04-24-2025, 05:16 PM
I'll offer my story FWIW. I live in a high end residential area outside DC in VA. Most of my neighbors have high end generators by now. We have a harbor freight 4KW portable that I bought about 10 years ago for less than $300. I installed a manual transfer switch myself and fabricated a cable with appropriate twist lock plugs on either end. We have a 310' well, gas heat and an a/c unit. The harbor freight special has one 240v double breaker which runs the well pump. There are 4 other circuits available that I have wired for the fridge, one set of receptacles on the ground floor, and also one for the control system to the gas furnace. We have a large finished basement which is where we would go if there were unbearable heat associated with an outage. Our lot is heavily shaded so we'd be fine for quite awhile. Actually I still have one circuit unused.
Anyway, the cost of installation was under $500 since I did the work myself. The transfer switch, plus cable and connectors was almost as much as the generator.
The generator runs 10 hours at 50% on 5 gal of gas. We have never come close to using even ½ a tank. We have never come close to 50% load. The machine has been flawless and reliable. I maintain it annually and run it periodically just to be sure it will fire up.
So that's my cheapskate story. We're perfectly happy with this solution given the storms and outages here.
I'd suggest thinking through what you really need and how much you really want to spend. As always, everything is a tradeoff, and high end systems require maintenance and continuing expenses. For a cheapskate family, we'll live on the edge and go no-frills if we have a major outage lasting multiple days. Not the most fun, but it will be manageable and we can always take a trip and stay with family out of the disaster area. Not buying a 25K generator solution can pay for some nice accommodations out of the area.
Good luck.
Anyway, the cost of installation was under $500 since I did the work myself. The transfer switch, plus cable and connectors was almost as much as the generator.
The generator runs 10 hours at 50% on 5 gal of gas. We have never come close to using even ½ a tank. We have never come close to 50% load. The machine has been flawless and reliable. I maintain it annually and run it periodically just to be sure it will fire up.
So that's my cheapskate story. We're perfectly happy with this solution given the storms and outages here.
I'd suggest thinking through what you really need and how much you really want to spend. As always, everything is a tradeoff, and high end systems require maintenance and continuing expenses. For a cheapskate family, we'll live on the edge and go no-frills if we have a major outage lasting multiple days. Not the most fun, but it will be manageable and we can always take a trip and stay with family out of the disaster area. Not buying a 25K generator solution can pay for some nice accommodations out of the area.
Good luck.
sleepy hollow