation for rapid throttle response. With a cylinder firing every 120 degrees of crank rotation, you got pretty rapid response.
I can tell you are of the mindset into which your experience molded you, a case of every job looking like a nail to a man whose only tool is a hammer. As much as I appreciate diesels and think something like a 3-71 would make a sweet modestly sized diesel genset, the requirements (IMHO) for a domestic standby genset strongly recommend propane. Long storage with no fuel contamination or degradation. Relatively benign periodic short run exercising. Absolutely minimal maint.
Not every household has a professional standby generator tech who may revel in all the little issues of the care and feeding of the diesel genset in a repetitive short run scenario. It isn't that I can't handle the requirements of a diesel standby generator in this class of service, I just don't want to and luckily there are a number of propane alternatives, including gasoline conversions. A propane burning ICE, as you know, has very clean oil and little or no acidic contamination from short runs whereas diesels on the other hand really trash their oil in short run situations and you get accelerated difficulties with bearings and such.
If I were gearing up for a few long term outages, diesel would get much more of my interest but our typical situation is everything from blinks and sub minute outages through several minutes, a few hours or in extreme cases (so far in last 10 years) 3 days. While not so far away there are still folks in the dark or in shelters but we haven't had to suffer such long outages. Half of the closest town was out for a couple days and a friend a half mile away on a different utility was out for a day.
We are on a "main line" so when our power goes out it is a high pri to get it going as LOTS OF FOLKS are down. If you are unlucky to be near the end of the distribution chain and have a local disruption you are in for a long wait as the crews will put in their effort to get the main lines going first as they effect many more folks. A 2-3 family outage is not high pri compared to hundreds or thousands. The outages for which we need a genset are typically only a few hours at most and rarely a few days. A portable gasoline genset would git 'er done, I just want a bit more luxury for my wife and to cover the case where we aren't home when an outage happens as well as it makes things easier for me.
Heating the home during an outage isn't a big deal as we have 3 little gas log parlor stoves and a big gas log fireplace which do not require an external electrical supply as they all have piezoelectric ignition, with self generating safety pilots for thermostatic control. IF we are home, we will have heat. If we are away with the T'stats set down low rather than off to keep pipes from freezing, then automatic start and changeover would be a good thing. Not having to toss out the contents of the refrigerators and freezer would be a good thing too. If it were not for the hassle of the clean up I'd just ignore them as the generator to protect them and the frequency of the needed protection would make taking the chance without a genset would be a viable alternative. This ignores frozen pipes because I could leave some gas logs going with the t'stats turned down.
Of course if you are home, after survival and a modicum of comfort is assured then it doesn't take long before you want your LUXURY back so a genset is not so extravagant and unneeded as some think in our situation.
Oh about the delay. I'd be happy to let the genset delay for 5 min befoer kicking on or even longer if I am away from home.
Pat
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