Generators.

[Usmc1345]

I got a free Koehler generator. It is huge and could run three homes the size of mine. It is set up for natural gas. I have no gas on my road was wondering if anyone had good info on how to switch it over to propane. Figure I can get a large tank and if SHTF I can steal people's 20 pounders off of their grills!!

 

[REDRUM]

What would be really funny is somebody steals your generator while your out stealing people's 20 pounders off their grills....hope you don't pick the wrong house.

You need to contact Koehler or one of their dealers with year, make and model genny you have, and order a new LP gas jet and install it. A transfer switch installed to your breaker box would make all your existing plugs live, instead of running cords to everything you want to power.

If your in NH pm me and I can give you a contact of a company that does installs, and conversions from natural gas to LP, installs transfers switches etc.

 

[06LemansC6]

It is huge and could run three homes the size of mine. Figure I can get a large tank and if SHTF I can steal people's 20 pounders off of their grills!!

If it's that huge how long do you think it would run on a 20# tank? If SHTF I'd consider it perfectly acceptable to use deadly force against someone trying to steal a propane tank, or anything else for that matter. I'm not sure if you're serious, but there are very few lower forms of life than a thief.

 

[strangenh]

Most of the "full home" consumer LP/NG generators have little more necessary to change over than to take a wrench and switch a fuel selector - ASSUMING your home propane supply to the generator is already regulated to 10 to 12 inches of water column (0.36 to 0.43 psi) (that's normal for home LP for heat, a lot lower pressure than you get from bottle propane). Look up the manual. It may well be that easy.

 

[JimB]

a 100# propane tnak might last a day, i know someone who runs

a 10KW gen. on propane, in the october storm he went thru 2 tanks.

 

[PaulR]

I've been studying which generator to get for a while now, I may go propane standby and propane portable. To the topic at hand: 20 pounders won't really get you anywhere at all with a big house unit.

The 10-14Kw Generac propane units run 1.2 to 1.6 gallons per hour. That's gallons, not pounds.

People like propane gens for a lot of reasons, but they are thirsty. I've got a 100 gal tank, when I get my setup in I'm looking at getting another 100 gal tank at the very least.

 

[strangenh]

Just keep in mind these larger LP/NG generators are not designed to run off bottle propane pressure. Generac now makes a smaller, portable one that will run off those BBQ tanks. For the whole home type, you will need a regulator to take a portable tank down to the correct pressure. If you have a home LP supply for heat, it is likely already regulated down twice - first to that bottle pressure at the exit from the tank, then down to low pressure at the entry to the house. But off of portable propane tanks, unless you're running the genny in bursts, you'll go through several 20# tanks a day. At half demand, a 12KW gen will eat about 1.5 gal (56 cuft) propane an hour, 2 gal (76 cuft) at full demand. 20# is less than 5 gallons.

 

[namedpipes]

Usmc1345, you may have just discovered why you got the genny for free!

 

[joe847]

20lb tanks would not deliver propane, as a gas, quickly enough to run a generator that size.

 

[fencer]

You might want to take a look at selling your monster generator for enough money to buy a new gas generator and pay an electrician to wire it right into the panel. My generator will run my whole house with the exception of the stove and clothes dryer. During the blizzard it ran for about 10 hours of five gallons of gas.

It had no problem keeping up with 2 refrigerators, oil furnace and hot water, tv, microwave, a couple of computers, lights and my son's x-box.

 

[mikem317]

They're might be a conversion kit to LP. But you'll probably need to get AT LEAST a 500 gallon tank. Preferably a 1000 gallon or two 500 gallon tanks to support that beast for anything longer than a multi-day outage.

 

[appraiser]

the trick is to run only what you need to be comfy until line power comes back on.

I can do that on 2000 watts and as little as 2 gallons of gasoline a day... while the bigger is better crowd is trying to figure out how to keep the heat on, I am sound asleep..

Sell it, buy something that you will be able to keep fueled.

Gasoline is easy to find, try finding propane when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground.

 

[Usmc1345]

Thanks guys. I do have a gas generator now. I had no experience with the propane type and I'm glad I asked. So on another note who wants to buy a huge generator??? Just kidding thanks for the help.

 

[PaulR]

You can store caches of propane for 10+ years though and not have a worry like gasoline.
This is why I'm really leaning towards a portable propane unit.

 

[appraiser]

the Honda Inverters can be retrofitted for propane, there is a aftermarket kit to do it

 

[Coopertino]

I have a honda eu series and did the propane conversion myself. Pretty straight forward and i love the flexibility it offers. There are a lot if resources out there for them, good yahoo group for the eu2000. Step by step directions etc..

 

[Palladin]

if you have a 15 or 20kw Kohler, on propane, at the minimum you want a 500lb tank. on the flip side, you may be warm and toasty during a 4 day outage, but when you get that $1000 fuel bill, reality will set in real quick..

 

[Billsail]

if you have a 15 or 20kw Kohler, on propane, at the minimum you want a 500lb tank. on the flip side, you may be warm and toasty during a 4 day outage, but when you get that $1000 fuel bill, reality will set in real quick..

Yup. Propane delivered to your location, is at least 3X the cost of what you would pay at your regular dealer. You all know what it costs to fill a 20# lb tank.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Gasoline is easy to find, try finding propane when there is 2 feet of snow on the ground.

There are some Long Island residents who endured Hurricane Sandy who might not agree with the first part.

 

[Fishercat]

Why do some of you insist on running your whole house with a genny. It's for an emergency situation. You don't need every single light to work or the TV (likely the cable is out anyway). You certainly don't need a washer and dryer. It isn't even really a prep for any kind of long term SHTF as in that scenario you aren't getting gasoline or propane. Plus people will hear it for miles. I have an 8k, run the furnace, the fridge, the freezer and the seasonal water feature in the cellar (AKA the sump pump.) There's also two live plugs in the kitchen (gotta have coffee) and the microwave works. It helps that our water heater is run through the boiler, not electric. We did 4 days in the October 2011 storm without even going through a quarter tank (about 40bs.)

You really want to get a gentrans on your electric box to hook up to. It prevents any backfeeding of electricity out of the house to the pole where it can be a hazard to workers. You can get auto switches too that turn off the main breaker and remotely turns on your genny when the power goes out.

 

[fencer]

When my wife doesn't have a tv, it's an emergency situation.

 

[JayMcB]

I have a generac 13kv 'whole house' generator, and IME it burns about 100# per DAY in propane if left to run.

 

[appraiser]

There are some Long Island residents who endured Hurricane Sandy who might not agree with the first part.

OK I will admit you are right, but siphoning is always an option.

As I have said countless times before, I can run on as little as 2 gallons of gasoline a day and still have heat and a fridge

My normal stash of gasoline in cans is between 25 and 30 gallons, sometimes as little as 15 in the summer.

30 gallons of gas is going to last me at least a 10 days depending on what machines I am running.

I have two 2000 watt inverters I can run single or in tethered mode, and a 5KW generator for my well.

If and when the cans get low, I have 5 cars, 2 bikes, and lawn tractors I can siphon from. Even if the vehicles were only half full of fuel there is at least 100 gallons of fuel there.

And as for cable going out, I have a good old fashioned set of rabbit ears I use when the cable goes out and I get enough TV to stay informed and almost entertained.

I default to 3G internet service tethering my Droid to the laptops, I have never had cell service go out in Southern NH even in the worst of storms.

I also rotate my gas out at 5 gallons a month into a car and refill the can with fresh fuel to keep the gas from going stale

 

[strangenh]

OK I will admit you are right, but siphoning is always an option.

When someone runs out of gas, siphoning someone else's is not a good option - it's get in line time. Or they might find others will take violent exception to theft. Especially if that other person's heat ultimately depends on the gas they're attempting to siphon away. That's what would have happened on Long Island during the outage. My sister and BIL were quite aware their natural gas generator put them in a better place than those who were squabbling over gasoline. It was obvious theft would get ugly even in some fine upstanding towns.

That said, I agree with your point that you can run on a limited supply by being frugal what you power and using a small inverter generator that can dial fuel demand down with draw, unlike the big units.

I default to 3G internet service tethering my Droid to the laptops, I have never had cell service go out in Southern NH even in the worst of storms.

With the power out for days? I don't know where you are, but the telco COs can last about 48hrs, and then the cell towers drop at maybe 56-64h. This last October's fun, both the Fairpoint and US Cellular systems were dead about 48h in, and based on past trends, VZ would have lasted only a few hours more (but the area power came back before that...). It's sad Fairpoint doesn't have a decent generator at their major COs, but cell towers are run on battery. When they go, they go. The ice storm of 2008 made the various drop-out points very obvious.

 

[garandman]

OK I will admit you are right, but siphoning is always an option./

Not easy to do on modern cars. My motorcycles have 5.3 and 5.8 gal tanks so I can count on them, but haven't been able to get gas out of our cars without modification.

 

[appraiser]

Not easy to do on modern cars. My motorcycles have 5.3 and 5.8 gal tanks so I can count on them, but haven't been able to get gas out of our cars without modification.

I can pump right out of the fuel rails on my F.I. cars, I have a fitting for the schrader valve

 

[namedpipes]

Not easy to do on modern cars. My motorcycles have 5.3 and 5.8 gal tanks so I can count on them, but haven't been able to get gas out of our cars without modification.

Not hard at all! Put a bucket under the tank and spike it.

Scavenging abandoned property is quite different from scavenging supplies from people that simply have less firepower than you.

Sent from my chimney using smoke signals.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

but cell towers are run on battery

The Hopkinton club was evaluated for a cell tower (dang, we did not get it - a business down the street had a better location and gets the rent). Part of the presentation from the cell phone cite selection agent was about the facility they would build to support the tower - temporary road to the building (gravel, not pavement) and we were told the backup power was propane or natural gas, so there was no risk of a hazmat oil or diesel spill on our property.

 

[strangenh]

The Hopkinton club was evaluated for a cell tower (dang, we did not get it - a business down the street had a better location and gets the rent). Part of the presentation from the cell phone cite selection agent was about the facility they would build to support the tower - temporary road to the building (gravel, not pavement) and we were told the backup power was propane or natural gas, so there was no risk of a hazmat oil or diesel spill on our property.

Commercial cell tower supporting multiple providers or a normal cell install? Because most cell towers have 48hrs power on battery - TOPS. Doesn't really matter what some guy told your club.

 

[Rob Boudrie]

Commercial cell tower supporting multiple providers or a normal cell install? Because most cell towers have 48hrs power on battery - TOPS. Doesn't really matter what some guy told your club.

No idea, I was only a spectator in the process. It was a fairly professional presentation complete with photos of a sample of the proposed building. I remember they were talking on the order of $10K/year rent if we were selected as the location.