Generators

[bjamison]

We had our power go down last Friday due to super high winds in my neck of the woods. Ours is finally back on after 4 days without.

I used a cheap-o Harbor Freight 800 watt generator to keep our refrigerator going, but that's about all it would take. On the plus side, a gallon-ish of fuel would last every bit of 9 hours. My brother has a Miller generator/welder he used and it consumed about 10 gallons in 12-ish hours. At that rate, and the price of gas, you could throw out a lot of frozen food.

But I digress...

Question is - do you have a favorite/recommended portable generator you would recommend for power outages?

What are your thoughts on Generac brand generators too? I've heard they are very good.

 

[dtanner]

I us a Honda 2000 for powering my 5th wheel trailer,It uses very little gas and has been used every summer for 6 years with just a few oil changes.I do want to buy on like Kraig has at his camp , I think his is a 3500 wat.

 

[wcompton]

Bill-
I have a Generac 4000, it's a little older model. Other than the 1.5 gallon tank, I love it. As a rule of thumb, about any gasoline generator works well if run regularly (bi-weekly, or at least monthly) If I were to do it over again, I'd probably get a propane generator out of a salvaged motorhome and either run it off propane tanks, or refit it for natural gas.

If you must stick with gasoline, I'd go with the Honda es6500. Where I work we build fire trucks, and for the fire industry this is pretty standard across all manufacturers. As long as it's run regularly it's rock solid.

under edit: IF one would go with a salvage generator out of an RV, be mindful that there may be two AC outputs, one for a refrigerator and one for everything else; i.e. a 6000w rated generator may have 2000w AND 4000w outputs. Some generator heads you can take apart and bond the two outputs, but not all of them.

 

[kmcconaughey]

At home I have a Generac 4000XL. I bought this back in the late 1990's our power at home had been going out on a regular basis. Shortly after that the power company did some overdue maintenance and now our power rarely goes out. Go figure... At our cabin we have a Yamaha EF4600DE. It has a ton of hours on it. We bought it in October of 1999. We have it set up with the remote start kit so we can start it without leaving the cabin. It has been very dependable. I wish the hour meter we had installed shortly after we got it had not quit working. Would be interesting to know how many hours are on it but it has to be well into the thousands. We did have to replace the carburetor a year or two ago. That is the only repair we have had to do. It gets regular oil changes. I should also mention that the Yamaha powers our well pump, a refrigerator, electric griddles, a coffee maker, a toaster, a microwave, a TV, a DVD player, a VCR, two ceiling fans, a blower in a gas stove, and plenty of lights. Granted they are not all on at the same time but quite often several of them can be on and the generator and/or inverter system don't miss a beat. It also charges a bank of batteries and we have a 3000 watt inverter/charger so when the batteries are fully charged we can shut the generator off and run all night. Kind of wish I had this setup at home too... I should mention that the well pump, being 220 volts is only operated when we have the generator running as the inverter only provides 110volts.

 

[kmcconaughey]

I know the topic was generators but thought I'd add the info on the batteries and the inverter that we have. The batteries are 6 volt, deep cycle, golf cart batteries wired in a series parallel set up to get 12 volts. The inverter is an older Prosine 3.0. Hmmm, looks like it's only available in a 24 volt model now. Here's the one we have: LINK

 

[dtanner]

Kraig , that is some nice set up you have there for the Camp. I did mis the wattage on your gen set buy a few lol. I still have plans to up day my 2000 Honda for the Yamaha 36000 with keyfob start for my fiver . I would love to find a propane model for my house .

 

[wshytle]

Since we're on generators here I'd like to see a pic of the one for cub cadets. I have a small generator out there and the techumseh engine will spin like crazy and the spark plug hasn't been removed. In other words it's toast and I've thought about mounting it to a mule drive like the Pincor (?) IH used.

I really like that battery bank and inverter set up Kraig. How do you charge the batteries? There's a guy on Youtube that shows how to add an alternator to a windmill for recharging car batteries.

I have a 6000 watt generator that I've used very little. I got it at a deal several years ago after the community here had a power outage and haven't had an outage since. I could have really used it after hurricane Fran in '96.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Wayne, the Prosine inverter is also a charger. When we drain the batteries down overnight they charge at 100amps for quite a while.

As the batteries charge the charge current gradually drops off to zero.

Remote start for the Yamaha generator.

Here are some links to posts on the Pincor generator:
Pincor 1

Pincor 2

Pincor 3

Here are some gen set photos for Cub Cadets.

 

[aschumacher]

A hundred (100) amps charge current ! ?? What do you have that outputs 100a @ 12V ?? Dont the batteries want to explode ??

 

[kmcconaughey]

Allen, the generator running through the Prosine inverter/charger can charge up to 120 amps at 12 volts we have it limited to 100 amps. If we had a larger class (amp hour) of battery we would up the charge current to the 120 amps. We did have a bit of a scare a couple years ago. The old knife switch disconnect on the - side had gotten a bit loose and tarnished and that increased the resistance and it got hot from pumping 100 amps of current through it.

We decided we didn't need the disconnect on the - side... Here's a before and after shot. Note, the photos were taken several years apart, actually about 8 years apart.

 

[jbaker]

The generator I have I bought at ALDIS for $200.00 it is only 120v/3800W but it works excellent for my application.
When power goes out I start it up and plug it in to a outlet on the side of the house. Then I flip a manual transfer switch that I put in and my vital outlets are now energized seperate from Com-Ed preventing feed back to the grid.

I made this real simple and my 14 year old daughter can handle the entire switch over.

my vital outlets are
sump pump (never runs)
furnace blower
boiler and pump
fridge and freezer
and a general use outlet for one of the following; tv,computor,table lamp, or maybe the blender for margaritas

 

[dtanner]

Well I have been thinking this K gen set would and should run , I did find the wiring PDF of the gen side and the 12 k should be easy.

I was told this would put out some power.Just so much to do,The house needs paint also.

It will all get done sometime (or not).

 

[wshytle]

Thanks for the pics Kraig. It seems your searches and postings are so much faster than mine. I thought it was a Pincor. It shouldn't be too hard to mount the little gen I have.

Don-

I have one of those old gens too. I'll try and get a pic sometime. It's out in the barn where it's been sitting for years. It's powered by an old 8hp Briggs with the down draft carb.

 

[wshytle]

The gen I was thinking of mounting on the front of a cub is a wash. I took it apart from the tecumseh crap it was attached to and found that mounting would be very difficult. I'd have to have a shaft machined as well and I don't want to chance all of that.

I pulled out my gen I use for emergencies and found I left the d%#n fuel on. We've been having some real bad weather in spurts so I felt the need to get it running. I cleaned the carb, hooked it to a battery and it fired up just fine. I then went (after shutting off the fuel) to put it back out of the weather and found a hole in the gas tank. This is the second plastic gas tank failure I've come across this week. The first tank was on a Lawnboy mower a guy gave me. I later learned it is a common occurence with this model mower...a 1975 10201 which is like the one IH used. I actually used the tank from the gen I disassembled and was able to bypass the failing tank. I had to make a bracket to mount the tank and it turned out rather well...looks almost factory.

 

[rmcshane]

I see that this thread is a bit dated, but I just got a project done related to the topic.

I took my 86 and side mounted a Homelite generator to it. Like Waynes situation, I had a Tecumseh engine mounted to the 1500 watt generator that was taking up space and would not run. I built a new shaft for the generator, added a pulley and made brackets for the side. Its powered from the flywheel pulley down by th clutch disc driver. It was a lot of work, but re-purposed a Cub Cadet and made something I can use in an emergency. Id upload pics, but this new computer won't let me size them down enough.

 

[jchamberlin]

Ryan, if a guy with your savy can't get the pictures down to the resolution of the Forum, then something is wrong with this picture (pun intended). I can't believe there isn't an option for VGA resolution of 480 H x 640 W which has always worked for me. I'm dying to see some pictures of your contraption, because I don't understand at this point why a new shaft is needed for a Tecumseh generator.
Plus, I like to see what I grew up calling "Yankee Ingenuity" in action.

 

[rmcshane]

Jeremiah- My old computer had a nice picture editing program installed on it. Worked great, only had to push about three buttons and it was ready for web pages. This new comp with Windows 8.1 has a program as well, and I tried it, but it would not bring the KB's down under 100. I'll keep playing around with it...

With the generator, what I started with would be similar to what Don T posted below. The generator was bolted to the crankshaft side of the engine. The reason for the new shaft is because this generator used the end of the engine crankshaft as the armature shaft (if that makes sense). Meaning one could not simply seperate the gen. from the engine and use it independently. So, I took a length measurement of the crankshaft and determined how much shaft I wanted to come out past the end of the gen to put a pulley on.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Ryan, you're welcome to email the photos to me. I'll resize and post them for you. My email is in my profile.

 

[rmcshane]

Kraig, I will email you them tonight if I can't get it figured out. Thank you very much

 

[kmcconaughey]

Ryan, no need to thank me. I have selfish motives, I want to see your generator setup.