Awl --
Well, I finally took the plunge, and sprung for a generator, a bit contrary to my initial intentions.
After that halloween snow debacle, where millions were without power for weeks, I was dead set on a nat. gas Generac from
God works in mysterious ways, as it came to appear that generac uses a cheap engine, with lots of complaints, and with shitty service on top of it all. I figger that they figgered that since home-moaners will be using this thing for, like, mebbe 5 hours in a year, all's it has to last is 10 hours! LOL
I had finally settled on a genset from these people in Maine:
Still, when all was said and done, it would be proly over $2500 for something that I might possibly NEVER use!!! My testosterone is too low to be a really good gambler....
Toward my "new strategy", these companies sell tri-fuel kits, supposedly diy-doable, no real mods to the carburetor, turning a gasoline generator to a tri-fuel generator..
Any opinions on going with the above diy-kit people vs. sending the carb to the Maine company for a bolt-on solution, presumably professionally done?
So, you ax, what carburetor will I be sending them?
Sam's club carries a Black Max gasoline generator (actually, exclusive to sam's clubs, hmmm.... ), 7,000/8,750 continuous/starting watts, with...... a Honda gx390 engine!
So I picked this up today, at $999, considerably cheaper than elsewhere, incl. Maine. Tomorrow, my first test will be to see if it is PC/Fadal stable. If it is, I will send out the carb, pending opinions here.
The nice thing about tri-fuel is that for prolonged outages, the nat gas fuel is Da Bomb, yet you can take it to jobsites or whatever, on gasoline/propane.. But, you lose about 10% of the power rating on nat gas.
I opted for 7 kW as opposed the 12 kW jobby, simply as a $$ bet. The 7 kW will power the house OR the shop, or pieces of both. If it works well, and if it turns out I need more power or there are lots of outages, I can always get another, and still be ahead of the game. I can isolate the shop from the house electrically, and therefore can power them separately. Or together, if I'm mindful of loads.
Comments/suggestions on this strategy? Sam's has a 90 day return policy, so I have some time to bail out.... and get a Generac.... LOL