On 7/29/2010 10:33 AM, Old and not too bright wrote:
We have a maintenance contract provided by the seller. Every 6
months, the tech changes oil, oil filter, spark plugs, and air filter;
checks the sealed battery, battery charger, output voltage, output
frequency, and connections.

The service has been unreliable inasmuch as it always requires me to
call them to remind them that the service is overdue. This has
happened right from the beginning in 2005. They're always late.

But I've been afraid to fuss because, who else would perform these
services? I'm too old and wouldn't have a clue about the electrical
checks anyway. Do you think that an electrician would perform these
tasks, or is the changing of oil, plugs, filters beneath them? Yellow
pages advertises electricians who work with generators, but I think
that this refers to inside work on the generator's circuit breaker box
when needed.


I used to service a lot of generators before I developed some of
my own maintenance problems. A generator like yours would usually
get checked or serviced once a year unless it was for someone quite
elderly or someone who had medical equipment then it was twice a year.
I setup a monitoring system for generators that had a local alarm
that would go off if the trouble light lit or alarm contacts in the
gen-set control panel closed. I also installed the circuit board from
a home alarm system panel inside the transfer switches to call an
alarm monitoring company whenever the generator ran/exercised or had
a trouble signal. I had a paper trail on performance and would get
a call from the monitoring company whenever a generator failed to
exercise at the expected time/date. There is much more sophisticated
real time monitoring that can be done via The Internet these days but
the old school POTS line dialup monitoring is very reliable. A great
number of HVAC companies of various skill levels have gotten into
the home generator market and are selling service contracts to mind
them. I don't know what area of the country you're in but there should
be more than one generator service outfit in your area.

TDD