[TowerTalk] Whole House Generator was: Re: Low RFI diesel generator?

[David Robbins]

that is an important point... there is a break point between about 15-20kw where you go from a relatively cheap and simple air cooled engine to one that requires liquid cooling with the associated increase in cost and maintenance.  my 18kw kohler is air cooled and at the time was much cheaper than the next step up to any of the liquid cooled ones... while it limits me a bit on how many stations can be on the air at once it seemed like a good tradeoff.

Mar 27, 2013 08:10:31 AM, n4zr at contesting.com wrote:

We have a 14KW Generac on awhole house auto transfer switch with smart 
load shedding. It will shed the AC if something else is starting up 
that needs the current. Our house is very INefficient, we have electric 
hot water, a well pump and a forced air furnace, so there are lots of 
start-up loads. At the moment we are just set up to shed AC, but we 
could shed the water heater for a few bux more. Through last summer's 
4-day outage, I don't think it had to shed load once.

We thought about the 10 KW and 20 KW options, but went with the 14 KW 
because the cost increase over 10 was trivial once the rest of the 
system was specified.

73, Pete N4ZR
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On 3/27/2013 1:39 AM, K8RI wrote:
> > When it's all done, for a normal, single family house, 5kw is way more
> > than enough.
> >
>
> With a smart panel, maybe. I burned up an 8 KW generator in an 1100 sq 
> ft home and that was just running essentials.. Hence I'm going to a 15 
> - 25 KW backup. Hot water is gas and on demand. Now that saved a 
> bunch. furnace is high efficiency, natural gas. Dryer is also natural 
> gas.
> Lights are all, either fluorescent or CFLs. 

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