I want to outfit my house with a generator to run at least fridge/freezer and heating system in case of a prolonged blackout. I live in an urban area in Western MA, so blizzard and ice storms are the biggest threats. Oh, yeah, and I need to do it without breaking the bank. My electrician says I can get buy with 2000 watts for those needs, but I'm looking at some 3500w machines.

Here's the background.

Gas generators seem relatively cheap, but would require me to store too much gas. I've got three young kids, and no garage, so I'm not crazy about that idea.

When we switched our heating system from heating oil to Natural Gas I kept the heating oil tank in the basement. In theory I guess I could use this to supply a diesel generator.

I've now got Natural Gas for home heating, but I don't want to spend the money for one of those instant-on Kohler-style generators. I'm researching portable generators that could fueled with NG. From my perspective this would be my preferred option. Any thoughts here? Good generator leads?

I could also run one of propane, but to keep things simple I'd rather not have a big 100lb propane tank behind my house.

Any input on best options would be appreciated? I found a company in CA, duropower, that makes dual fuel gas/ng generators.

Thanks!

Hello Horus. Welcome to the forum. This subject comes up often. Here is a link with some good posts about the pro's and con's of the various approaches.

http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=138718&page=1

Good luck!

If you are worried about storing about fuel then propane or ng would probably be best for you.

The other thread probably answers a lot of questions if you have more please post

Welcome to the fire, Horus!

If I had an unused heating oil tank in the basement I'd seriously consider using it to store fuel for a diesel generator. From what I've read (no first-hand experience) diesel generators have a higher initial cost but give you the best energy-to-fuel output. My understanding is they also have lower maintanence requirements. Danger-wise, I'd put diesel equal to heating oil as far as storage safety goes. If you've been storing heating oil in your basement for years, diesel isn't much worse.

That being said, try to track down the tank's manufacturer and discuss it with them. Diesel might attack gaskets or washers differently than heating oil or something like that. I'm not too concerned about that, but it doesn't hurt to check.

How big is the tank? If it's something huge like 350gal I doubt you could afford to fill it full of diesel. Leaving it half empty would expose the diesel to air, which isn't great for long-term storage. Maybe the people who swapped out you furnace have/know where you could get a smaller tank. Just a thought.

-Blast, who isn't an expert but occasionally plays one in magazines

Thanks. I believe, up here in MA anyway, the only difference between heating oil and diesel is a dye that's added to the heating oil. I'm going to look into this.

Great link. Thanks!

They are similar but heating oil is thicker and a little bit harder to ignite. It'd probably be best if you found some way to clean out whatever dregs of heating oil remained in the tank. Adding biodiesel to the tank might help as it is a better solvent for "oil goo" than regular diesel fuel. You don't need to get the inside of the tank spotless, but if there's several unused gallons of heating oil in the tank you might have problems due to it raising the flash point of the diesel.

-Blast

Think that #2 fuel oil is diesel, check with your local heating oil supplier. Even if you don't use fuel oil you can get off road diesel and not have to pay road taxes on it.

Don't be too quick to dismiss the gasoline generator. I agree that storing a lot of gas can be dangerous and expensive. I don't know your situation in power outages, but where I live, when my house and neighborhood is without power, I can drive 2 miles and have always found operational gas stations. They are on a different, and clearly more reliable part of the grid. Thus, I just have to make "gas runs" to keep the generators going. I store just enough gas (5-10 gallons) to get thru 24-36 hours until I can resupply.

So, maybe it is worth thinking about how much you want to prepare for a large scale, wide spread power outage where there is no gas to be had anywhere close, or, like my situation, where you are just at the far end of a circuit that goes down whenever the wind blows a branch off a tree.

On one memorable occasion, we were without power for 7 days while I could see homes with power from my front porch. Everyone else was up except us.

Frankly, I would put more thought into what you want to power, how much power you need and consider a supplemental panel to power these circuits from a single point where you can plug in the generator. The alternative is running extension cords from the generator to the things you want to power.

Anybody have any good suggestions for a diesel generator manufacturer? Ideally one with a fuel pump--maybe the all have this.

Heating oil/diesel Tank is in the basement per code. Generator would obviously be outside.

The other latest wrinkle is that according to code I was supposed to get rid of this heating oil/diesel tank in my basement when I switched to NG over the winter, so getting a licensed plumber to plumb this might be a challenge. The heating company who I bouight the tank from won't send their plumbers to do it.