Kenneth wrote:
On Fri, 23 Nov 2007 08:09:38 -0500, "Mike Marlow"
wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
...



Panels....................$3000
Batteries..................$800
Inverter....................$500
Misc hardware.........$500

Total......................$4800

Use $5000 as an estimate to achieve total independance from an
unreliable supplier.


For that money, just to power a sump pump, I'd certainly go the
route of a Guardian standby generator. You can buy one heck of a
whole house generator for that kind of money. Keep a couple extra
propane tanks around and switch tanks over every 50 hours of
runtime. Enjoy life as usual. I feed my whole house on a simple
8,000 W gas generator, but it's not an automatic setup. The
Guardians are really nice units. I've installed several of them
and
one of these days I'll put one in myself.

Hi Mike,

I appreciate your comments about the Guardian stuff, and
would welcome any further information you could offer based
upon your experience with the units.

For example, what might you know about ease of installation,
trustworthiness of the unattended starting, durability, etc.

My neighbor has had one for about ten years now--every month it kicks
off its test cycle, never failed to start during an outage, never had
a problem with it. A friend of mine had one installed last year, had
an initial problem with a gas leak that IIRC was traced to a
manufacturing defect and fixed under warranty, but other than that
it's been dead reliable as well.

Installation requires that you (or whoever is doing the installation)
know wiring and gasfitting and it needs a place to sit, outdoors,
which is usually a concrete slab on the ground. It has its own load
panel that the circuits to be protected are wired into, the other end
goes to the meter or to a large breaker on the main panel, the load
panel contains the transfer switch. You really should have a licensed
electrician wire the panel--it's there to protect power company
employees from getting zapped by power fed back into the line, and if
you install it yourself and screw it up you're at risk for huge
liability. It's not that easy to screw up, but given some of the home
wiring jobs I've seen . . .

This isn't a lightweight unit--it's a big box that weighs over 300
pounds for the smallest one and doesn't disassemble to any significant
extent--you really should have the bed for it prepared before it
arrives so that you only have to move it once.

If there's a Home Depot near you they'll sell you the unit and deliver
and install it for you--they'll likely have at least one on display as
well so you can get an idea of what it looks like. Their prices
aren't bad either.

It needs regular maintenance--that means change the oil and the air
filter and whatnot like anything else powered by an engine--that's
typically once a year or after a prolonged outage. Whoever sells it
to you should offer you a contract where they do that for you and do
an annual inspection.

If you've got either natural gas piped in or a big LP tank for your
stove and/or heat then they'll plumb right in--on natural gas it runs
as long as the gas company keeps providing gas, on LP it runs until
the cylinder is empty--that's a good long time on a stationary tank
that gets filled from a truck--if it will run 50 hours on a portable
tank then it should run a month on one of those.


Sincere thanks,

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)