Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: kybaseball on March 01, 2014, 02:57:57 AM
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Just would like to know some different ways of hooking up some backup power and the size of the generator to get it done? With the potential of another ice storm headed this way kinda scrabbling to get things right before it get here. Was without power for 3 days the last time and this storm sounds like it could be worse. Thanks
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Are you looking generator size just for your OWF or whole house?
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I have a 7500 watt gravely. Start up watts is 9375. It runs the whole house.
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I have a 7500 watt diesel generator. I hooked it up with a transfer switch on the side of the breaker panel box. Got it all hooked up Saturday. It took us all day to run wires from the building. Don't want to leave the generator outside with people stealing them like crazy when power goes out. Thought we would loose power with this last storm but got lucky and missed it. So we shut the panels off today and fired it up to check if it would be ok and run what we need. Worked great and gen never ran hard!!! We are better prepared for outages now!!
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Basically you need to sit down and add up all the things you want to run in your home during an outage. Keep in mind some things can be ran while others are off. There's 2 ways to look at it. Do you want to survive or live comfortable. All appliances have a rating tag. Some can be found online. Once you have considered all usage, add them up. Refrigerator freezer furnace blower well pump etc. that's where you need to start. Most people can get along fine with a 5000 watt generator for basic needs. Some even less. Now if you want to live it up put in a home standby auto start with an automatic transfer switch and sit back and enjoy life. But you will spend more money. Either way you go if you are going to try to back-feed electric service you will need a transfer switch. You can pick up a manual transfer switch pretty reasonable and mount them inside or out. This is a must unless you are going to run extension cords to everything and that's a pain. So hopefully that points you in the right direction. Let us know if you need help calculating load.
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I bought a 6500 watt on sale at Rural King on Black Friday for $399. I also bought a new Reliance transfer switch and outlet on E-bay for $150. Got lucky on that as I was the only bidder. The outlet sells at Lowes for $54.00. The generator will easily handle my OWB or oil furnace plus my water pump and refrigerator and microwave and coffee pot. Put the generator in my unattached garage and run a 10 gauge wire to the outlet. Works well and didn't cost me much.
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Just don't undersize to save a few bucks, in the long run it isn't worth it.
For years I made do with a 8000 watt unit, 12500 surge.
But if I need it in the dead of winter i have to keep the heaters on in the cattle waterers so they don't freeze, also might have to plug in a block heater or two for feeding livestock. Then the house on top of that, we got by but wasn't fun. Then somebody gave me another generator, still have em both but haven't used either one for years now.
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Not sure your budget or even the availability, but may want to look into getting a LP or NG fired generator. Don't have to worry about gas/deisel going bad, assuming long times between need for generator. Just have to worry about the $$$ for LP. Old man had an 11kw unit, from an old rural fire department who was upgrading/upsizing theres; has not had to use YET, will let you know how things turn out if it is required.
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I have a 5500w Genrac for the house and a 1750 coleman for the OWF. But I currently have the 5500 supplying the OWF through the transfer switch. For long-term, I plan to run the OWF on the 1750 since it uses less fuel and will run all the time. The 5500w can be shut off when not needed, I run it about 1 hour every 12 to keep the fridge and freezer cold. I just got a DPDT switch for the furnace blower which is 240v. Once installed, I will be able to run it off of the 5500.
Jim
KY
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I have a Genrac 6500..Runs everything I have hooked up to my gen-tran..Well pump, oil boiler, OWB, kitchen area, living room area and master bed and bathroom..I bought it a yr ago..Best $800 I've spent..Should of done it yrs ago.. esp the times where Ive lost power for a longer period of time