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Whole house generator

Whole house generator

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by: fastanez Active Indicator LED Icon  OP 
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 5:37am  
We just moved to KW (Sand Creek) back in September. Love the area but never realized how much the power goes out in KW. Got a quote on a whole house generator yesterday. $4500 for the generator and the rest is installation for a total cost of $9800.
 
Generac 22 kW Pre-packaged, Air-cooled Standby Generator with Aluminum Enclosure and 200 Amp SE Rated Switch.
 
Going to get a few more quotes, for anyone that's recently purchased one is this a pretty fair price? Also is getting the mobile link worth it? 4951
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tatertot58 Active Indicator LED Icon 15
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 7:13am  
I have been thinking about one.  $10,000 is a lot of money for what little it would be used.  I understand there is monthly maintenance that has to be done religiously otherwise you will have a problem.  Over $5,000 for installation seems like a lot unless that have to run a new gas line? 4951
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tguid18 Active Indicator LED Icon
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 7:17am  
I purchased a whole hose generator, the system that you are looking at will work fine, BUT a whole house 22k air cooled will run at 3600 RPM meaning it will be on the loud side, and being air cooled will not last as long. The other option you would have (and the cost would be more) is a water cooled system that runs 1800RPM, very quiet, long lasting. Mine is a Cummins Onan 30k with all the bells and whistles plus whole house surge protector and extended service for around $16500 installed. You will get what you pay for, the rest of your area will love the 3600rpm quiet system.By the way it was installed 23 months ago and has not been used since, a lot of money but it will be worth it if needed. 4951
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tguid18 Active Indicator LED Icon
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 7:30am  
By the way, you are getting a quote at the worst time for a good price, you could wait until November and save about $1000. 4951
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Jpgurl Active Indicator LED Icon 18
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 8:03am  
We decided it was a lot of money for as little as we would've used it so far. We have a stand alone generator - it runs 2 Refrigerators, washing machine/dryer, fans and a room AC ( in shifts of course). We've used it twice- hurricane Rita for 12 hours and Hurricane Ike for 13 days- that's in 12 years. The other outages are 2-3 hours at most- though we did have an outage that lasted 8 hours one time. Unless you need to run medical equipment consistently I'd say save the money and don't buy into the hype. Ike was a pretty rare occurance according to the long timers here. Was it a pain- sure but it was doable and we saved the $$
If you really want to go that route I agree with the water vs air one. Not only will your neighbors like it better so will you. Of course if we get another Ike it won't matter- the drone of EVERYONES generator will make you batty 4951
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1meow2meow Active Indicator LED Icon
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 8:47am  
That's what my 20Kw generator ran from Quality Generators.   It also included 5 years maintenance plan and they come out twice a year to do checkups and oil changes.I may not have needed it much but I'm so thankful for the times when I did have it waiting for me Emoticon 4951
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Stealth83 Active Indicator LED Icon 16
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 9:10am  
Removed By Request 4951
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doddlebug Active Indicator LED Icon 17
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 10:07am  
We bought our Generac from Amazon, hired someone to pour the slab, hired someone to lay the gas line and connect (city of Houston has to inspect); hired someone to put in the electrical box.  Total cost was about $5500.  Ours is a 18 KW. 4951
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Fallon Active Indicator LED Icon 18
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 10:22am  
Removed By Request 4951
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tguid18 Active Indicator LED Icon
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 10:24am  
Ike was the reason we purchased ours, I do not have access to natural gas, so we had a 1000 gallon propane tank installed underground,(did not want to look at propane tank in the yard)   with the cummins, propane tank, and filled with C3, the total cost was just south of $25K, it is so quiet you can stand next to it and have a normal conversation  and cannot hear at all from inside the house and barely on the outside, I believe it does add value to the property, and if it does not, bring it with you to your next house. I purchased not only a generator, but piece of mind, the stress factor goes way down during hurricane season, and that is worth a lot to me. Its like buying a car with electric windows, you don't need them but they are nice to have. 4951
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Retired_Engineer Active Indicator LED Icon 13
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 11:03am  
We just moved to KW (Sand Creek) back in September. Love the area but never realized how much the power goes out in KW. Got a quote on a whole house generator yesterday. $4500 for the generator and the rest is installation for a total cost of $9800.
 
Generac 22 kW Pre-packaged, Air-cooled Standby Generator with Aluminum Enclosure and 200 Amp SE Rated Switch.
 
Going to get a few more quotes, for anyone that's recently purchased one is this a pretty fair price? Also is getting the mobile link worth it?
 
@fastanez:  I used Generator Supercenter for my 20kw Generac generator about a year ago.  Hurricane season is the worst time to do this as you will pay a premium during this time.   If $9800 is the TOTAL price, you're doing good.  Some costs depend on the location of your gas meter and your circuit box.  I am paying Generator Supercenter a monthly service fee of $35. They installed a remote monitor on the generator and have it tied into a central monitoring system so they receive any alerts.  I get weekly email summaries from the monitoring system, but i can also look online for more details.  They do all of the typical routine maintenance (oil, filter changes, etc) at no additional cost.  The generator auto-starts once a week and runs for ten minutes.  It just runs the engine (essentially a 999cc motorcycle engine for 20kw) and does not transfer power. Having the service contract also means you have priority if you have any problems during a major power outage.It is very difficult to justify the costs based on usage and economics.  However, my wife and I cannot tolerate the heat as well as we used to. I am diabetic so I have medicines that need to be kept cool and I use a CPAP machine when I sleep.  During Ike, we lost all of the food in our freezer and in our fridge/freezer  I seriously considered a gasoline powered generator, but when I estimated the amount of gasoline needed for a long outage, I bit the bullet and went with the natural gas powered generator.  Getting ice and gasoline was very difficult for about a week after Ike.Our only limits are that we have an electric stove and oven, which are amperage hogs.  We can run both A/C units, fridge, freezer, and lots of lights.  We can use a burner or two on the stove but if we use the oven, we cannot use the stove and have to turn off the upstairs A/C and any extras while we use the oven.As for the noise, it has a good muffler system but it does make noise.  Ours is just on the outside of our bedroom (brick) wall.  It's definitely noticeable but it doesn't prevent us from sleeping.Good luck!
4951
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ET Active Indicator LED Icon 17
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 11:14am  
I am sure it also helps resale value when it is time to sell the house. Lot of people are nervous about hurricane outages. 4951
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dotti573 Active Indicator LED Icon 15
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 12:11pm  
After the last power outage a couple weeks ago we thought about buying the gas run ones but I don't know anything about them.  Does anyone have knowledge on this?  I basically want to run a light, stand alone a/c and fridge.  What size would I need for that?  We rent so I will not being putting out thousands to add a whole house to their property but I want to be sure that I don't lose anything next time.  During Ike I lost everything and lived in an apartment with an electric stove.  I bought a grill with a side burner so I can cook outside if I need to.  TIA 4951
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Jpgurl Active Indicator LED Icon 18
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 1:04pm  
After the last power outage a couple weeks ago we thought about buying the gas run ones but I don't know anything about them.  Does anyone have knowledge on this?  I basically want to run a light, stand alone a/c and fridge.  What size would I need for that?  We rent so I will not being putting out thousands to add a whole house to their property but I want to be sure that I don't lose anything next time.  During Ike I lost everything and lived in an apartment with an electric stove.  I bought a grill with a side burner so I can cook outside if I need to.  TIA
 
@dotti573: dh bought a 5500watt one. He also made a stand alone outlet - so only the one line runs from the generator to the main outlet. I believe there are 4 outlets with switches.At night he would run the refrigerator, box fans and phone chargers. He also runs an electrical cord from the generator to the fridge in the garage. So all of that ran overnight - about 8 hours. Understand that he is an electrical engineer and the outlet box and cords are heavy duty.
In the AM- he mad a pot of coffee before he turned the genie off. We tried to not open the fridges a lot. He also had thermometers to monitor the freezers. We never lost a bit of food. The genie stayed off almost all day- I'd run a load of clothes once in a while. I would turn the genie on to run the fridges for an hour. Both freezers never hit 40. Everything stayed well insulated. We got the room AC after Ike- dh said our genie was big enough to run it( I only care about using it at nite so I can sleep). It will cost in gas usage tho. We go through about 5 gallons a day. We have 6 10 gallon containers with another 20 gallons in a Jeep we can siphon. We went through 4(?) days worth before we could find a station open.
Hope this helps
 
4951
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fastanez Active Indicator LED Icon  OP 
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 3:36pm  
Thanks everyone for the input.  Very good information passed on by all.   During Ike we were without power for 2 weeks thankfully I was at lowes when a shipment came in gas generators.  This was something that we talked about getting and on a whim passing by a place Yesterday I gave them a call for an estimate just to get an idea of the total cost.  The guy was honest and even told me of places having sales and said they would price match.   Right now I have a gas generator and will be getting a window AC unit for those times needed so there is no rush to get this.  I think if we do, we will wait until after October.   4951
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djohn78 Active Indicator LED Icon 1
~ 8 years ago   Jun 23, '15 3:37pm  
We just moved to KW (Sand Creek) back in September. Love the area but never realized how much the power goes out in KW. Got a quote on a whole house generator yesterday. $4500 for the generator and the rest is installation for a total cost of $9800.
 
Generac 22 kW Pre-packaged, Air-cooled Standby Generator with Aluminum Enclosure and 200 Amp SE Rated Switch.
 
Going to get a few more quotes, for anyone that's recently purchased one is this a pretty fair price? Also is getting the mobile link worth it?
 
@fastanez: Be sure to get it serviced every year!!!
4951
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