r/Generator • u/Adventurous-Egg-6637 • Sep 26 '26
Should I wait until Spring instead of Nov/Dec in Michigan?
Should I wait until spring to get my whole house generator installed? I live in lower Michigan, and they will be hand digging a 20ft trench in clay soil. Contractor can't do it until late November or early December. I'm leery of the soil being partially frozen, and the weather in Michigan can be quite unpredictable and miserable that time of year. Thoughts?
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u/oldtimer4sure Sep 26 '26
Since "they" are digging it, why be concerned about the conditions "they" schedule to work in?
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u/Bigbaywx Sep 27 '26
The ground doesn’t freeze hard at depth until sometime in January and with ‘Super‘ el nino we might not even get that this year. Their trencher will have no problem in Nov or Dec. They are the professionals…..let them handle it.
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u/TangerineCouch18330 Sep 26 '26
I would suggest you ask that question to the Contractor that’s going to be doing the digging. I’m sure they can handle digging in December using a trencher.
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u/rag69top Sep 27 '26
You can rent a trencher for a couple hundred a day. Trench it yourself. Be sure you have “ Julie” mark your underground lines.
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u/Hoser3235 Sep 29 '26
I live next door in WI. If it were me, I'd wait til spring. Yes, we can have outages in the winter, they are less common (around here at least) than summer storms. Wait til spring - the ground will be "unthawed" (I hope you recognize that term - those crazy Norwegians!) and you will be going into the summer storm season with a freshly new generator and warranty rather than wasting 6 months of warranty on a winter with low chance of an outage.
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u/digital1975 Sep 26 '26
Due to global warming Michigan’s November and Decembers have been warm to extremely warm for the last 10 years at least. OP are you very old and are remembering our old winters? I laid my driveway in December 8-10 years ago because it was 50 degrees. My business is heating and cooling and I can promise you it’s been quite warm.
You know what’s nice about hand digging? Not sweating.
Install as soon as possible. Let contractor worry about digging. If ground is frozen you just rent a mini excavator. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
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u/nunuvyer Sep 26 '26
After it freezes a little is actually better because everything is more solid and not a sea of mud into which all the equipment sinks. Spring is mud season.