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.

As is your advice. Only in certain geographical areas could your
comment be near "correct". You know not of which you speak.