Home Standby Generator: Price, Size, & Install

i got a scary story for you a couple of years ago in texas hurricane harvey hit now i wasn't nearly as bad as my friends in houston that got flooded out but you know what i lost power for three days in a really hot and uncomfortable time now if you know me i'm a little bit of a prepper i probably have more flashlights than 10 of your friends combined i also had plenty of charged cell phones but you know what i didn't have i didn't have air conditioning my refrigerator ran out my freezer ran out all that stuff was nasty to deal with after the fact and man was in an uncomfortable couple days what i really needed was a home standby generator now today's video we're going to get into all the ins and outs of a home standby generator how much they cost where you're going to install it how much size and capacity you might need this video is sponsored by champion but i think no matter what flavor variety manufacturer you buy this video is going to be helpful for you today is all about disaster prep let's get going [Music] all right so i don't need to tell you about all the crazy natural disasters that happen i told you my hurricane story if you're in the west coast you're probably dealing with wildfires brownouts earthquakes there's all kinds of crazy stuff that can happen that you might want one of these for now first off when we think about generators let's talk about fuel sources all the portable units are pretty much gas powered and gas is very energy dense but when you're talking about one of these we don't want something we're going to have to refill we want to connect it to a very big tank or a nearly limitless supply so your two main options when we're thinking about standby units for your house are either going to be propane or natural gas now propane is more fuel rich or more energy rich per gallon than natural gas is so when you see the ratings on generators you're going to see a higher rating and that's usually the propane rating so this particular model i'm putting at my house 14 kw 14 000 watts but i've connected this one to my natural gas line which means it's slightly less output 12 500 watts on this particular model on natural gas now let's think about this though natural gas i love because it's running underground where i am in texas it's not prone to i don't have earthquakes or other issues i don't have shutoffs in the natural gas system so if i had a massive hurricane if my power goes out i could pretty much run limitless on natural gas i'm never going to run out of fuel propane on the other hand can be a really good choice especially if you already have propane to fuel your water heater your furnace your cooktop that sort of thing because you've got that big tank already it can be nice to hook this up to that the other nice thing about propane is you don't have to worry about the natural gas company shutting you off especially if you're in a you know an earthquake prone area they do occasionally shut off natural gas in those spots but when you're planning one of these generators you really want to consider getting a professional out i think that's your best choice now champion has a great website to talk about sizing so you can try and figure out how much am i going to want to run on my house your electrical appliances do you have gas or electric for your heating are you going to want to run your air conditioner in the summer all those kinds of things but you also can find a dealer there and it is a good idea to get a pro involved when it comes to scoping this out and getting this installed for you because a pro can help you in terms of all the site assessment now my particular house i've got my natural gas meter right here and i'm right on the other side of the fence for that so hooking this up to the fuel source for me was about you know eight feet of black iron pipe no big deal so you got to think about that you also need to think about co2 emissions right when this thing's running it's an engine it's pumping out co2 we wouldn't want to put this in an area that had an operable window that a kid could open by accident all of a sudden we've got co2 gas in the house so having a pro scope it out really is a good idea however you can buy these yourself and have them shipped and that's pretty much what happened in my case i don't have a local dealer i had this shipped to me and here's kind of a crazy story speaking of natural disasters i actually got this unit six months ago actually at the end of december and i was busy with my jobs my electrician and my plumber were were finishing houses for me i couldn't get them to hook it up and you all know what happened to us in february this crazy pandemic outbreak happens my city inspections were shut down for three months i couldn't get a permit i couldn't get an inspection i didn't have this thing doing anything for me but just sitting here like a big brick for a couple of months i literally just recently got it hooked up so be prepared think about this ahead of time when a natural disaster strikes everybody goes to cabela's to go get a portable unit and if they want one of these they're either going to be sold out or the guys that are installing them are going to be backed up for three months so think about this ahead of time next let's talk about sizing and in fact i got the biggest champion that they make this is the 14kw they do make some smaller sizes and i thought about the 8kw uh version as well for my house but here's what the big deal for me was when i was out for a couple days from hurricane harvey for me one of the biggest pain points was not having my air conditioner it was super hot super sticky outside so being able to run my air conditioner which is a big hog for electricity is why i wanted this big size i needed to be able to run a couple of light circuits my tv and my refrigerator and my garage freezer as well as my air conditioner and that's why i went with this size if you're in a colder climate though if you're in canada or wisconsin or one of these places where you don't have hot summers you may think about a smaller unit the reason being is the bigger unit the bigger the gas consumption if this was a propane model and i had the next size up from another manufacturer like another manufacturer i know i was looking at specs online they have a kw model that thing uses four gallons of propane per hour when it's running so we're talking about almost 100 gallons of propane over a 24 hour period number one propane is expensive number two what if you only had let's say a 500 gallon propane tank you'd run out of gas in five days running this never mind your tankless water heater your range all these other things that might need gas your furnace so think about propane tank size and potentially going bigger if you are going to go with these or go with the smaller unit you know this model is a pretty affordable unit it's about 4000 bucks for this 14kw just for the unit itself the model that's the 8kw is only about 2 000 bucks so there is some savings up front and also the fuel savings if you could get away with the smaller size oh and speaking of fuel this model by the way if it was on propane would use about 1.6 gallons per hour so if this could work for you compared to that let's say 22 size from a competitor that's kind of nice having less than half the fuel use all right let's talk about setup and startup and really this is going to be no matter the brand that you use once you get that thing in location you really have two main trades involved unless you have a you know generator dealer who's going to do all this for you the plumber is going to be hooking up the fuel source for you and the electrician's going to be hooking all the wiring up for you now with this champion i've got an automatic transfer switch which is pretty sweet so what happens is when the power goes out from the utility i'm connected to my grid here when that goes out there's about a 30 or so second delay until this thing is going to kick on now that delay happens because sometimes with brown outs powers kicking on and off you wouldn't want this generator constantly cycling on and off but you could actually have your local dealer change that if you wanted to kick on faster and then once the engine starts up it needs to run for a couple of seconds before it's up to the rpms i think it's like 3 600 rpms is it's running speed before it's generating full power and then boom it clicks to transfer but that happens all automatically in the background the same is true when the power kicks back on so if the power was out for uh you know 16 hours and all of a sudden kicks back on the same is going to happen on the back side it's going to turn off the generator and switch back to the grid so it's nice that this happens all automatically the other thing to think about with loads though is remember your loads that are the 240 circuits are going to be more power intense more power hungry things like your electric dryer your electric cooktop your air conditioner those are the big hogs in your house that are using a lot of energy so you need to think carefully about how many of those might be running at one time when you're thinking about sizing and also be thoughtful about it when you're running your generator that you're not doing multiple 240 circuits let's talk cost for a minute i mentioned earlier this unit runs about four thousand bucks the smaller eight kw you might get for about two thousand bucks at a minimum you're going to spend at least i would say a thousand bucks uh on your trades getting this hooked up don't forget you've got permit cost too that's gonna vary big time depending on where you are in the country uh in california permits are more expensive you might have longer lines to hook up so it could be multiple thousands of dollars but i would say for a generator like this one as little as five thousand maybe as much as ten thousand dollars to install the next size down you certainly could do it looks like depending on where you are in the country for five thousand bucks maybe not too much more than that so these aren't as expensive as maybe you initially thought they were the next thing i want to talk about is exercise and maintenance just like you and i need to exercise our bodies these guys are going to run once a week for just a little bit of time like seven or eight minutes and they're going to make sure that everything's working well that the oil has been lubricated that everything's working well and that's actually for your benefit as the generator owner because you want to check it and make sure everything's working well that there's no trouble lights on so this one in particular has a little exercise button when you flip open the goaling doors here when you flip that button back there it's going to turn the generator on and it's going to exercise it for seven minutes and then seven days from now it's going to do the exact same thing so if i flip it on now let's say it's two o'clock in the afternoon seven days from now it's going to do the exact same thing and run for seven minutes now maintenance there is a little bit of maintenance to do we need to change the oil after about a hundred hours and then check your manual because you want to check your schedule now you really want to make sure that when i need it this thing's ready to go but it's going to have a continuous charge on the batteries it's pulling that from the grid to make sure my batteries are working well and you want to check your trouble lights just to make sure that there's nothing like i said during that exercise cycle that you need to do some maintenance on guys big thanks to champion for sponsoring today's video they got a great website go check it out as i mentioned before the sizer the deal locator that's really helpful but i wanted this video to be helpful for you no matter which brand you're thinking about or which one you ultimately end up with quick plug for these guys though they've got some nice models they represent a really good value for the dollar spent and by the way they've got a 10 year warranty which from what i've seen looks like about the best in the business so you've got a lot of peace of mind with one of these units check their website out to learn more information on that guys if you're not currently subscriber hit that subscribe button below we've got new content every tuesday and every friday we talk about building science we talk about products we talk about how to build a better house and i really enjoy making these videos so join me hit that subscribe button you won't miss any of our new content follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music] you

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 545,890

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build, emergency power, black out, brown out, generac, generak, standby generator, home generator, champion generator, disaster prep, prepper video, preparation for emergency, build show, generator, propane generator, natural gas power

Id: z_MrC7_xz6U

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020