Natural Gas Generators

guykuo said:
Also, don't want to be THAT HOUSE with its Christmas lights on while everyone else scrambles just to keep a phone charged.
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There are so many gensets in our neighborhood that the dark houses are the ones that draw attention.

We pulled the trigger on a Kohler 26RCL. That is the air cooled one. The water cooled was over $30k installed. This was just over $14k installed. Ten-year warranty, so it will outlast me.

The only problem is I have to get rid of almost all of my UPSs since they smurf with the THD. They add up all of the UPS sizes, triple that number, and add that to your total kW needed.
 
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samplenhold said:
There are so many gensets in our neighborhood that the dark houses are the ones that draw attention.

We pulled the trigger on a Kohler 26RCL. That is the air cooled one. The water cooled was over $30k installed. This was just over $14k installed. Ten-year warranty, so it will outlast me.

The only problem is I have to get rid of almost all of my UPSs since they smurf with the THD. They add up all of the UPS sizes, triple that number, and add that to your total kW needed.
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Thats a good unit. It has hydraulic lifters which never needs adjusting. I'm coming up on my oil change so I'll need to gauge my lifters to make sure they are the proper distance.
 
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samplenhold said:
There are so many gensets in our neighborhood that the dark houses are the ones that draw attention.

We pulled the trigger on a Kohler 26RCL. That is the air cooled one. The water cooled was over $30k installed. This was just over $14k installed. Ten-year warranty, so it will outlast me.

The only problem is I have to get rid of almost all of my UPSs since they smurf with the THD. They add up all of the UPS sizes, triple that number, and add that to your total kW needed.
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That's the same genernator I had put in last year, July of '25 and am VERY pleased:

TonyR

Post in thread 'Emergency Power/Storms/Prepping etc'

After living here for 19 years, finally decided to get a whole-house generator. The tipping point was having to rope-start my propane 3.5kW portable generator several times during the period of my cancer therapy....man, it just about killed my shoulder each time.

Got the 26kW Kohler (below) put in a couple of weeks ago with a 200 Amp ATS. A Kohler model 26RCA, it's propane and air-cooled. It's quiet and quick, is set up to run a fully loaded, scheduled exercise every Monday at 10 AM. An app on my phone alerts me when it kicks in and I can look at its vital stats (status, run-time, oil...
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I have a soft spot for the Onan 30kw generators with the Ford 240 straight six. Propane I like the best. They are 20kw when wired single phase. Engine parts are cheap. If you find one with the older pre late 70s controls, they are all analog, and the manual diagrams tells you all the components and their values.

They are 1800rpm and don't sound that loud even with no muffler. Propane makes a lot smoother sound than gasoline. Fuel system parts are easy to get, at least for propane and gasoline. The difference between the propane and NG fuel systems is a spring in one of the regulators - no spring for propane. Gaseous fuels are so much nicer to deal with since they don't go bad.

The last guy I know who found one payed $500, and that was last year. I'm sure there is more than $500 of copper inside that thing. He got the deal of the decade. It came with a trailer also. There are different versions, some for indoors and some outdoors. His had sat outdoors, and it was an indoors version, but it still ran fine. No water damage to anything important, just maybe ten years of faded paint. Once the mud daubers nest got cleaned out of the propane filter screen, it started right up.

If I needed one, I would go for the older version. Cummins now owns Onan and maybe think customers are made of gold. There is little to go wrong other than the electronics in the newer versions. It's the same industrial engine that is in everything ftom wood chippers to welders to airport tugs and sawmills. Points ignition. Basic alternator. Little to go wrong.

Can you tell I like these things?

That being said, they are probably twice as big as a generator with a 3600rpm small engine. They also weigh about 1500lbs.
 
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Simas123456 said:
I have a soft spot for the Onan 30kw generators with the Ford 240 straight six. Propane I like the best. They are 20kw when wired single phase. Engine parts are cheap. If you find one with the older pre late 70s controls, they are all analog, and the manual diagrams tells you all the components and their values.

They are 1800rpm and don't sound that loud even with no muffler. Propane makes a lot smoother sound than gasoline. Fuel system parts are easy to get, at least for propane and gasoline. The difference between the propane and NG fuel systems is a spring in one of the regulators - no spring for propane. Gaseous fuels are so much nicer to deal with since they don't go bad.

The last guy I know who found one payed $500, and that was last year. I'm sure there is more than $500 of copper inside that thing. He got the deal of the decade. It came with a trailer also. There are different versions, some for indoors and some outdoors. His had sat outdoors, and it was an indoors version, but it still ran fine. No water damage to anything important, just maybe ten years of faded paint. Once the mud daubers nest got cleaned out of the propane filter screen, it started right up.

If I needed one, I would go for the older version. Cummins now owns Onan and maybe think customers are made of gold. There is little to go wrong other than the electronics in the newer versions. It's the same industrial engine that is in everything ftom wood chippers to welders to airport tugs and sawmills. Points ignition. Basic alternator. Little to go wrong.

Can you tell I like these things?

That being said, they are probably twice as big as a generator with a 3600rpm small engine. They also weigh about 1500lbs.
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That Ford 240ci six is a bullet-proof engine, one of the best ever built by any manufacturer, from what I've read.:cool:
 
Our original whole house generator was a Kohler. Its higher requirement for NG delivery pressure forced us to also put in a new gas main and a huge regulator. That generator lasted about 12 years, but eventually succumbed to increasing instability in its RPM and could not rely on it to start or continue running once started. Tons of technician visits / repairs to no avail. Basically became worse than having no backup generator.

Finally called it on the original and had a Onan/Cummins installed 6 years ago - half as loud and runs steady.
 
The last time I was without power for over 3hrs. was back in 1991. It was a bad ice storm, and we had no power for 5 days and we froze our asses off. Since then, I have had small generators just to keep the furnace going, but they always gummed up and failed. This last time I bought a dual fuel 2700w inverter. I never plan on using gas in it, just LP. It's a very simple setup, yet it will keep me from freezing, I can live without all the rest. BTW, the furnace runs just beautiful on this inverter, very clean power. For $500 bucks it gives me peace of mind, as more than likely I will never need to use it. The video is much louder than it is. You cannot hear it at all inside the house.

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I have an older Cummins 4BT diesel powered 50KW generator on a trailer that can run my entire ranch. Got it from a utility in Ohio and upgraded the entire control system to a modern setup. I was thinking of permanently installing it in a shed and hard wiring it into my rack but I have not done so. It presently uses cam lock cables into a camlock interface box and manual transfer switch. The genset came with the cables and when I setup the rack I anticipated using cam locks so it worked well. I mostly use it to run a multiprocess welder building pipe fences on my property. If the power goes out I'm set. The cummins power is incredibly reliable as the whole unit only has 320 hours on it. I have tested it a couple times for hours on end running the ranch. All my computers, cameras, etc... work flawlessly with the setup.
 
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Tinman said:
The last time I was without power for over 3hrs. was back in 1991. It was a bad ice storm, and we had no power for 5 days and we froze our asses off. Since then, I have had small generators just to keep the furnace going, but they always gummed up and failed. This last time I bought a dual fuel 2700w inverter. I never plan on using gas in it, just LP. It's a very simple setup, yet it will keep me from freezing, I can live without all the rest. BTW, the furnace runs just beautiful on this inverter, very clean power. For $500 bucks it gives me peace of mind, as more than likely I will never need to use it. The video is much louder than it is. You cannot hear it at all inside the house.

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Although I have had this new propane, whole house 26Kw Kohler genset since this past July of 2025, I still have this 3.5Kw 14-1/2 year old Chinese genset from Home Depot. IMO, propane (or natural gas) fuel is the best fuel for whole-house and portable gensets, no need to to keep the preservative in gasoline to prevent it from gumming up. I can read the oil level through the dipstick it's so clean and there's no gasoline to wash down the cylinder walls and dilute the oil when it's propane-powered.
 
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I went with an air‑cooled unit too, mostly for simpler upkeep. As long as the gas line is sized right and you test it now and then, it should keep your place lit.
 
Spinnerring said:
I went with an air‑cooled unit too, mostly for simpler upkeep. As long as the gas line is sized right and you test it now and then, it should keep your place lit.
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Yup. @samplenhold make sure you have your gas pressure coming out of your meter upped to 2lb if it isn’t already. It’s probably 1/4lb or 7 W.C. currently. If you leave it at 1/4lb, the generator may starve the rest of your gas appliances for gas when it’s running.

The only downside of upping your pressure is you will have to put regulators on all your current gas appliances as they are all designed to work with 1/4lb. I had that done ahead of time and then called the gas company to up my pressure when the plumber had finished with the regulator installs.
 
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johnfitz said:
Con Ed delivers at the same pressure here in NY...

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7" WC (1/4 PSI) is standard that gas/LP appliances use so that is generally what any gas utility will deliver out of the meter. Fortunately It's a simple call to tell them you want it upped to 2 PSI. They will change the output regulator on your meter so it kicks out the higher pressure but they will want to make sure that you have installed the smaller individual appliance regulators first inside your home since appliances can't run on 2PSI.
 
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biggen said:
I had that done ahead of time and then called the gas company to up my pressure when the plumber had finished with the regulator installs.
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I had a pool put in several years ago and they installed a larger meter. The Gastron guy looked at it and said that it would work just fine.

I upped my gas pressure, up yours!:)
 
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