Whole home, standby generator

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couldn’t get it to crank

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Only trying to be helpful here…

If you would have done regular maintenance on this one it would probably crank fine. Whole house standby generators are no different.

If you spend the money on one, make sure to do at least quarterly and annual maintenance on it.

That’s gonna be pretty expensive I’d imagine. Gotta call utility and some contractors for a real cost as the location and market will vary on price.

Prob cheaper to get one that runs on propane and get a 500 gallon tank.

But a couple backup carbs from Amazon, always need to drain fuel in generators before storing.

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Prob cheaper to get one that runs on propane and get a 500 gallon tank

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Better idea in my opinion.

As an alternative, you might consider installing a solar panel with battery back up-system.
That’s what we did on our house. Bought the equipment from a well-known retailer out of Texas and installed it ourselves.
Would probably be a little more expensive upfront. But you get a 30% tax credit from the fed gov. And it pays for itself over time.

Also, the sun is free to everyone. So that eliminates any outside utility failures or them cutting you off for any reason.

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A few years back for one of those storms I was unprepared, and didn’t have a generator so I had to rush to buy one. Ended up getting a champion 7850w. Didn’t need it for the storm but shortly after I bought a camper and used it to run the camper for a hunting season. Pulled it out yesterday, put some gas in it, couldn’t get it to crank. I ended up just setting up my small camper with my small generator on standby if we lose power. My main concern is losing all my deer meat and fish in my freezer if the power is out for too long.
Anyway, I’m really wanting a whole home natural gas generator so I don’t have these problems in the future. My house doesn’t have gas hooked up though. My street does, because my buddy down the road has one. Anybody on here had one installed on a house that doesn’t already have natural gas ran to it? How much more is that going to cost over having one installed on a house that already has gas ran to it?

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Hospitals do not power the entire facility with backup generators, no home would need that much backup power. It'd ne VERY expensive to install and VERY expensive to properly maintain...and you only need about 30-50 amps at 240 volts instead of the 150 of the most likely 225 amp service your home has and could use at any given time. For instance do you need to run your washer and drier and you oven simultaneously while your AC is running and someone is taking a 45 minute shower? If the answer is no, and it is, you do not need to power your entire home.

The most practical way to have backup power...most affordable, safe and convenient, is to buy a 9000/7500 or so open frame inverter generator and run drop cords to things you can't live without. It'll cost you about $1500 or less and you can use it for other things. If you do not run any generator under a load for a pretty good amount of time each month none of them are going to crank when you need them.

I’m wanting to be able to run my 4 ton ac unit, a few lights, refrigerator, freezer, and hot water heater. About what size would be able to do that? A friend of mine works on equipment for a living and he’s convinced me to go the diesel generator route. He said his burns about 4 gallons a day, and people with natural gas generators have problems when everyone is running their generators at the same time. I’m considering buying a welding machine/generator that way it will get used more than once every couple years.

If you plan on running your central AC unit on an open frame generator, you will probably need a soft start kit for your exterior AC unit. They are designed to reduce the starting current of the compressor thus allowing a “smaller” generator to power the AC. You also will need an interlock kit for safety and a transfer switch. Just google “running your AC with a portable generator “.
Genmax has a 10,500 watt tri-fuel generator with key fab start that would be a good option with natural gas.

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I don’t know what size he has but 4 gallons a day seems very unrealistic

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43kw, so it probably doesn’t run much more than an idle lol

The main road by me has NG, but my little dead end street doesn't. So I contacted Atmos about how much it would cost to run 1500 feet from the road to my house.

They estimated $85k. I opted to buy a 500 gallon propane tank instead.

Also, renting large propane tanks is an option too.

Predator 9500s.

They sell everything to do it.