There is a great deal of hype regarding maintenance on gen sets. At one time decades ago, I supervised the maintenance of gen sets in emergency operations centers at many remote sites. A typical gen set was 360 KW, diesel powered, and required for emergency services. Each had a battery pack that took up about 2,500 square feet. I had two men employed full time to maintain them. In fact, I invented a device for filtering the radiators used on them, they held 36 gallons of water/antifreeze.
Maintenance is really not a big deal on most generators. I have 4 portable generators and a 4K Onan in the motorhome. On the gas ones, the only real issue is not letting dead gas accumulate in them which can cause the gas to break down and form varnish, which will then cause problems starting the gen set because of the small carburetors in them. Stabil will protect it for a couple years, but gas should be completely rotated out once per year, just to be safe. The gen sets themselves are nothing but two motors, one a simple gas motor and one simple electric motor/alternator with on/off switches and a circuit to regulate the output. There is not really much necessity of exercising them, they are just like your lawnmower, changing oil is not really necessary unless it get dirty. It is more important to make sure rats do not build nests in them or chew up the wiring. The dual fuel gensets do not require any fuel issues. Like anything, car, lawnmower, or microwave, you need to start them up once in a while if you expect them to work after sitting for months. Do you need to run them once a week or month? That is nuts.
Oil change recommendations are more hype than fact. Think about it, even the riding lawnmower, exposed to constant dust, only requires an oil change every 50 hours. Now put any motor in a clean space and it becomes like your car, which with any decent synthetic oil today is now 10,000 or 25,000 miles, that is 200-500 hours of engine run time. Any quality motor on a gen set should exceed that because they are filtered and do not move, they are not exposed to much in the air. As far as exercising them every week or every month, that is a lot of hype. The motor does not need that, the more important purpose is to make sure the rats have not gotten into it or the gas has not died. and the battery is charged.
Maintenance contracts where you pay someone to come out and check it or run it periodically are a rip-off. These are not like an HVAC unit that has something like freon that might leak out and has pressure levels that need to be maintained. I think the marketing staff just scare people into signing for the service which just goes on forever. There is nothing on a genset that might wear out from wear and tear like fan belts or hoses that might develop a leak, so a maintenance contract is like buying a maintenance contract on your riding lawnmower. The biggest value in frequently starting the genset is just to make sure the battery is up. Sitting batteries can easily be kept up with a $20 trickle charger, like you put on your boat or motorcycle that sits for months without being used.
A second reason for periodically running the genset is simply to replace the gas in the unit, you really do not need to pay people to do that. Propane and diesel powered units do not require that at all. So, the maintenance contract, in my view are a scam. But for people with zero skills, to simply flip it on and run it for 15 minutes, it does relieve those imaginary fears of the unknown.
On the portable gen sets that are started by battery power, that is the weak link. We have one from Cabelas that is a great device, but they come with tiny batteries, like a motorcycle battery. For the remote to work, that battery must always be up and should be checked and charged a couple times per year. Of course just flipping it on for 20 minutes every 3-4 months solves that. And again, a $20 trickle charges solves that problem.
I think as we get older we all want simpler things to do. Think about simple things, like changing your own oil. I still do that on my Jeep and motorhome. The motorhome is simply a V10 Ford where changing oil is the same as it was on any V8 fifty years ago. The problem is you cannot get it done at Walmart, it is too tall, so you take it to a truck or RV center and they change your 6 quarts of oil and filter for $250.00, so I change my own. On most cars today, people have no clue how to change the oil, and you cannot get under them anyway, so off to Walmart we go, money well spent.
Gensets are incredibly simple, but for many people who have no concept, they are a fearful mystery. Everyone gets to decide how to spend their money and a whole house system does away with that intense fear that many people have.
So, for folks with electrical knowledge there is a whole array of simple and cheap solutions, for people without basic knowledge of electricity, an automatic system is worth the high cost.
Also, as we age, all of us are losing our mobility. Many of us, myself included have problems getting out of bed at night in the middle of a storm and going out to wherever our genset might be and starting it up, running cords or whatever. So, automatic gensets are just the ticket for us as we all become feeble. and less mobile. That being the case, it makes sense to just add them to the budget if we are in a home we plan to be in for many years. That said, no reason to wait until we are immobile to put them in place, just go ahead and get them now and get more years of use out of them. They are simple devices, they should never wear out. They are not an investment, they are a device that makes life easier.
Just my opinion.
www.popularmechanics.com
