At 05:51 PM 7/29/2006 +0000, scott.hall@comcast.net wrote:
>I want to buy a standby generator for my house. we were without power for
>about three weeks total last year, and I'd like to avoid that this year.
>So, I added up all the breakers in the breaker box, and started shopping.
guess I got too long winded in the reply - so here it is broken into 2 parts.
Scott,
That is over kill! Keep in mind that as the output of the generator you
purchase goes up, so will the cost. And not linerally. The fuel consumption
will also go up. All this means more dollars out of your pocket!.
>the house is all-electric (no gas stove or water heater) and water comes
>from a well, powered by an electric pump (so no power means basically
>that we have to move out). I want to power the whole house, like there
>was no interruption. if I'm going to have to spend, I'd at least like to
>do it once and do it right.
OK, that said, what is it worth to you? Let's see, 3 weeks in a hotel
at $100/night is 15*$100 = $1500 lodging. Now food, you could get by
on 1 meal per day at about $15 per person. So that 15*15 = $225/person,
assuming 2 people $500. So you're looking at about $2000/ yr if you go
to a hotel.
Hows $15,000, for the generator sound! That's about 7 yrs to break even.
Now that is a bit high. Keep in mind when you loose power, you are in
an emergency situation. Do you really need to run the whole house AC?
Can you get buy with a single room cooled? Do you really need to have
every light and appliance on?
What you need to do, is to walk around the house and see what you really
want running, the refrigerator, the AC unit, the heater (hope that's not
electric resistance), your water pump, several lights, etc.
You need to find out how many watts you really need. Then look for the
lables on the units. You refrig is 115V. There should be a lable that
says it either draws 5 amps or X watts. Watts = Voltage * Current. So
if the unit says 115V at 5 amps, that 115*5 = 575 watts.
Start a list of each item and the number of watts it takes. Then sum
up all the watts. This gives you the amount of power you want to consume.
Then you can add a 10% to 25% safety factor. This will account for the
start up loads.
How much does that come out to be? You'll want the next size up generator.
>One guy told me I could get away with a 6500kW,
Yes. That's a good size generator for an emergency use. You won't be able
to run the whole house AC, but could run a window unit, the TV/radio,
computer, refrig, and some lights.
>while another told me no less than 40kW would do.
Again, that's probably about right if you figure you want everything as it
was.
>the reason I shouldn't just use the breakers added up seems to be that in
>reality everything won't run at once (the lower rating peoples' story) or
This is true! You don't have everything on at one time. But in many cases
like a kitchen, you can't run the toster and microwave at the same time.
The reason is that other things like the Refrig is running and the micro
wave. Then the toaster pulls too much current and it will trip the circuit
braker.
End part 1
John
John T. Blair WA4OHZ email: jblair1948@cox.net
Va. Beach, Va (eBay id: zebra48-1)
Phone: (757) 495-8229
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