re: Home Generator Cost Question

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Jon A thon

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Thank You, Sir

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In Louisiana apparently everyone wants twice that much no matter size of house with an industrial rating.

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A lot of folks in Louisiana have experience dealing with long term outages and as has been stated in the thread the cost to increase KW is minimal compared to the overall installation costs.

Reliability is #1 and most would agree that liquid cooled stomps air cooled in that category but to get a liquid cooled you typically have to step up to 30kw or above.

Go back and read some of the threads about how many new Generac air cooled crapped out their first real test, and how many others were suggesting only running them part of the day so they don’t overheat. If your going to spend the money for an actual standby generator most will actually want it to run 24hrs a day.

That said I have a 20kw B&S air cooled with over 800hrs and I have had no issues running it 24/7 when necessary (while shutting down for regular maintenance per recommended hrs).

Gage was great for the order and install of our Cummins 30 kW generator. It was installed last summer, just before Ida. Had to run for 6 days straight during that power outage. Gage was backed up on oil changes during that week after Ida, so I did the first oil/filter change myself at recommended 50 hours of runtime. Very simple job. When they send out a tech later to do the annual maintenance that came with warranty, he spilt a fair bit of oil, so was not too impressed, lol.

Now Gage wants me to pay $500/year for subsequent "annual maintenance" visits. Thinking I can do that myself...looking for best source of maintenance info on Cummins generators with the Foton 2431 cc inline-4 NG engine. Any suggestions?

Sorry to hear about spilt oil, that’s not a typical result from GAGE techs or part of our high standards. However, less than 5% of customers actually follow through with doing their own full maintenance checklist. The $500 range is a very fair market rate for 2 visits per year from a responsive company who will call you back and provide service going forward. If you want specifics on what’s needed to DIY, call 225-753-4243 and ask for a Cummins maintenance kit specifically for that unit. Thanks for the business and good luck!

Getting a Generac 24kw for $8400.