Generators?

 
  Wife recorded a Info-mercial the other day on the Gererac whole home generator.   Starting at $1879!   I know these generators are a nice thing to have, being all automatic.  They are pricey, and in hindsight, I should have spent the $$$ shortly after we moved into our place, but they were expensive then too!
  Anyone here have a Generac installed at your house?  How quiet are they?

  Wife recorded a Info-mercial the other day on the Gererac whole home generator.   Starting at $1879!   I know these generators are a nice thing to have, being all automatic.  They are pricey, and in hindsight, I should have spent the $$$ shortly after we moved into our place, but they were expensive then too!
  Anyone here have a Generac installed at your house?  How quiet are they?

They are fairly loud as I understand it and can burn a huge amount of gas/diesel or LPG depending on the model.  I looked REALLY hard at getting one when I had my house in FL.  Just didn;t make financial sense for us at the time.  The cost of the generator was the cheapest part of the whole deal.  At the time, the fuel was going to run something like $100 a day to operate.

I have a 6500 watt generator to power the whole house and the 220 volt well pump. Five gallons of gas will last 6 to 8 hours to run lights, frig, well pump, computers etc. No electric heat or oven or hot water tank use. 100 gallons a day seems really excessive.

$100 a day ... Not gallons

Whole house generators like that are available at Home Depot.  Their costs are reasoonable, but the accessories are gonna cost as well; cut-over breaker box, installation by licensed electrician, county permits,etc.  Figure at least double the basic generator cost to get this 'turn-key'. 

I have a Honda 6500 inverter generator.  VERY quiet.  I converted it run on propane for $200 and bought and filled a 50 gallon propane tank.  Gas generators require constant refueling.  I can run several days with propane. 

With everything I want running, my 6500watt generator does the trick, but I also have propane/gas heating and cooking too.

We had a propane version installed at our previous house.  It would run for 1/2 an hour once a week for testing.  It was inside a plastic casing.  You could hear it from inside the house but it was only meant for when power to town was out.  We would turn it on and do what we needed to, like microwave, dryer or other appliances and while it was running the freezer and refrigerator would kick in long enough to cool stuff down and then we could turn it off for awhile without having to run it all day.  At night we had oil lamps and battery operated flash lights so it didn't have to run.  Would have been nice to hook to a battery bank so we could use lights and other items when generator was off. 

I ran my house off of my HOnda gen for 7 days few years ago. It would run about12-15 hours on 5 gallons. Shut off at night restarted in morning for re freezing and water from the well worked fine, just not legally.

runs the house with a bit of creative hook up.  main shut off, etc

I need to get a big propane tank like that for my yamaha genny.

$100 a day ... Not gallons

Our Kohler 10,000w generator burns 1gallon per hour at full load. Its diesel.   Red diesel is about $3.00/gallon.  It mostly runs at 1/2 load and burns 1/2 gallons per hour so $1.00-2.00/hour

I have two of these puppies.  The first one was $12,000 new in 2007.  We bought a new one this year,  it was about $14,000.   

We bought a used Generac that was from a cell tower as a backup power source a few years ago.  It was 20kw.  This thing was old school and had a Chevy 6cyl diesel I think.  Maybe it was 4cly.  It had very low hours.  It burned a ton of fuel and broke down a lot (always electrical).   We spent a lot of money fixing it.  I think it was about $4500 used and mounted on a Home Depot trailer.  I think we sold it for $2500 after being frustrated with it for two years.

Our generator sales guy likes Kutbota,  Honda, and Kohler,  and is not a fan of Generac.

I think these guys charged $75/hour for drive time and $125/hr for service work.  If it breaks,  its pricy to fix.

We need all this power as we are off grid solar and when there is no sun,  no clean dishes, or clean clothes at night,  the generator runs.

I need to get a big propane tank like that for my yamaha genny.

I got mine off craigslist for $100 and it was 3/4 full.