On Sunday, March 11, 2018 at 8:03:27 PM UTC-5, Clare Snyder wrote:
On Sun, 11 Mar 2018 15:16:30 -0500, Dean Hoffman
wrote:

On 3/10/18 7:45 PM, Don Wiss wrote:
Here in Brooklyn the wires are underground. But where my elderly mom lives
in NJ there are frequent power outages. She got her power back for about a
day, and it is out again.

Of course she would put in a natural gas generator. But what I learned
tonight is they require checking the oil level twice a day with a dipstick.
And adding oil. This would be beyond what she can do. Are all generators
like this? Are there ones that can run for two weeks with no maintenance?

Don. www.donwiss.com (e-mail link at home page bottom).

I think most of those run at 3600 rpm. We had a generator at
work that
ran at half that. It was much quieter, of course. The generator was
only big
enough to run impact wrenches and stuff like that.
The GOOD generators run at 1800 RPM. Not many of them being sold
today.


Back in the 1990's when I was installing Generac gensets for homes and businesses, the little 8kw used an air-cooled Briggs & Stratton V-twin that ran at 3600rpm but the 10kw used a liquid-cooled 4cyl Turkish Fiat engine running at 1800rpm. The higher output Generacs using the same little 4cyl ran the engine at 3600. My favorite genset of all time is a very old Onan air-cooled flat 4cyl 15kw with a natural gas kit that were bought from a used equipment dealer. I installed a lot of them and they were very reliable. There were no electronic controls anywhere in the generator or transfer switch. The transfer switch had a special voltage sense relay that closed when the generator got up to speed. Everything was electromechanical and I rarely had to repair anything in them. I'd change the oil and filter once a year and test them. There was an electromechanical time clock in the transfer switch that ran them once a week but other than that I never had one fail to come on when there was a power outage. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Power Monster