HF Generator

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by greywynd

Don’t expect to power the whole house with that unit. A fridge, freezer, and a few lights will take care of close to 3000 watts.

You may have to do some figuring, and ‘rotate’ thru the heaters as necessary to heat the portions of the house you need to keep warm.

Since we ended up getting a 3000W honda inverter, for the rv trailer, current plan if needed would be to simply run cords to the essential stuff in the house. I’ll add a plug/receptacle sometime in the near future to the furnace so that it can also have a turn on the genny if needed.


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We will be rotating as you mentioned. Probably only need 3-4 heaters at any one time. We have 4 freezers in a unheated garage as well. They will be unplugged during any outage, like the wood shop 5 kw heater.

Seems to me that the generator breakers would trip if there was too much load, but they did not trip.

[Shade Tree Welder]

Originally Posted by Norm W

If you have a 100 amp service, you still have more power than the generator will produce. If you are lucky you get 90 amps. More than likely you have a 200 amp service. It is time to figure what you can do without, to lighten the load.

Residential services are 230V not 115V, so your math is off a bit.

[Shade Tree Welder]

Originally Posted by milomilo

The generator is got at HF last year has issues. It is a 9000 watt unit, predator engine. Not a inverter generator.

After hooking it all up to the house and testing it everything was good. Powered the whole house for an hour. Ran it again last month without hooking to the house.

Had a 1 hour power outage last Wednesday. Have a written checklist to follow for startup and shutdown.

When throwing the safety switch it briefly put out full power then after 10 minutes the engine kicked way down on RPM and was shaking, the lights were flickering instead of full bright. Turned off the safety switch and the engine returned to full RPM. Turned on the safety switch and it was back to low engine RPM and flickering lights. Did this twice. same results. Waited 10 minutes and did it again and left the unit running for 3 minutes with flickering lights and then it went up to full rpm and lights were not flickering. 15 minutes later back to low engine rpm and flickering lights.

I am going to run it again tomorrow and check voltage out put with my meter with no load, then hook it to the house with a load and check voltage again with the flickering lights.

Before someone asks the warranty was for 90 days and that expired a few months back. My check list says turn off power at the incoming pole 1st, then connect the generator to the house. Shut down is reversed.

I will report back with the results of the tests.

9kW peak watts, that is for when an electric motor starts.

Since you have a lot of resistive loads you have to use the 7250 continuous watts for your actual calculations.

My genset is 12kW peak, 10kW continuous.

[Norcal]

Originally Posted by Shade Tree Welder

Residential services are 230V not 115V, so your math is off a bit.

115V & 230V were used in NEC calculations back in the '70's, 120V & 240V are used now, as they are the standard nominal voltages today.

[Tim KS]

It's a learning experience to run a lower output genset when the power is out.

I can keep the house comfy & functional during power outage with my 5500w genset by being selective with what runs & when. I back feed the entire 200amp box through a 50 amp breaker......that will run the furnace (propane), the water pump (240), all the lights necessary (mostly LED's), freezer & two fridges, and our Traeger grill (120v). There's is NO use of oven or cook stove, whole house A/C unit, but I do have a 6000 btu A/C unit (120v) in an upstairs bedroom that will cool us off if needed.

The water pump is the only thing that makes the genset 'bark' a little when everything else is on, but seldom does everything run at the same time.

All you do is decide the difference between 'wants' & 'needs'.

[milomilo]

The test turned out well. Genny ran smooth all the time, as we turned on the power. Had all the essential heaters on and a couple lights. All we need during an outage. Turns out no issue with the genney, just my stupidity for not turning off the 5kw heater in the wood shop.

[Shade Tree Welder]

Originally Posted by Norcal

115V & 230V were used in NEC calculations back in the '70's, 120V & 240V are used now, as they are the standard nominal voltages today.

'Nominal' is the key operative word.

Depends on how far you are from the last transformer.

Here on the farm I am very consistently at 245V. I also have some friends
that average 215-220V. Youse get what youse get.

[Shade Tree Welder]

Originally Posted by milomilo

The test turned out well. Genny ran smooth all the time, as we turned on the power. Had all the essential heaters on and a couple lights. All we need during an outage. Turns out no issue with the genney, just my stupidity for not turning off the 5kw heater in the wood shop.

Good to hear.

[BukitCase]

"just my stupidity for not turning off the 5kw heater in the wood shop"

Join the club chris; I have a honda powered 7200 watt (continuous) genny from Costco, first time I went to use it I cut the main 200A breaker, flipped off everything I didn't need in the power panel, fired up the genny, plugged my suicide cord into the genny (backfeed thru one of the welding outlets), and the breaker in the genny IMMEDIATELY popped

The REVISED procedure I keep with the genny now includes the line
"Unplug the (80 gallon 5 horse Baldor motor) air compressor, dumb-ass" ... Steve

[Samcord]

My lights blink when the well pump starts. To fix this I have a 100 gal pressure tank. I’m going to plumb it in after the softener and filter, and keep it full for when the power goes out.

That should also let me run the house on a smaller generator that uses less fuel.

Now, where did I see that round tuit?