Standby generator, whose got one.

[jrcampbe]

I just made a post in the other generator thread. But I picked up a surplus MEP-002a army diesel generator that I think is a wonderful machine. It will do 5KW steady state basically forever. Realistically it's about a 10KW generator. It burns just under half a gallon of diesel per hour at full load. When we've had an extended outage recently I ran it at about 25% of the time in 3 hour chunks, just to keep the freezers cold and have things charged up. About 3 gallons per day.

The *beautiful* thing about these units is they have an interconnect panel that can be reconnected to provide other kinds of power. They will generate real 3-phase 208V power for shop equipment!

Check them out. You can get one from govliquidation.com. They are sold as-is, but mine only had 11 hours on it when I bought it for $650. I had to go get it. It will just barely fit in a pickup bed.

Jim

 

[BlackjackNA]

Canadian Tire has a propane / gasoline generator on sale this week... only 3000 watts, tho'.
I have a 10kw unit in my trailer to power 220v welder and multiple compressors. I have lots of heavy gauge extension cords to reach anywhere in my apartment during power outages.

 

[Notgrownup]

I have a Craftsmen 5000 watt and it has save a **** load of food over the years... When it dies I will have another one...Fans at night and fridge and freezer during the day...I would love to have one to run my whole house including A/C... Gets hot in NC during hurricane season... We know oh! so well....During Hurricane Floyd it made its round to 4 families and saved a ton of perishables... My brother in law gave it to me because it broke a valve retainer and I fixed it for like $20 ...Bonus... Fixed it again this year for $35...