Generator Shed Ideas | DIY Generator Enclosure

so there's actually quite a bit of information out there right now and videos that are showing people ideas on how to make a generator shed i'm just really seeing a really common occurrence though with the majority of them as to what they're using as far as turning a plastic sun cast shed or storage container into a generator enclosure which there's nothing wrong with that that can work just fine but in this video we're going to talk more about a wood structured shed so let's go ahead and get started with it now [Music] what's up guys adam here with another video and in today's video we're going to be continuing our series talking about generators and we've been talking a lot about generators over the past month or so we've made quite a few videos on how to hook up a generator to your house how to power certain things in your house like your home air conditioning unit for instance and this video is really going to be no different we're going to really dive into detail on some ideas on how to build your own generator shed to protect your generator from the elements but before i get into all of that if you're new to the channel and you like how to's and do yourself type videos for around your house then this might just be the channel for you consider hitting that red subscribe button down below and if you find the information this video be helpful to you and maybe it gives you some ideas that you haven't thought of before then let me know by leaving a comment down in the comment section and also giving the video a thumbs up now there's quite a few different ways that you can go about building your own generator and there's all kinds of different ideas out there a lot of the ones i've been seeing lately involve using one of those plastic sun cast sheds and then converting it into a generator enclosure which there's nothing wrong with that a lot of people have had success with that i just prefer that my structures be made more out of wood they're going to be less flimsy structure they're going to be more structurally sound it'll be heavier there's going to be more customization that can go into it so it's really all going to come down to preference so i'm going to get into all the details on how i built my generator shed and after i get done going over all the details of the generator shed then i'll take it outside where it's going to sit and i'm going to hook it up and turn on the generator and close it all up and we're going to take a decibel reading just to kind of see how much the generator shed can bring but bring down the noise of that generator so let's go ahead and take a look at it now all right so this is the front of the generator shed obviously and i've got a couple of different latches i've got this one here that i'll have a lock on to keep it all locked up and then up here is kind of like a bolt type latch just to keep the shed doors more sturdy and as we open it up inside there's another one of these bolts that holds the door closed they just need to undo and then you can pull both of the doors open so those of you that are subscribers of the channel i've seen quite a few of my videos you know that i am a big proponent for making things as simple as possible but without sacrificing any quality this shed is a four by four by four so it's four feet wide four feet long and four feet high and the reason i did that is it was going to be plenty big for the original generator i was going to put in here is going to be one of the smaller ones but obviously i've got my big one in here but it still has plenty of room but all of your wood for the most part your standard pieces of wood come in eight foot long sections and then your plywood comes in four by eight sheets so by doing that it makes it super easy to make your cuts and figure the amount of materials that you're going to need you'll see down at the bottom here it almost looks like a pallet and i did that on purpose i've got three four by fours that are four foot long underneath of here and this was going to allow for me to use a tractor to move this around wherever i need it to be now another thing about this shed is i made this roof i put it on hinges so that it will fold up so that i'm able to get in there to move the generator around and it also makes refueling it a lot easier right now i'm just using pieces of wood to hold the roof up i'll probably do something more permanent but for right now that's just what i'm using all right so getting in here closer you can see the floor i've got all the two by fours spread apart from each other and the idea is to allow as much air as possible into this building to keep it as cool as possible so that's just another source for allowing this building to vent and that was a huge focus of mine on this whole thing is trying to get this thing to vent as much as possible if you look over at the back there you can see i've got this is a 16 by 16 vent here over here there's a 20 by 20 vent and i've got a fan in it that's another 16 by 16 vent and then down at the bottom it's hard to see there's another 20 by 20 vent and so i want to get as big events as possible to allow as much air flow as possible so the one down at the bottom the hope is that it's going to bring in a bunch of air these are more so going to allow air to escape and maybe let some through on this one here this one over here that i've got the fan in this should be the warmest part of this building because the exhaust is back here so the idea here was i built a shelf for this fan this to sit in and a lot of people use attic fans which that's fine attic fans are made to go in hot attics and get the air out so that would be what it would be used for and it would work just fine but my thought was get one of these fans that you put in your room they push more air than most of the attic fans the hole that it's going to be able to push through is going to be much bigger than any of your attic fans that the vents the the flaps that open up i haven't seen any that are nearly that big so the idea is just getting as much air out as possible and putting it up high like that is science that heat rises so theoretically most of your hot air is going to be up in this corner where the exhaust is and up high so that fan should be pushing out a lot of the hot air keeping this building a lot cooler so and then talking about the exhaust if you can see down here that exhaust pipe down there is attached to the generator and then it's going to the outside of the building through that hole there and i made a video on how to make a generator exhaust extension and i'll post a link for that down in the description below and might also put one where it will pop up in the top of the screen now so if then we go to the outside here you'll see where the exhaust is coming out and i've got a piece of hardy board siding up on here and the reason i did that is because hardy board is not flammable so this hardy board will not start on fire but if you were putting an exhaust tube like this through plastic at the very least the plastic is going to completely melt if not start on fire and it would be the same thing for wood wood wouldn't melt but you would probably have a very serious fire issue that could come from this exhaust pipe making contact with either plastic or wood that pipe is going to get super hot as generators the way they try to stay cool is by pushing a lot of that hot air through the exhaust pipe back here on the back we've got those two vents you can see 20 by 20 that's one with the fan in it and this 16 by 16 over here and then i've got three hinges for the roof to make this thing into a convertible and so that should be plenty to be able to hold that up now that roof is is pretty heavy i mean it's all solid wood with plywood on top and it sits pretty flat the roof does itself which it doesn't have a whole lot of pitch to it but i put a silicone coating on top which withstands ponding water so i'm not too worried about that it's not going to cause me any issues as far as deteriorating the roof or anything like that then on the left side of the building here i've got this box which is just an exterior weatherproof box that would actually fit a couple of plugs in it it's just an outlet box but it's made to be outside and i used a hole saw to cut the hole out big enough to fit my 50 amp generator cord through so this is where the generator cord will come in out through and then hook up to the house all right so now coming back to the inside you may have seen this while we were looking at some of the other stuff in here it is monitoring the heat the humidity all of that and it's going to go to this device that then i can monitor all of the heat humidity what it's been at the highest it's been the lowest it's been there's alarms on some of these that will let you know when something's reached too hot of a temperature and to me this is super important this is something that you really i feel like you should consider getting something like this i've heard too many stories about people their fans quit working and then it gets too hot in here and then you've just got it's a mess you've got your generator outlets and all kinds of stuff on your generator is melting or just just destroying the generator so the investment is very little to protect what is actually a very expensive investment so that's pretty much it for the features of the generator shed so let's go ahead and take it outside and put it where it's going to go start up the generator and see how much quieter it is on a decibel app as opposed to when the doors are open all right so now we've got this about where i'm going to want it to be i've got it this side over here this is where the box is it allows the cable to come out from the generator and then it would hook up to the house right there in that 50 amp power inlet box so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to test the decibel rating of how loud it is with this completely open the way that it is right now let's go ahead and start the generator up the cord you're seeing is the cord that goes to the fan so we'll go ahead and start this up and see how loud it is on the app [Applause] so we're about 20 feet away and the current decibel reading is averaging 82 with a max of 87 which i know you can't really see the phone very well so i'll have the decibel readings up on the screen so average of 80 max of 89 81 89. all right so now let's go close it up and see how much quieter it gets [Applause] all right so now that's all closed up we're getting about 70 decibels so that's a that's a pretty big drop and i can notice a huge difference in how much quieter it is all right guys so there's a bunch of ideas on how you can make your own generator shed i'm super pleased with the way that this turned out all of the vents were working exactly the way that they were supposed to letting that air in and then also on the other side letting it out up above and that fan was really pumping the hot air out so that's exactly what we wanted it to do the exhaust extension worked great it was getting all the exhaust fumes out and we did the decibel test to see how much quieter it could get by closing everything up and we saw some really great results there as well so it really quieted everything down so overall super happy with it i just really really want to stress again when you're making your generator shed and you're making your plans just really always have on the top of your mind how you're going to vent that shed how you're going to get the cooler air in and get that hot air out because that's ultimately what's going to make this thing a success or a failure if it gets too hot in there there's all kinds of things that could happen and they're all bad so just make sure that when you're planning out your shed make sure you're getting plenty of ventilation in that thing and i'm not so sure even though i'm happy with the way this turned out i'm not so sure i won't add another vent just for safety precautions because the last thing you want is for it to get way too hot in there and the thing goes up in flames and there goes your generator and if it's too close to your house well that could be a big problem too so i i just say all of that to just really pay attention to it and think about that because it is important so i hope that you found this video to be helpful and informative if you did please let me know down in the comment section down below and if you have any ideas on how you'd like to make a generator shed that maybe i didn't cover in this video i'd love to hear about those as well if you found the video to be helpful please give it a thumbs up and if you like how to's and do-it-yourself type videos like this one please consider subscribing to the channel i've got a new video coming out every single week and i've got quite a few generator related videos if that's what you're into that i've already done that you can go check out now so consider subscribing to the channel and i hope to see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: How To Home

Views: 201,277

Keywords: generator shed, generator enclosure, how to build a generator shed, generator shed ideas, generator enclosure ideas, diy generator enclosure, diy generator shed, building a generator shed, how to build a generator enclosure, wooden generator shed, wood generator enclosure, generator shed build, generator shed plans, generator shelter, building a generator enclosure, weatherproof generator enclosure, generator noise reduction enclosure

Id: wPpQ4NTme3U

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020