A whole house generator btu provides backup power to your entire home. It powers up everything that needs electricity, including lights, heating and air conditioning, refrigerators and freezers, tools and more.
The size of a generator you need depends on your household power consumption, financial situation and fuel availability. It’s also important to consider where you’ll install the generator.
How to Determine Your Needs
If you’re considering purchasing a whole house generator btu, it’s important to determine your needs before you make a purchase. This will ensure that you get a generator that’s sized correctly and will be able to power all of the appliances in your home at once.
First, you’ll need to calculate the watts that you expect to use from your appliances and electronics. The best way to do this is by taking a look at the wattage ratings on each appliance you plan to use with the generator.
Most manufacturers will list the “rated watts” and the “starting watts” on these devices and appliances. You can find these numbers on the label or by calling the manufacturer. When you have these two numbers, you can calculate the wattage that your generator will need to handle them. This wattage calculation will give you the watts you need to size your whole house generator correctly.
Size
The size of the generator you need depends on your home’s square footage and the number of appliances and electronics you want to power. A larger home will need a bigger generator than a smaller one because it has more space and a higher number of appliances.
Once you’ve made a list of all the appliances you want to keep running, you can calculate how much wattage they use. You’ll need to include both the starting wattage of the appliances and their actual wattage.
If you’re not sure how to do this, you can use this wattage estimation guide.
Once you know the total wattage of all the appliances and electronics you want to run, you can use a whole house generator sizing calculator to get a more accurate idea of what size generator you need. Once you’ve sized your generator, you can also consider runtime and noise levels to make the best decision for your needs.
Noise
The amount of noise produced by your whole house generator depends on a number of factors. The model and size of the generator, as well as the distance from the home, wind direction and any noise dampening measures that you’ve taken all contribute to how loud the machine is.
Luckily, the noise can be easily controlled and there are a few things that you can do to help reduce it. The first is to move the generator away from your home.
Another option is to install an acoustic barrier that helps deflect the sound waves from the engine so they won’t travel as far into your home. These barriers can be made of a variety of materials and are often found in large industrial installations.
Some generators also come with a muffler, which is a piece of equipment that sits over the exhaust pipe and reduces the volume of the exhausts that the engine emits. These mufflers can be quite effective at quieting your generator.
Fuel
Gasoline is typically the fuel of choice for most homeowners who need a backup generator. It’s available in most locations and is a cheap, stable fuel that won’t congeal in the generator line, is quieter when burning and contributes to a longer engine life.
Whole house generators offer a variety of fuel options including natural gas, liquid propane and diesel. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages and can be used to power different loads, but the most important thing is that each has an adequate amount of fuel for a given load.
Tri-fuel (or hybrid-fuel) generators provide solutions to fuel availability issues that inevitably occur in the event of a power outage. To operate on vapor fuels you simply turn off the gasoline fuel line, connect the proper t-valve fitting for your chosen fuel and then connect a main fuel supply.