Recommendations for whole home generator?

4 or 5 of my neighbors have generacs and while the cost can be 5-10k for setup, the couple of times we've had power out i've been jealous as hell.

it kicks on within minutes and b/c its running on NG, there's literally no limit to how long your house can be run.

pretty sweet setup.

go w/ Generac for residential. they used to be shite but are now one of the most reliable. we have generac at our home fwiw.
call your local generac dealer and have them come look at your loads and they will size what you need. you can load shed what you don't want to run.
i live in the electrical world and deal w/ generator back up power a good bit. most of our commercial customers are now transitioning to generac. in the past it was always CAT and kohler.

fwiw, i dont sell generators, just install what the client goes with.

I went down a rabbit hole last year researching this. I ultimately went with a Generac 32kw liquid cooled unit. It was installed and serviced by Optimize EGS, which is located here in BR. The unit is fantastic, appears to be well built, and Optimize was a pleasure to deal with. I probably could have saved a few bucks and gone with the 27kw liquid cooled, but at this point, I didn't want to be running around worrying about overloading the unit and I didn't want to deal with under-supplying my two AC units, multiple fridges, dryer, oven, etc. It's also quieter than air cooled units and performs better in our climate. I'm very happy.

Generac always has specials, so they included a 10 year warranty on the unit. There was also minimal wait time. It was installed within 45 days of signing the agreement.

That's what I wanted to do originally. If you are confident in your ability to deal with electrical and plumbing issues, generators are not a big deal. I suspect, however, that OP will run into the same issue I did: he lives in BR. That being the case, if you have to upgrade your gas service or pull your meter, you are going to have to involve the gas company (and somewhat less critically) Entergy. The upgraded gas meter will not get installed absent a sign off from the permit office. Apparently, BR has really tightened the regulations on setoff requirements for generators in the last few years. Accordingly, I ultimately decided that I was willing to pay for someone else to deal with that because I did not want to be in a situation where I paid for all this equipment and labor and have the permit office deny me based on where I sited the unit.

Replaced our Generac with a Cummins 40kW last year. Much quieter and uses less natural gas. Also had a 500 gallon tank added to our 250 tank so we're good to go.

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I went with a Kohler water cooled

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Do you mind telling me what you paid and size?

We just paid $27k in Covington for a 25kw Cummins installed for my mom. The install labor was high because the power run was pretty lengthy and there were some obstacles we had to get through.

I paid about $22k for a 30kw Cummins last September, but it was on a new construction so we were able to easily plan for it. I've learned that sometimes retrofitting can be a lot more expensive.

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they used to be shite

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I don’t know how long ago but mine is 6 years old (22KW air cooled) and I haven’t had any problems with it. Nor anybody I know with one.

Damn thing ran for 6 straight days during Ida and never checked up.

My 32kw liquid cooled was $23k ish. But they knocked $1k off of it because I poured my own slab. That included about 80 feet of gas piping, which they ran down the side of my house through the attic. They also did interest free financing for 18 months, so it was nice to let inflation take a bit more off the price.

I recommend having them install a whole-home disconnect between the meter and the ATS. The disconnect runs about $200ish, and it's not a big deal to install it when they are doing everything else. It's nice because when/if you need to do additional work, you don't have to deal with having the meter pulled.

We just had a NG 20kw Kohler installed last November. Our house is about 2800 square ft and the ac is a similar size. The connections are right by the unit and we spent 12k all in. Turns on within 10 seconds of the power going out. It's great.