Tell me about your home energy back up system

[Bucknaked]

Picked this up yesterday!


[ATTACH]1054153[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]1054154[/ATTACH]

And?

[Bucknaked]

We retired in rural Montana. House heated by forced hot air with a buried 1,000 gallon propane tank supplemented by a wood stove.

I went Cummins 9500w (max) portable generator with a 40 pound RV propane tank. I bought clamps and built a holder on the non-exhaust side of the generator, and replaced the 2 rubber bumper feet with swiveling/ lockable casters.

I did not hook it into the house’s propane so it was a self-contained system to roll outside the garage. I did not want 6.6 gallons of gasoline in the garage and then having to drain/ burn it off and refill periodically.

I figured I’d need it in -20 Montana winters. A car hit a power pole today on the highway and 460 homes lost power.

When we wired the house we knew we’d need a sub panel for all the breakers. We put it in the garage and have all ‘mission critical’ branch circuits in it- well, septic tank pump, freezer, kitchen, selected lights. The spec sheet says I should get 22 hours at 25% generator load.

It works. The Cummins generator is loud. Total cost

Generator $1,050 (dual fuel)
Casters $25
Tank clamps and hardware $60
Filled 40# propane tank $120
Connecting cable $100
Incremental cost in new home wiring unknown as it was in his bid.

Total $1,355 plus several hours to put the tank on.










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Nice! This probably won’t effect you but for people in high coastal humidity regions have problems with that small of tank freezing up! I’m reading that it shouldn’t be less than a 100 gallon tank! Again, this probably doesn’t effect you.

[K. Lane]

I thought about a whole home Generac but a couple things changed my mind..
1st it adds zero value to your home and if you move.... you just can’t load it up and take it with you
2nd and most important is the apparent unreliability of them ( it may be very out of the ordinary) but my parents is in the fritz more often than it runs. They test ran theirs once a month last year and had a repairman out 8 of those 12 months


I went with the DuroMax 13,000 HX. I bought an interlock switch and a 50 amp (originally went with a 30 amp but changed my mind) rv plug an mounted it and wired it through the wall to its own breaker in the electrical panel (had my brother the electrician do it actually)

The DuroMax is dual fuel but I purchased a kit that converts it to tri fuel so I can use gasoline, propane or natural gas
I have a 40 gal fuel cell for gasoline
2-100 pound propane tanks and of course my house has natural gas.

It won’t run the ENTIRE house but it will run the vast majority of it and all the important stuff


And OP.... don’t be fooled and look at it as a 100 year freeze event. 1988 was worse and 1989 was as bad as this past February

[Drycreek3189]

Electricity has been out twice since installing, works like a charm.

[db@100]

Does anyone know a place near Conroe that works on 30KW Onan generators?

[Txhunter3000]

Electricity has been out twice since installing, works like a charm.

How long total was your power out the 2 times? I'm not knocking what you have just trying to show that most people without a checkbook can be more manual with a generator and an interlock. Just posting so more people can benefit, not everyone can afford a Cadillac.

[Tbar]

Here at home we have natural gas. We have lost power several times, most recently during snowmagedon, and ran one HVAC, select lights, internet, tv, cable etc on just one Honda EU2000i. After a few days of no power we ran out to the Farm and got the EU2000 Companion unit and brought it back so we could run two HVAC's and some other things. At the ranch we have a 24kw Generac with auto switch that feeds from a 1000gal propane tank.