Thought I would post what our experience with a whole house propane generator was, for anyone that’s considering one.
This is our first experience with an extended power outage.
Our power went out Sunday morning at 4:45am. The generator came on automatically. We have a (15 year old) Generac 17KW propane generator, gas heat for downstairs, heat pump upstairs, unvented gas logs and gas stove. Lucky for us, our tank was filled up on Tuesday. The power just came back on (9pm) and I checked our tank. Looks like we have used a little over 125 gallons of propane since Tuesday afternoon. The generator ran approximately 40 hours, we heated the house and had the fireplace going most of the time. According to the gas company, our fireplace burns one gallon every 3 hours and I’m not sure what the furnace uses (90% efficient older unit). We didn’t use the furnace all the time and we did cook some but not a lot. I don’t know how much propane we used from Tuesday night to Sunday morning, but assume we didn’t use enough to matter. I’m overestimating usage, but It looks like we used about 3 gallons an hour. Not really bad when the generator repair guy estimated the generator would use 2.5 gallons and hour by itself. We were warm and figured we had another 3.5 days (400 gallons of propane to start with) if we didn’t make any changes. The downside to our generator is that it runs a constant speed so you can’t conserve fuel by cutting of appliances. Overall, I’m glad we have one, it came with the house) and living in the mountains would never be without one. Probably will have small backup just in case we have an extended outage.
This is our first experience with an extended power outage.
Our power went out Sunday morning at 4:45am. The generator came on automatically. We have a (15 year old) Generac 17KW propane generator, gas heat for downstairs, heat pump upstairs, unvented gas logs and gas stove. Lucky for us, our tank was filled up on Tuesday. The power just came back on (9pm) and I checked our tank. Looks like we have used a little over 125 gallons of propane since Tuesday afternoon. The generator ran approximately 40 hours, we heated the house and had the fireplace going most of the time. According to the gas company, our fireplace burns one gallon every 3 hours and I’m not sure what the furnace uses (90% efficient older unit). We didn’t use the furnace all the time and we did cook some but not a lot. I don’t know how much propane we used from Tuesday night to Sunday morning, but assume we didn’t use enough to matter. I’m overestimating usage, but It looks like we used about 3 gallons an hour. Not really bad when the generator repair guy estimated the generator would use 2.5 gallons and hour by itself. We were warm and figured we had another 3.5 days (400 gallons of propane to start with) if we didn’t make any changes. The downside to our generator is that it runs a constant speed so you can’t conserve fuel by cutting of appliances. Overall, I’m glad we have one, it came with the house) and living in the mountains would never be without one. Probably will have small backup just in case we have an extended outage.