Eric wrote:

Twayne wrote:

RBM wrote:
"Lee" wrote in message
...
A friend has a backup generator that runs off of natural gas, and I always
thought it would be nice to get one when I got a new house. Fast forward -
I have a new (old) house, but it heats by oil and there is no gas nearby.

The power has gone out several times this summer, so now I'm wondering
what the options are. Are there any generators that use oil? I know there
are propane generators, but was thinking it would be nice not to worry
about another tank and delivery schedule.

Any recommendations? I need something *simple* to use. So far the outages
have lasted around 6 hours. They are annoying in the summer, but I'm a
little concerned about more occurring in the winter.

It won't be as cheap as a NG/LP generator, but a diesel generator will run
fine on heating oil, runs at half the RPM's of a gas generator, and will
last much longer


Well, it'll run fine on #1 fuel oil; not other numbers. #1 is actually
kerosene but with a little less filtering since it's not used in
automtives. You might have to clean the filter a little more often with
#1, gut it's an easy job.
If you heat with #2 fuel oil, do NOT use that unless the genset is
specifically designed FOR #2 fuel oil.

HTH

Nonsense, any diesel will run just fine on #2 fuel oil.
As just one example: I've personally watched a lyster engine
run on vegetable oil, fuel oil mixed with motor oil, and even
cooking grease thinned out a bit (quite a bit) with kerosene.
Eric

Correct, the only real differences come into play in prime power
applications where the engines log a lot of hours. For a residential
standby generator that is likely to log 100 hours per year of run time,
the differences are entirely irrelevant.