OT- small propane generator for home backup?

Recent freak wind burst here in Rochester knocked out power to a bunch of homes. We were ok, but everyone across the street was blacked out, for at least 5 days.

I'd like to get a small backup generator with enuf capacity to run the gas furnace electrics, refrigerator, and internet/tv. Can live without everything else. It should be affordable, reliable, safe, easy to use, and quiet. I'm thinking propane - easy to store, relatively clean, and won't degrade. Or could be natural gas, if it be installed in the basement safely.

Any suggestions?

I understand your preference for propane or natural gas, but that will limit your choices especially in the small generator arena. I am thinking a 2 or 3 KW unit is what you have in mind/need. All I can tell you is i bought a gas Honda 2KW EU2000 generator for just the sort of thing you have in mind. The things that influenced me were that it is portable (can be kept outside the house for safe storage), puts out a true sine wave power curve opposed to the chopped up wave form that the great majority of portable generators produce (your computer and increasingly computer-controlled appliances like sine waves and may not do well with chopped wave forms) and it starts with a single not very vigorous pull on the cord. That means my wife can start too. Finally it is very quiet running.

Care must be used in attaching it to the items you want to run. Don't turn your emergency power setup into an emergency worker killer! It is tempting to just plug it into existing wiring and throw the mains. Not recommended or legal where I live.

Denis

richard newman said:

Recent freak wind burst here in Rochester knocked out power to a bunch of homes. We were ok, but everyone across the street was blacked out, for at least 5 days.

I'd like to get a small backup generator with enuf capacity to run the gas furnace electrics, refrigerator, and internet/tv. Can live without everything else. It should be affordable, reliable, safe, easy to use, and quiet. I'm thinking propane - easy to store, relatively clean, and won't degrade. Or could be natural gas, if it be installed in the basement safely.

Any suggestions?

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Huge no-no unless you have it in a room especially build for this purpose. Fire proof lining, forced outside ventilation particularly with propane. Propane is heavier than air and will accumulate on the floor. Spark, Good By! Same with storing gasoline in the house. Then there is CO.

You will need more like 7-10 KW. We have 4.2 kw which will not handle the starting current of the well pump. If you want to do it properly, The unit wants to be outside, the unit will be either natural gas or diesel with CODE transfer switches. Propane has a problem in cold weather, it won't vaporize or stay vaporized without heat, ala a band heater.

Tom

Generac, Kohler, and others make small backup generators powered by propane or natural gas. Although I have seen them in a separate basement room (multi-million dollar home) they generally sit outside on a pad and have the electrical and gas connections brought in through a basement wall. The units I am talking about are mounted in noise insulated weather resistant enclosures and are designed to auto-start in the event of grid failure and usually connect to automatic switching transfer switches. The units usually auto-start on a weekly basis to ensure they will be ready when needed.

If you saw one of the smaller units you could easily mistake it for a central A/C unit.

When we looked into it after a prolonged outage a few years ago a minimum of 10kw was recommended. The installation costs usually outweigh the purchase cost so buying too small is a waste of money.

richard newman said:

Recent freak wind burst here in Rochester knocked out power to a bunch of homes. We were ok, but everyone across the street was blacked out, for at least 5 days.

I'd like to get a small backup generator with enuf capacity to run the gas furnace electrics, refrigerator, and internet/tv. Can live without everything else. It should be affordable, reliable, safe, easy to use, and quiet. I'm thinking propane - easy to store, relatively clean, and won't degrade. Or could be natural gas, if it be installed in the basement safely.

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

As you HAVE natural gas, forget Propane. Sort out where to place a pad & doghouse, outdoors, have a line run to code, 'coz indoors is a no-go.

If you really CAN 'do without' all but heating system controls, fan, and fridge/freezer, a 1.5 kW 'may' be too small to start your air-handler. You'd not need over 2.5- 3.0 kW though. I'd sort that with a fairly austere battery bank, inverter, solar panels added to the mix. I prefer the gen set shut-down, midnight, latest rather than running whilst I sleep, but then, too - the fridge/freezers are not being opened, cooking is done with, most lights are off, and a well-insulated home can live midnight 'til dawn on no heat input reasonably well for the price of a duvet or three.

Any 'serious' size natural gas powered gen set could need all-new very-much UPsized lines clear back to the street. Costs aside, that may not be on the gas company's option menu anyway.

Disclosure: Nat gas at the kerb, grew up with it, our own wells, even.
Don't want it in my house. Have Diesel.

for around $100 you can buy a propane conversion kit for most gas powered generator engines. Probably save a lot of money if you can buy a used gas powered generator and convert it to ng/propane. For home use stationary generator sets will have very low run time on the engine. Smaller portable units may have been used for camping/hunting trips and the engine can be worn out.
On the used market I would expect the bigger units to be less costly then the smaller portable units. Kind of like smaller machine tools ,that two big men can carry into a basement, cost more then a full size industrial unit.
Bill D.

Monarchist said:

As you HAVE natural gas, forget Propane. Sort out where to place a pad & doghouse, outdoors, have a line run to code, 'coz indoors is a no-go.

If you really CAN 'do without' all but heating system controls, fan, and fridge/freezer, a 1.5 kW 'may' be too small to start your air-handler. You'd not need over 2.5- 3.0 kW though. I'd sort that with a fairly austere battery bank, inverter, solar panels added to the mix. I prefer the gen set shut-down, midnight, latest rather than running whilst I sleep, but then, too - the fridge/freezers are not being opened, cooking is done with, most lights are off, and a well-insulated home can live midnight 'til dawn on no heat input reasonably well for the price of a duvet or three.

Any 'serious' size natural gas powered gen set could need all-new very-much UPsized lines clear back to the street. Costs aside, that may not be on the gas company's option menu anyway.

Disclosure: Nat gas at the kerb, grew up with it, our own wells, even.
Don't want it in my house. Have Diesel.

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You can buy an off-the-shelf standby generator that runs on either propane or natural gas, but use natural gas unless you have a propane bulk tank for home heating. A small generator (4 kW or so) running on propane can easily suck about a gallon of propane per hour under load, and when you see that a 20# propane bottle is only about 5 gallons, the numbers add up real fast. Not so bad if you're feeding from a bulk tank, but expensive from BBQ bottles.

BobRenz said:

You can buy an off-the-shelf standby generator that runs on either propane or natural gas, but use natural gas unless you have a propane bulk tank for home heating. A small generator (4 kW or so) running on propane can easily suck about a gallon of propane per hour under load, and when you see that a 20# propane bottle is only about 5 gallons, the numbers add up real fast. Not so bad if you're feeding from a bulk tank, but expensive from BBQ bottles.

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Yep. Part of my Diesel equation is that I can store a week's worth for what I actually USE without getting into the range where I have a ton of regs about the tankage, have far less to periodically preen. Lot of energy in a gallon of Diesel, and it doesn't take much care to see that it doesn't decide to leak and level the whole area.

I also live in the Rochester area. I was without power for a couple of days. I wouldn't use propane, as you might have trouble finding a supply with the power out in the wintertime. If you have natural gas, you have an unlimited supply, but the hoses, regulators, etc. get complicated. If you take the time to properly store a gasoline generator, it is extremely reliable. I'm not sure when I last used mine, but I think it was in the ice storm of 2008. I filled it up with gas, set the choke, and it started on the first pull. (It's fairly old, as I bought it from Chase Pitkin. That will mean something to Rochester folks)

It has a Honda gasoline engine. When an incident is done, I make sure the engine is hot. Then I drain the oil and refill with fresh oil. I also drain ALL the gasoline out of the tank and carb. It's easy, as there is a small drain built into the carb bowl. Then I spray storage seal into the carb, pull the plug and spray storage seal into the combustion chamber and pull the engine over gently a couple of times. I hit the combustion chamber again and put the plug back in. Then I slowly pull the engine over until I feel compression resistance. There's a hole in the shroud and a slot in the fan that you line up that leaves the engine with the valves closed.

Some people believe in running the generator periodically, but I think this is the wrong way to do it.

When my house was built in '68, the owner put in a transfer switch for the furnace circuit that has a pigtail and a plug. When I use the generator, I run extension cords in through the cat door, a 12ga for the furnace, and separate 14ga for the refrigerator, water heater, and sump pump. The generator is a 6500 watt generator. When the furnace blower comes on, it doesn't seem to spool up quite a quickly as when on regular power. I wouldn't go much smaller. Didn't think to check the voltage on the generator or what the droop might be under heavy load. Something for the next time I guess.

FWIW, I bought a pricey Generac generator after a 1998 flood led to four feet of water in my basement. I think it ran about 7k back then. After about 12-14 years, I happened to notice that, upon an electric failure, my sump pump didn't kick in (altho the rest of the house did.) In short, Generac failed to include the sump pump in their original wiring. They came out and corrected things (for no cost, at my insistence), but it just shows that, unless you are extremely careful, going the Generac way is no particular guarantee against the future.

TDegenhart said:

If you want to do it properly, The unit wants to be outside, the unit will be either natural gas or diesel with CODE transfer switches. Propane has a problem in cold weather, it won't vaporize or stay vaporized without heat, ala a band heater.

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I disagree with this.

Unless the tank if very small or it is very cold, vaporizing propane isn't really an issue. I've lived off grid for 7 years, and get to rely on a generator to supplement the solar panels in the darkest coldest months. Running on a 120 gallon LP tank, my 12kW generator will work reliably down to about -26F. At that point, the propane isn't vaporizing fast enough out of the little tank to supply enough vapor for full load on the generator. Switching to my 500 gallon propane tank at -26F will keep it running. I have customers in the interior of Alaska that run 30kW propane generators at almost -50F, off of a collective 5000 gallons of surface area. So of the those telecom sites used to have liquid draw and vaporizers isn't the shelters, but all of that has been replaced with normal vapor draw systems such are standard in the lower 48.

But -50F and 30kW isn't in the realm on home backup in New York. 10 or 15kW and 500 or 1000 gallon propane tank really shouldn't be a problem.

-Jim

dgfoster said:

... i bought a gas Honda 2KW EU2000 generator for just the sort of thing you have in mind. The things that influenced me were that it is portable (can be kept outside the house for safe storage), puts out a true sine wave power curve opposed to the chopped up wave form that the great majority of portable generators produce (your computer and increasingly computer-controlled appliances like sine waves and may not do well with chopped wave forms) and it starts with a single not very vigorous pull on the cord. That means my wife can start too. Finally it is very quiet running.

Denis

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These are all the rage for off grid systems now for all the reasons Denis lists. In addition, the generator puts out DC and an inverter produces just enough amperage to supply the load- throttle is automatically controlled by load. Way more fuel efficient than an AC generator that has to run at 1800 or 3600 just to get somewhere near the desired frequency. And electric and remote start are available for the 3000W and up models.

Very handy for power outages, as their portability makes them useful for more than one household.

Honda was one of the first to make them, lots of others are following-Yamaha, Robin, and I think Ryobi.

One characteristic deserves attention, though. The inverter generators tolerate only about 10% overload and for a very short time. For starting motors, they need to have a nominal rating higher than a wound unit.

Neil

kb0thn said:

I disagree with this.

Unless the tank if very small or it is very cold, vaporizing propane isn't really an issue. I've lived off grid for 7 years, and get to rely on a generator to supplement the solar panels in the darkest coldest months. Running on a 120 gallon LP tank, my 12kW generator will work reliably down to about -26F. At that point, the propane isn't vaporizing fast enough out of the little tank to supply enough vapor for full load on the generator. Switching to my 500 gallon propane tank at -26F will keep it running. I have customers in the interior of Alaska that run 30kW propane generators at almost -50F, off of a collective 5000 gallons of surface area. So of the those telecom sites used to have liquid draw and vaporizers isn't the shelters, but all of that has been replaced with normal vapor draw systems such are standard in the lower 48.

But -50F and 30kW isn't in the realm on home backup in New York. 10 or 15kW and 500 or 1000 gallon propane tank really shouldn't be a problem.

-Jim

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Most of us don't have that size of tank. For those that do, then this is a viable solution. Propane boils at -43.6F and in so doing cools the liquid. In fact propane is classed as a refrigerant. I would venture to say that without a means of heating the tank at those low temperatures, there is a problem.

Tom

I installed a 14KW Generac generator at my daughters which is run on natural gas and a 14 KW at my home that is run on propane. You can buy a complete generator package with a transfer switch that will automatically run the generator once a week for 15 minutes. The units are out side and very quiet. You can't hear them in the house and having them run in auto mode is the best thing. I think the best thing a person can do when considering a generator is to have a transfer switch so you can't accidently power up the incoming line that a service man may be working on to restore a power outage, even with a portable unit install a transfer switch.

If in earthquake area only use propane or diesel and forget about natural gas.

When quake strikes the gas is shut off just to avoid broken lines causing fire.

Propane is clean and diesel has more energy in the fuel but for a normal house load it does not matter much.

Above 15 kw it matters a bunch.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337Z using Tapatalk

Propane and diesel are valid choices, because you have control of your fuel supply. Small generators are usually 2 pole and high speed, think noise. Larger units are usually 4 pole and run at half the speed and are inherently quieter. Lastly, the installation is always much more costly than the generator. You must also consider duty cycle. These things will asked to run for days on end. Gasoline, natural gas and propane units usually use limited duty engines. If the installation is the real cost and it is, it makes no sense to skimp on the unit cost. There is no low ball way to do this correctly.

We here in my area/hood lost power for 4 days in that wind as well.
this happens a handful of times a year. At times I say we lose power when the sun goes behind a cloud. we are out in the sticks one mite say.
2 or 5 maybe 6 years ago we had a genset installed. It is the largest air cooled Kolher made at the time,propane is its fuel, propane is what powers the area here, N/G is headed this way soon.We had it installed.full auto is what we wanted and what we got. BEWARE of prices,we were offered prices from
12,000 to 6,000 $, same Genset.
Gw

TDegenhart said:

Most of us don't have that size of tank.

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Every rural house around here either has at least a 500 gallon propane tank or a big heating fuel (diesel) tank. Hence my line of thought that if you have propane, you have enough to run a decent size generator. But you must be thinking a small portable tank. Which is probably more in line with what the OP was thinking. In which I agree. The loaded fuel consumption on the cheapie Generac style generators is atrocious. If the BBQ sized bottle of propane didn't freeze while trying to vaporize, it would be gone quickly. My 12kW 3600 Generac uses something like 12 gallons per hour at full load.

-Jim

I installed an 18kva Generac when I made my garage bigger, and went to a 1000 gal propane tank. Transfer switch in the garage and one in the house. All circuits includes so we sometimes shut down on of the 4 AC zones. Last hurricane big outage we supplied water to neighbors on both sides via gender bender garden hoses, and power for one neighbors fridge. I think that outage was 4 days. Do an oil change yearly and after a big outage.
I insisted on the 1000 gallon tank but my supplier told me that even though the grid can be down, they have their own generators and their truck can run as soon as roads are cleared, usually the next day.
If you do get a permanent installation the generator will start and test itself weekly, engine run up to operating temp. Try and set that time of day when you know you will be around to hear it so you know its working. Ours failed to start once a few years ago and the battery was shot from age.

kb0thn said:

My 12kW 3600 Generac uses something like 12 gallons per hour at full load.

-Jim

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Huh? maybe 1.2?