Whole house generators (slightly OT)

The Hawaii home is where I need the big generator

Ah, pardon the confusion. For that Hawaiian *hotel* perhaps you really do need a big genset. Whatever you do, be sure to use auto-start, auto-transfer. Otherwise, if you're on the mainland and a problem happens your freezers will thaw -- not so good.

The big sets are mostly enclosed in very quiet housings so it may not be necessary to build a home for it. If you decide to make it part of the house, be sure to implement a negative pressure exhaust for the compartment. It is also essential that the muffler be located far from any possible return air leaks. I built a 22-foot chimney around the muffler of my Winco because (1) the thing was really loud and (2) I wanted to be certain the fumes couldn't drift back into the house. CO is nasty stuff. I also installed Macurco CO detectors in each room abutting the area where the genset was.

every bit of it) now although I wouldn't need to run all the

Ubetcha.

He is. Both places. (That is if you mean HI instead of HA.) You could fit perhaps as many as 3 or 4 copies of my little house into any one of his 3 (or is it 4) houses!

:-)

-- Bobby G.

Oh, no. Only the 2 in HI & TX. I'm building a spec house which is 99% complete and listed for sale but that's a business venture - not my home. The thought of managing yet another home is frightening.

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:37:42 -0400, "Robert L Bass" wrote (with possible editing):

So do I - 24 rooms and over 8800 sf. I guess it depends upon how many folks live there fulltime.

You might consider having some 15amp exterior outlets wired up to generator power (one outlet per neighbor, each with its own breaker). With an extension cord, the neighbor then has the ability to run fridge, or lights, tv... but the limited power available means they have to budget and won't break YOUR budget. Oh, and if you do this, one tip is to have a 15amp breaker outside near the outlet, and a 20amp breaker inside. That way when (not if) the neighbor trips the breaker, it will trip outside where they can reset it. But you are still protected and can control the power from inside.

In my case, my close neighbor is 150ft and the one on the other side is about 300ft. I have a few 100ft, 12ga extension cords that I can loan. (Of course, if copper keeps going up so much faster than my income...)

sdb

bit of it) now although I wouldn't need to run all the

I dunno... 200amp is 38kw sustained. And don't forget the utility is very low impedance compared to small (yes, 40kw is small) generators.

The big concern is the AC units... Those usually need a hefty surge to start, and the genset needs to be considerably oversized to do it. The next big concern is a well pump, and then finally we get to large freezer and refrigerator units. Everything else is usually pretty reasonable unless an electric furnace is involved. Even an electric range/oven is no biggie when you have already allocated for a multi-ton AC. (On a hot summer day my 2.5 ton heat pump pulls around 100amps to start, with a new starting capacitor. The oven's only 35amp cycling.)

sdb

I lost count at two. (-: Has the real estate downturn that's plaguing CA had any effect on HI? I had some friends who were spec'ing houses during the *last* downturn and it wasn't a pretty sight.

-- Bobby G.

Bruce,

Angela shipped the device. Shipping was less than $20. I don't want anything. If you want to do something in return, consider the American Cancer Society.

My first generator was a small, portable unit. It was *loud*!!! It also had to be fed gasoline about once every 90 minutes. The first time a storm knocked out power I set it up in my driveway and ran extension cords in for the fridge and a few lights. This was at my first home -- a tiny place with the neighbors' home about 30 feet away.

That night when I went out about 11:00 pm to refill the tank the neighbor, an unpleasant older woman with a bad temper through open her window and started screaming at me that she was going to call the police about the racket. Of course, since it was a declared state of emergency at the time, the police were less than sympathetic to her complaint. They did stop by to let us know she was upset (as though I didn't already know this) but they said that we had the right to run the generator.

The next morning I spooled out a heavy, outdoor extension cord, plugged it, dragged the business end to her front door and knocked. She opened the door, took one look at that cord and said, "What did you do? It got so much quieter." It was another three days before the power was restored. She ran her fridge, a lamp and a small TV so "George" could watch his football games. After that they never gave us any trouble.

When I installed the 8 kW genset in our next home the first thing I did was install outside outlets for my two abutting neighbors. Both were powered from a dedicated 30 Amp breaker. Every time we had a major outage I ran cords to both neighbors. The one behind loved us. The one on the left side (we had a corner lot) put up a fence and acted like we were invaders except when she needed power. Go figure.

That's a lot of house. Mine is only 3800 sf under air. It seemed large enough when we moved in. But in a few weeks we'll have five house guests in from Brazil for a 3-month visit and the place is looking kind of small, particularly since my parents plan to come down to visit for a few weeks in the middle of all that.

I'm putting off getting a generator at least until next year. We just redid the lanai and the pool and now I've got to replace 6ksf of tile roofing. The lanai was expected. The roof job was not. (ugh)

Getting even farther off topic, when you redo the tile roof, consider using the special expansion foam adhesive to apply as opposed to nails or clips. It's less expensive and a full paddy of adhesive gives you Cat

Robert L Bass wrote:

Great. I was unaware that this even existed. I'll bring it up with the contractors and ask for them to include it in their bids.

Unfortunately, my home was built before the "Andrew" construction codes came into play in Florida. Twelve foot high sliding glass walls make up one or more sides of almost every room in the house. As a result, the house is quite vulnerable to winds in excess of category two. If we ever got hit with a Charley, much less a Katrina class storm, damage would be extensve.

As soon as we can afford it I plan to upgrade all of the sliders and windows with hurricane proof replacements. I don't want shutters for two reasons. First, they would ruin the appearance of the home. Second, we are sometimes out of the country for months at a time. If a storm came up while we were away the shutters might never be deployed. Motorized shutters with remote control are an option but they look awful even when they're stowed.

Thanks, Bruce. I contacted them.

When I was using generators to power scientific labs in the field, I quickly gave up on carbureted generators (gasoline, NG, LPG) because they were too slow to respond to load changes caused by air conditioners and pumps. When a heavy load kicked in, the UPS's powering the electronics would cycle. Eventually the batteries in the UPS's would become discharged and the lab electronics would recycle or worse.

This was in the 1980's and NG/LPG/gasoline generators may have improved, but ABIK, the physics still favor fuel injection.

Diesel, which is always 'fuel-injected', is fast to recover from a load because at 1800 rpm on a 4-cycle engine, there are 450/60= 75 injections/sec (i.e., opportunities for load adjustment) so with electronic fuel injection, the amount of fuel injected can in theory be adjusted for every AC cycle. This in turn reduces the nominal KW rating of the genset that you actually need to buy compared to NG/LPG/gasoline.

(Thar's steady-state KW's and then thar's *real* KW's ... ) Big flywheels help a lot, but I found no useful comparative specs on _dynamic_ performance. Hopefully this has changed for the better.

Since you are planning to allocate space for backup LP cylinder(s), you would may not lose space with diesel compared to the NG+LNG approach, esp. considering that the energy density of diesel is about 50% higher than that of LPG, so combined with the requirement for cylindrical (not rectangular) LP tanks, you can store twice as much energy in the same volume/area with diesel than with LPG. IME, with good housekeeping diesel fuel isn't unacceptably smelly.

... Marc Marc_F_Hult