I Bought a Military Surplus Diesel Generator to Power my House

after doing a bunch of research I decided that a military surplus generator would be the best option to power my entire house not only are these cheap but they're extremely reliable plus diesel is frankly the best fuel which I'll explain later I bought this generator at a gov Planet auction several months ago and it's time to unload it from my [Music] truck in this video we're going to go through this generator mechanically to make sure it will work reliably I'm also going to hook it up to power my whole house now I do plan on using this generator as an automatic standby generator where it'll start up automatically when there's a power outage to power my whole house however due to the complexities involved there I may do a part two video on that now the model of this generator is an MEP 803a if you're looking to buy one of these generators be very careful because there are some pitfalls especially when you get into the larger capacity generators many of them are three-phase only and many of them operate at 4 100 Hertz if you're going to power a house in the US you need a 240 volt generator that operates on single phase and 60 HZ now the auction listing claims this generator operates it has an indicated 535 hours which is very low and it's rated for 10 Kow of power singlephase or three-phase now as far as I know the only thing wrong with this unit is it has a little bit of cosmetic damage to the top of the housing that's probably why I got it so cheaply I think I can probably just bang this out with a hammer and throw some new paint on it and it's totally fine when I was researching these I saw these regularly sell for about $5 to $6,000 this one I got for $3600 that's a heck of a deal we just open this thing up and take a look inside I mean it is a beautiful 4cylinder diesel engine the engine's made by Onin I believe but it's painted the color of a Detroit Diesel naturally we have a battery tray that is empty there's no battery in it the oil filter says it was replaced at 533 hours I think that was 2 hours of run time ago May of 2021 I mean it looks pretty good in here it's clean everything's easy to access this thing's going to be great over here on the other side this one might be a little tricky to open we got another empty battery tray on this side these are 24 volt units so they take two batteries the coolant expansion tank has coolant in it that's good antifreeze tested November of 2015 going to want to replace that so this plaque here says this engine was overhauled in 2013 they put standard Main and rod bearings in it and looks like they rebor it to plus 40,000 of an inch so I'm guessing it's 535 hours on the rebuild over here I have the control panel I love it it's got tons of gauges it's got indicator lamps to tell you if something's wrong this is fantastic so these are the output terminals essentially where I'm going to hook my house up to the generator but first I need to pour a concrete slab which is challenging in cold weather the concrete cannot be allowed to freeze until it reaches at least 500 PSI of compressive strength which is likely to take a couple days at these ambient [Music] temperatures all right well that didn't turn out too badly looks pretty good so we have a temperature of about 63° on the surface the ground is like 37° the snow 30° 2 days later I had covered the concrete with a blanket and some plastic sheeting to keep it warm and here are the results the temperature of it's a good 54° and the ground is uh 46° and with the slab ready it's time to move the generator onto the slab with my excavator that's frankly older than I am [Music] I mean would you just look at that that is a sight to behold as you can see I am not cheaping out on batteries cuz I want this thing to start all right we've got power okay let's just make sure this thing has oil and we'll start it up it's got oil and it actually looks pretty good too with that said it's at least a couple years old so I am going to change it but not before I started up temperature right now 27° fah so I'm going to put it on preheat for a good it says 30 seconds it's quite cold out so this is going to use all the glow plug preheating it can get I'm not actually counting but that's probably good enough all [Music] right we've got good oil pressure that thing is sweet yeah it runs great okay first things first Let's do an oil change if I just open up this valve it should drain out should drain out oh my God it's draining out real slow oh my goodness I should have run it for longer this is some thick oil in there I think I think it's safe to say this is not the right grade oil for these weather conditions in fact this oil is so thick I'm genuinely wondering if someone put gear oil in the engine while I'm waiting for that oil to drain there's a really convenient coolant drain tube here back here there's a valve to turn and the coolant drains right out okay this is taking way too long it's getting dark and colder out so I set up a heater here to try to warm up the engine block and hopefully that will make it drain faster well it looks like that's about all I'm going to get out of it it takes 5.9 quartz so that's probably pretty close to all of it next time what I'm going to do is run the engine to get the oil warm and then it should drain out a lot faster I know this filter probably doesn't have to be changed but I'm going to do it anyway to be thorough new filter we got a wix the old filter is a champ it does say made in USA so it can't be that bad the oil I'm using is Shell Rotella T6 it's a 10w30 which is approximately the correct temperature range for this application since the generator is mostly going to be run in the winter and it is a full synthetic oil level looks okay we'll check it again after I run it for coolant I'm using this xerx heavy duty extended life coolant and the advantages of this over the green coolant are twofold number one it has an extended life 10 years it says and number two it has an additive that helps protect against cavitation which is nice for diesel engines because this is concentrate I've already gone and mixed it up in these jugs here with distilled water this looks suspiciously like truck stop lemonade oh we're overflowing okay it's full so I filled up the radiator the coolant expansion tank is full to the cold level so the correct thing to do now is to run this get it up to temperature and then I can double check the coolant level and make sure it's good I really should have done this before I ran it initially but I'm going to check the water separator here for any water or crap in the fuel nothing is coming out you know it's also possible that the fuel that's in this is not winter fuel so it could be gelled up CU it's pretty cold out right now okay it's 25° outside I'm going to give these glow plugs a good 30 seconds to run here got oil pressure all right well it started up a lot faster that time okay I feel like we might have some cooling system issues first this gauge has been pegged down here so this gauge does not work I don't know if it's the gauge the wiring or the sensor but I'm going to have to dig into it and figure it out the engine's been off for a little bit I'm getting about 160° over here there are two sensors here and I'm not sure which one is the temperature sensor there's a one wire and then there's a two wire sensor first thing to check is in here I think this is just as simple as opening it up let look at that let's see tet temp gauge is this one right here it's got a bunch of wires to it it's hooked up and everything looks fine oh this switch right here currently it's set for three phase if I switch it over here that puts it on 120/240 Volts single phase cuz that's what I'm going to need for my house five wires going to this gauge here so I'm going to need to get out the electrical diagrams and sort this out okay so even though there are five wires there really are only three terminals that I need to concern myself with so we have the the ground here this is power 24 volts and this is the signal from the sensor first thing I need to do is turn the power on so first thing I'm going to check is ground here and power and we're getting 23 volts that's good enough second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to check the resistance from the ground to the sensor and I'm not getting any resistance that's a problem I should be getting some resistance there so that's telling me there's no signal coming into the gauge okay step two over here at at the sensor so I'm going to get one of these leads on the sensor itself and the other one I'm going to ground somewhere like this and I'm getting 66 ohms I don't know if that's the correct value for this temperature but it seems like a plausible value so I think we're going to say the sensor is probably okay the fact that when I tried to measure the resistance at the gauge and it said that the circuit was open suggests that there is probably a problem with this wire right here just as a bit of a sanity check I have one of these probes over there on the sensor and this one here you hear that beeping that means that the wire is continuous and there's nothing wrong with the wire so what's going on here something is fishy okay let me double check this so we got ground we got signal and I'm getting 70 ohms now what is going on here this is working correctly yeah the gauge is still pegged down here so I'm going to diagnose this as a bad gauge because I think all the inputs to the gauge are correct while I was waiting for a new gauge to in I figured I'd change the air filter this air filter looks super clean this is replaced 533 hours I mean I bought a new air filter but I am not going to replace that because that's like brand new next I'll change the fuel filter and water separator you see that the end of this hose is plugged with ice which is why it wasn't draining when I tried to check it for water earlier I guess that's kind of dumb because it's below freezing so the water's ice that's probably a good enough reason for me to change this filter oh it's on there really tight I think this one is going to work hopefully oh my God that's so tight so this Wix filter that I bought to replace this doesn't have this Nifty drain here so I wonder if I can swap these it looks like they're the same threads the only difference being that this has an O-ring seal and this does not you know what I don't think they are the same threads I think they just look very similar yeah no they're similar but they're not the same okay that's fine this is no big deal this video would not be complete without a little bit of controversy pre-filling my fuel filter okay new fuel filter it goes like this right it looks like there's a little seal in here this seal is old and hard and messed up so I'm really glad that I'm changing it new seal all right well there's another task that's super easy to do on this thing now before I hook this up to my house we need to do the obligatory disclaimer warning I have no idea what I'm doing I am just a YouTuber and not a professional if you attempt this yourself you will certainly experience loss of life Li and or property the building Spector likely to condemn your house you will be exposed to risk of fire electric CH traa and if you live in California cancer do not try this at home now my first sort of installation note is that the generator needs to be at least 5T away from the house and that's because if the generator catches on fire hopefully the house won't also catch on fire second I've dug a trench here that allow me to run conduit from the house to the generator at a depth of at least 18 in as required by the National Electric Code now I also have a quick note about this ground rod here which I drove 8 ft into the ground it's not technically required for this installation because the generator is grounded to my house all the time through my transfer switch however if I were to use this generator to power something else like my three-phase Bridgeport Mill not through my house then I would need that or at the very least having a ground rod is best practice so essentially I've done this to make my life easier in the future if I ever need it okay so I need a post here to have an electrical outlet and also to have the conduit come up and the wires come out to go to the generator luckily I had some concrete left over from pouring this laab that I was able to mix up real quick as always for cold weather pores I'm using warm water from the kitchen sink there we go that's perfect close enough to close enough being so far into the ground I'm not particularly concerned about this concrete freezing before it cures okay it's it's time to drill into my house I really don't like doing that but it's got to be done I'm going to start with this pilot bit here and we'll see where it comes out I think I know about where it's going to come out [Music] but okay this right here is where it came out I wanted to avoid this stud here so that's pretty much exactly what I wanted I'm going to start drilling on the inside of the house first because this is easier to repair if something beard is in here well unfortunately I hit a stud over here to the right so I'm going to have to move this over to the left by about half an inch on the other side so in order to cut a nice clean hole in this vinyl siding without tearing it up or shattering it especially in this cold weather you can actually run a hole saw backwards and it'll do a really good job of cutting through it look at that fantastic here we go look at that could see through into the other side I love how they Ed plywood rather than particle board or fall a particle board to build this house so that's nice through this 2in conduit I'm going to be running these four things and first I have this big honken cable right here this is the generator power cable it's got three power wires plus a ground plus a bunch of wires for control circuitry I'm going to be using these in part two of this series so that I can use the generator as an automatic standby generator here I have some 38 fuel line I'm going to be using this in part two as well this is basically going to be so the generator has an almost endless supply of fuel over here I just have a standard four wire cable I'm also going to use this in part two of the series for some custom control circuitry over here I have some fairly standard 122 non-metallic wire I'm going to use this to power a 20 amp outlet by the [Music] generator okay so my new water temperature gauge came in as it turns out there were two manufacturers of these military spec gauges for these generators and neither of them are in production anymore and I'm wondering if maybe that's why they sent this otherwise perfectly good generator off to the auction to be sold as it turns out you can still buy quality aftermarket gauges that will work in this application but they're just not technically certified to military specification okay so we're going to started up here make sure the coolant temperature gauge works and then also we're going to test and make sure it's actually generating power over here I have some 103 wire running in here that I've got hooked up and if you're not sure which wires go where someone was nice enough to write in Sharpie so that I would know but if you open up this in here it says for output of 120/240 volts we do L1 L3 and neutral all right because I replaced the primary fuel filter I'm going to Prime this for a little bit looks like the gauge is working it's been running for a little bit and it shows that it's up to temperature I'm not getting any power at these terminals very very weird I decided to moove the top cover so I can take a look inside and see what's going on well here's a look inside the generator the three main generator output wires connect to this thing right here so that might be something to take a look at but it's pretty complicated in here so I think it's time to break out the wiring diagrams right wiring diagrams well I identified the part in question as K1 and the key says that K1 is the AC circuit interruptor I also noticed that there's a part called the AC circuit interruptor switch labeled S5 when I located the switch on the wiring diagram I can see it plainly controls the AC circuit interrupter well this is that switch in question so let's see if that fixes the [Music] issue all right we got 121 volts and that gives me 243 this is perfect well I feel a little bit dump for not reading the manual on that all right so we got these cables protected by this nice nylon sleeve here this will protect it from the Sun and from some abrasion as well I just got to strip down these big wires here and connect them to these lugs right here I think I figured out the best way to strip this cable you don't cut all the way through it but you just make a little slice down the cable cutting most of the way through it the problem is you really don't want to slice into the insulation of the wires inside this Cable's very expensive and I already ran the entire length of it so I can't really replace it at this point especially if I ruin the wires down there I don't have any extra then you can kind of just pull it apart that's not too difficult to do okay I just got this thing stripped all the way down and that's when I noticed that there's a string in here that you can pull and it'll cut the installation for you which is the easiest way so these are the control wires that I'll use to turn this into an automatic standby generator in part two but these are the four main conductors that I'll use to transfer the [Music] power so technically I'm supposed to bury some of this marking tape at least 12 in above the conduit and the purpose of this is so that it doesn't get dug up accidentally now it's a little bit silly in this case because it's a short run you can see where it goes in and where it comes out so where do you think the conduit is obviously it's in the middle but it is technically required so I'm just going to do it maybe I just tie it to this [Music] okay it is time to install this 20 app Outlet over here on this [Music] post [Music] [Music] stripping this underground rated wire can be a pain because the insulation runs around all three of the conductors see if I can use this and then pull it off oh yes it worked never mind that was really easy so I guess I'm turning into Home Improvement channel here and I'm going to show you guys how to wire an electrical outlet start with the ground I need to twist these two conductors the reason why I'm doing this is because I have to ground both the box and the receptacle a ground wire nut will go on there secure those together I'm going to make a little Loop here and on this one I'm going to make another little Loop inside the box that green screw is the ground screw the loop should go clockwise when you install the screw on it so that when you tighten it it doesn't make it come apart this actually doesn't take a loop so I'm going to cut this end off I mean these things are really easy you just stick it in and tighten it up we'll strip about that much off of this wire and the same with the black wire these Outlets are so easy to install you just stick it in and tighten it up the white wire will typically have a silver colored screw and then the black wire there's actually usually a gold colored screw although in this case it is black which is nice okay we got plenty of wire here so we'll just sort of Tuck this in fold it into the box neatly having extra wire is nice for if you do anything in the future you have plenty of room to cut it strip it do what whatever you need to do to it there we go I should also note that I am using a water resistant GFCI outlet out here because it is an outdoor damp environment in fact all of this stuff is outdoor rated and there you go that's how you wire an electrical outlet and now to power that outlet I need to hook up this end of the wire which I already ran over here to my circuit breaker now before I start poking around in here this is live with 240 volts and it would be quite dangerous to work on this in that state this is a good time to try out the utility service disconnect on my new transfer switch now this is an automatic transfer switch but I'm using it as a manual transfer switch I will turn it into an automatic transfer switch in part two of this series okay shutting the power off simple as this great I do have a light here next to the camera that's pluged plugged into my UPS uninterruptible power supply so that's why there is still some light here just to be extra extra safe we do have Zer volts space number 12 here is currently for the external power outlet by my driveway and so I'm going to replace this breaker with a dual breaker that way it'll control both exterior outlets and it won't take up any more space in my panel now I just have to run this wire into the box and I probably should run it on this side somewhere okay I'm going to use this knockout right here now I'm going to run the wire through this hole but to protect it from abrasion I'm going to clamp it in place with one of these clamp connectors it's threaded right there so you just stick it in and then I can screw this onto it so I'm going to strip this wire right about here and then hooking it up is fairly straightforward the black wire goes to the breaker itself this is where the power comes from the white is the neutral and that goes to the neutral bar right here it could also go to this one but I'm going to do it on this side keep it neat and then the ground goes to one of the ground bars which are grounded to the case of this one thing about this panel is that the ground in the neutral are not bonded together and that's because they are bonded together in the transfer switch and you can't bond them in both places for the neutral I can just find any opening on the neutral bar the ground wire I hooked up to the Ground Bar which is hidden behind all these wires and is therefore kind of difficult to see I should be able to turn power back onto the house now lovely and to make sure this Outlet works oh no what's wrong it's a GFCI outlet so maybe I need to reset it yep there it is and then I really should make sure this thing is actually able to power my house so let's try it out it's pretty cold out it's uh 30° outside so we'll preheat it 930 okay so the voltage is good 240 volts the frequency right about at 60 HZ I'm going to go ahead and close the circuit interruptor now from the inside they give you this little handle to manually switch it which goes in here it's insulated for 600 volt cuz I'm sticking this into an enclosure that is charged right there yeah so shut off power to the house first okay and now switch over to the generator and we got power back on fantastic yeah everything seems normal in here everything still looks good over here interestingly it's showing that I'm only using a tiny bit of current so I'm wondering if this gauge works I'm going to turn on my oven and see if I can get that power usage up let's go bake yeah we're a little bit over 25% rated current so that's great at the beginning of this video I mentioned that diesel is the best fuel compared to all the other options and there are many reasons why but the number one reason why I chose diesel as opposed to propane or natural gas or gasoline is because of storage now I have propane at my house already I have a 125 gallon propane tank and I started my search for generators by looking at propane generators because it would be so convenient the generator I was looking at would use about 2 gallons of propane per hour and these propane tanks they don't fill them up all the way but I would be looking at if the tank were full of getting about 4 days of runtime on my generator before I run out of propane now if I were only half empty I would actually get 2 days of runtime which is not very much so I called up my propane company and asked hey can I get a larger propane tank for my generator and they said well they don't give out propane tanks for generator usage I could buy one she gave me a quote for a 500gal propane tank in the price was wait for it $6,000 and that by itself wrote off propane as an option because that is ridiculously expensive now diesel on the other hand because it's not a compressed gas is much easier to store and the tanks are a lot cheaper I can buy a brand new home heating oil tank at 275 gallons for about $1,000 so that's already much much cheaper but you can actually get those tanks for free or cheaply a lot of the time right now A lot of people are switching from oil heat to propane and for that reason you can go on Marketplace and you can find a lot of used tanks on there and that's what I did and I actually got a killer deal this is the tank that I got on Marketplace for free and it even came with about 150 gallons of home heating oil that was inside the tank now the challenge was to pump the fuel out and transport it and then also the tank was located in a basement where it was pretty tricky to get out but if you can solve those problems you can get a really good deal on a tank like I did also this tank is only 10 years old which means it has a lot of life left in it a lot of the tanks on Marketplace are used and so you do do have to be concerned with leaks but this one I should be able to get decades more use out of it before I have to worry about that also with a 275 galon capacity I should be able to get conservatively about 10 to 11 days of runtime out of my generator before this runs out of fuel and that brings me to reason number two why diesel is better and that is ease of Transportation now if I had a propane generator and I run out of propane my only option is to wait for my propane company to come deliver more propane now a lot of the time when the power goes out it's because trees fall down on the power lines and if the trees are down it could very well be that they're not able to get to my house with diesel fuel I can bring my truck here to the gas station and fill up my 90 galon fuel transfer tank and it's as simple as that if you don't have a fuel transfer tank you can go to Tractor Supply or somewhere like that and buy one or you could just use a smaller fuel can I mean diesel is very easy to transport reason number three is that diesel engines tend to be a lot more reliable and longer lasting than gas engines whether they're gasoline propane or natural gas reason number four diesel also tends to be a lot more efficient than gas engines reason number five is a minor reason but diesel tends to be safer than the other options because it's not going to explode on you now there is one downside to having a diesel generator and that is the cost usually they're a lot more expensive than gas generators although when you go this route this ends up being about the same amount of money or at least in the same ballpark as a gas generator and the second downside with this generator in particular is that it is not able to be used as an automatic standby generator without significant modification and this is where we get into part two of this series where my engineering background is going to really come in handy because I'm going to do those modifications to this generator to make it an automatic standby generator my plan is to turn this into a computer controlled sort of smart generator so that I can write software to control it I'll even be able to use that software to send me notifications like hey your generator just turned on or it's overheating or it's out of fuel things like that which could really come in handy anyway if you're interested in that stay tuned for part two and thank you so much for [Music] watching

Channel: Waldo's World

Views: 3,717,792

Keywords: generator, diesel, military surplus, MEP-803A, DIY, home improvement, mechanics

Id: 6ChQhIzUXr4

Length: 35min 23sec (2123 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2024