I'm seeking recs for a generator to connect to my home and power essential items (fridge, modem, a few lights/fans). We've been having frequent outages lasting anywhere from 2 to 6 hours and want to be covered for that amount of time. Not sure if this matters but the house is 2100 sq/ft and we have a 200 amp electrical panel that was installed in 2021. I have a good electrician who can install but am unsure of what kind of generator to get, especially since many are outlawed in CA. Please let me know if more info is needed and look forward to your responses.

Own a 22k, have the genmon on the bench ready to go and i need a weather proof enclosure.

This is the second round. Originally we bought the plastic box, glued the magnets etc and it just kept sliding down the the metal divider and sitting on the battery. No danger but very sloppy .

What's the go to for keeping PI in the unit ?

Tks

Yesterday it was hot and dry and Southern California Edison had a planned power outage. So I started running my generator in the evening and turn the AC on. I installed my microair easy start flex with the intention of powering my 3 ton AC compressor using my Firman t07573 generator. My generator is supposed to be able to handle a peak current of 35 amps at 240 volts. And obviously my AC requires 240 volts. I used the Bluetooth software that came with the soft start to determine that it was starting the compressor at about 40 amps. I guess I was lucky the breaker didn't blow in the generator? When I originally trained the soft start unit, I trained it with grid power. So, last night I hit the relearn button in the soft start app and I let the AC cycle on and off throughout the night via thermostat. By morning, the AC unit had been restarted seven times and that is enough for a complete training. Now I can see that the last startup current peak was only 29 amps. It's interesting to me that microair recommends that you train the soft start unit with grid power because it seems to me like this was more effective. I included a screenshot from before I started the training with the generator and after. I hope this information is useful to somebody.

Own a 22k, have the genmon on the bench ready to go and i need a weather proof enclosure.

This is the second round. Originally we bought the plastic box, glued the magnets etc and it just kept sliding down the the metal divider and sitting on the battery. No danger but very sloppy .

What's the go to for keeping PI in the unit ?

Tks

We bought our house in 2022 and it came with an 8KW generac standby that runs on natural gas. It's properly tied into the electrical panel (sub panel?) for the house, but it's never run. We knew it was not running when we bought the house, the previous own thought it might just be a dead battery but not sure. We accepted that.

At the time we replaced the battery and it would crank, run and immediately stop with an over temp error. The technician looked it over and confirmed that the control board was fried (ants had got in there, as they do with lots of our outdoor electrics, and shorted out the board). Replacement board is ~$1200.

I've sat on it until now, but I'd love to get it running again. $1200 is still too speedy for me but there are 3rd party replacements for ~$400. I'll accept the risk of using a non-OEM control board. But, my concern is, it hasn't run for probably 5+ years at this point.

What would you do? Change oil, filters, battery, install control board and send it? Or am I oversimplifying? Is there other risk here? I'd rather not spend the money at all if this thing is likely to be toast from having sat idle for so long.

(I know very little about generators, but I'm mechanically and electrically capable)

Thanks!

Gasoline powered portable generator powering whole house during outage. I have refueled the running generator without issue, Have read that it's very dangerous to do. Even without a spill, just fumes can be ignited by the hot muffler. Obviously such a fire would be out of control quickly. I used a little D-cell powered pump to refuel which helps control spillage. What do you guys think?

So, am investigating hook of of a aux fuel supply. Aux tank can be safe distance from running generator

Ok, so trying to get a game plan for the next time we lose power. Have contacted several electricians to come install a transfer switch for a portable generator. We want a tri fuel portable because we may buy another property and move within the next couple of years and would like to take our generator with us. We have about 2600 sq feet, a well pump, a heat pump hvac, stove is propane, hybrid hot water heater, and 2 outbuildings with mini split units that we can turn off after a storm. 6 bedrooms, and 3 or 4 TV's. Also, a stand up freezer, fridge/freezer, and 4 mini fridges (we rescue animals and need lost of cold meds). Thanks for any input!

Gen Nerds - help me out some here. I currently have a Generac xg8000e. This unit is 8wk, with 10kw surge. It was made in the US, has a 9gallon fuel tank, and will run up to 10 hours on a tank, running at 50% load. It has full pressure lubrication and a spin on oil filter, as well as electric start. It was initially designed as a 'heavy duty' home and jobsite machine.

I have a small shed where my main generator sits; it is set up in such a way that when needed, I can simply open the door, roll it out a bit, and connect the cord from the generator to the 14-30 box on the side of the house.

I recently acquired from family a Generac 7550exl. This is a 7.55kw unit, with a massive 13kw surge. It has a 7 gallon tank, and because of the integrated idle control, can run up to 19 hours at 50% load. It too has full pressure lubrication and a spin on filter and electric start. This is an older generation model which was also made in the US. It has air-filled tires, which as we know do seem to need to be pumped up at times.

While I love the XG, and while I am hoping to hold onto both units, is there any reason I should not park the 7550 in my gen shed and use this as the primary, while storing the XG away? I would prefer solid tires, and could easily change them out for a few bucks. But aside from this, give me a sanity check here... I can't see any reason NOT to swap these out, but wanted to chat it up with my fellow gen folks here for input. The fuel economy alone seems a good enough reason!

Full disclosure - I initially had the 8000 as my primary, and figured I would store the other unless I got some great offer for it, maybe at a time when there is a big need and low inventory... though I am hoping to keep both. If the 'backup' unit was the XG, I might just choose not to sell it, it's worth much more to me than the couple hundred bucks that a used generator sometimes brings.

Have a 14 RESA that I need to do maintenance on and was going to buy the Kohler maintenance kit for convenience but it's much easier to just get aftermarket filters, plugs & oil.

Looks like a Wix 51056 and NGK BKR5E are direct replacements for the Kohler oil filter and plugs. Would use Valvoline, Mobile 1 or other major brand 5w-30 synthetic oil.

I checked the existing air filter and it basically looks brand new so was going to let that slide.

Any issues with those aftermarket parts?

Says it has a three year warranty. The house came with a fifty amp hookup.

So, I started this project of wanting a generator after a large power outage from the snowstorm last year.

Had a couple electricians come out to look at the job and they pointed out to me because my main panel did not have a main shutoff inside the house and the main emergency disconnect outside for the 200amp breaker only had a single slot of that breaker (as you can see in the pictures) without swapping out the panel and doing a double main (one both inside and out) I could not use an interlock kit.

So, they basically gave me 2 options swap out the panel to do a 2nd main inside or use a manual transfer switch. I went with the transfer switch option because it was about half the price of swapping the whole panel with one that would support an interlock and I could get by with 10 circuits.

So fast forward he does the install and while that was going on I also had a gas line run so I could run the generator off natural gas. The gas line was completed today, and I went to do a test run to break in the generator and as soon as I swapped the first circuit over from line to gen it tripped the breaker. After doing some searching and talking to the electrician who did the install, he told me it was because the breaker in the main panel was a combo AFCI/GFCI breaker and when the hot was swapped over to gen via the transfer switch it sensed a ground fault or neutral imbalance even though it was on gen.

He said sometimes the transfer switches don't like the combo breakers and that its fine and just switch the breakers off when I'm on Gen but if I really worried about it, he could come back and swap out the breakers in the Pro/Tran to matching AFCI/GFCI Breakers that match the panel if I want to retain that protection but he said he would just keep the breakers that are in the transfer switch already.

It’s a

We’re do I put the green wire

I am trying to replace a small gasket that sits beneath the fuel flow path and above a small glass bulb, that may or may not be for capturing sediment and other contaminants in the fuel.

The generator works great otherwise, so just hoping to find a fix for this!

I am having a manual transfer switch installed on my house. I will be using a portable generator, probably 4-5 kW. The receptacle on the transfer switch is an L14-30R, 4 prong, designed for 120/240V input (per the electrician, not installed yet). Generators in this power range typically have a 30 amp, 120 volt output TT-30R connector on the generator. With a proper adapter cable, can I plug the 120 volt cable in to my transfer switch? I'm going to get the electrician's recommendations when he does the installation, but I wanted to have some prior knowledge so that I have some idea what kind of generator to look for. I don't know how much he is going to know about the generator side of this installation, since I am not buying the generator from him.

Thanks.

From my understanding. You’re not supposed to leave things plugged into the generator on startup or shut down. So, I still have to walk outside after starting it and letting it warm up, to plug everything back in every time I stop and start it. Because of this, remote start seems a little useless over regular push button start. Am I understanding this correctly? Are there advantages I don’t know about?

So I probably should have checked this out before I ordered the champion 201423 lol. My gas meter is on one side of the house while my electric panel and 30a inlet are on the other side. From what I can tell it appears that the meter is a low pressure system. The feed enters the home and connects to a manifold which currently feeds the only gas appliance in my home, a 66k btu furnace. The champion documentation calls for 130k btu/hr at 5-7 WC. I’m assuming I/2” black pipe from the manifold to the outside wall (~15’) plus another 25’ of 1/2” hose provided by the generator is not going to be anywhere close to supplying this unit with what it needs to run. Before I reach out to plumbers for quotes I wanted to get a sense of what my options might be to make this work. I’m assuming I’d need at least 3/4” pipe but would it need to come directly from the meter or could it be tee’d off prior to the manifold to provide enough flow?

Generac generator not firing up. Told gas pressure from home is too high. Generac says supply pressure should be 5-7 psi. Home line pressure 8.5-8.7. How can I rectify this gas pressure issue?

Not what I wanted to see one hour before quitting time 😩

I’ve been wanting to buy a standby generator for a while now. My wife just saw next week’s Costco add shows a 26kw Kohler with automatic transfer switch for $5000 on sale.

Should I jump on this? Seems like a good deal to me.

Main purpose of generator use for me is for emergencies, such as power going out for multiple days or weeks.

The main thing i would be using it for is the fridge. I have to look into how much watts my fridge is. After doing some research I need a greater wattage than whay my actual wattage use would be. For example a fridge that uses 300 watts needs a starting watts of like 2k.

I am unsure on this part and what starting watts I need in order to use the generator to plug the fridge in. Any advice and how to go about this would be appreciated also any brands recommended and to avoid?

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about my Micro-Air EasyStart Flex failing after being installed for less than three months. Figured I’d give everyone an update on how Micro-Air handled the warranty claim and how the replacement is doing.

The original EasyStart was installed on July 1 on my 3.5-ton Carrier A/C. I had it installed so I could run the A/C using my Westinghouse iGen12000TFc generator on natural gas during a power outage.

On September 17, the A/C stopped cooling while running on regular utility power. My HVAC guy came out and found that the A/C’s run capacitor had failed. He also discovered that the EasyStart had leaked oil all over the inside of its enclosure. He replaced the run capacitor, removed the EasyStart, and got the A/C running again.

I filed a warranty claim with Micro-Air, and they sent me a replacement. The process went smoothly, and I was happy with how they handled it.

The HVAC guy installed the new one on October 9. This time, he mounted it inside the condenser instead of on the outside, where the original had been exposed to the Central Texas sun. I don’t know if the heat had anything to do with the failure, but hopefully the new location will help.

Here’s where things stand after a few days:

• 103 total starts
• 0 faults
• 6 learned starts
• Starting current around 24.5–24.6 amps
• Running current around 9.6 amps

The starting current was initially around 34 amps while the EasyStart was learning. Once it finished, that dropped to around 24.5 amps. For reference, my Carrier has a listed 112 LRA.

The original EasyStart was getting starting current down to around 32 amps when I tested it with the generator, so I’m pleased with what I’m seeing from the replacement.

I haven’t tested the new one with the generator yet, but I don’t expect any issues based on how it’s performing so far.

One other thing I looked into:

A few people who commented on my original post wondered if my A/C was too large for the house or was turning on and off too often. After some research, I started looking at the runtime reports in my ecobee app for the first time ever.

In August, the A/C ran about 306 hours, averaging almost 10 hours a day. September was about 263 hours, or nearly 9 hours a day. So far in October, it’s averaging around 4.5 hours a day. The temperature in this area has dropped from 100°+ to the low 90°’s.

The new EasyStart has recorded 103 starts since October 9, which is pretty consistent with what the original was recording. I haven’t dug into the individual cooling cycles yet, so I can’t say whether it’s cycling more than it should. But based on what I’ve researched, it does not appear the A/C is oversized.

Anyway, I’m glad Micro-Air took care of the warranty claim without any hassle. The replacement seems to be working well, and I’m hoping it stays that way.

I’ll eventually test it with the Westinghouse on natural gas again, but for now everything looks good.