On Sep 21, 8:22*am, Han wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote innews:wMednTF_Y4miJOTTnZ2dnUVZ_jCdnZ2d@earthlink. com:

Having enjoyed about one-third of our lives on generator power, we
decided to enter the discussion.

Thanks for the informative and comprehensive post. *The difficulties you
point out have indeed prevented me from going forward with getting a gen
set. *That and the uncertainty what capacity I really need, e.g. should it
be able to run my whole house A/C?

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

You live in NJ, no? That's where I am and I wouldn't size a
generator to run my central A/C. Only in the hurricane last
month did I really even need a generator at all in the past 35 years.
Power was out for 3 1/2 days. All other times, it's been out
a few hours at most, except one other time when it was out
for 24 hours.
Also, around here, it's far more likely for power to be out
for an extended period due to winter weather, eg an ice
or snow storm, than it is to be out in summer.

Sizing it for the A/C means it's going to have to be a lot
bigger, cost more, heavier, burns more fuel, etc. For my
needs a portable unit, about 5 or 6KW that runs on
natural gas appears to be the most cost effective solution.
Seems you lose about 20% power when running on
natural gas vs gasoline, so if you're converting one over
you have to keep that in mind.

A neighbor had one of the whole house automatic Generac
natural gas units which was capable of running his A/C.
Paid $7K for it and it was about 5 years
old. During the hurricane it ran for about 4 hours, then
had a major failure in the gen section. It's totalled. He's
buying another one. That seems like overkill too unless
you have a situation where it's critical it automatically
powers up without someone being there.