Quote:
Originally posted by tmerrick
Does anyone run a natural gas unit tied to the house that automatically fires up when power is lost?
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I have a GENERAC unit that runs off of my propane (it will run off of natural gas also). We live in rural Elk Grove and don't have natural gas. In any case the unit is great. We bought it a Costco 6 years ago. It comes with a transfer switch and will support about 60 amps. We use it to run our refrigerator, freezer, well pump, fish tanks, Koi pond pumps, and some house circuits including our TV and DirecTV and internet equipment. When the power fails it waits about 30 seconds and then starts the generator motor, waits for it to come up to speed and then cuts over the dedicated circuits. When line power is restored it waits about a minute and then cuts back to line power and shuts off the generator. It also does a test once a week to make sure everything on the generator side is working and alerts us (via a red light) if the test failed. We have been very happy with it. As a side note we had SMUD come out an inspect the installation to verify that there is no way for it to back feed the line and put their crew in danger.