GENERATORS

What you need to know about fuel

Many of my friends consider themselves at least wannabe preppers and every single one of them made the same mistake when it came to emergency power.  They went to Home Depot, or wherever, and bought a generator on sale; then put it in their garage with several jerry cans of gas, content in the knowledge that they’re ready for the next power outage. 

 The problem is this.  Regular gas has a shelf life of just a few months.  Diesel is somewhat better, but neither of these two fuels is a good idea.     Most small consumer and contractor grade generators run on gasoline anyway.  If you’re like the rest of us, you will forget that generator in the garage or your backyard shed until the lights go out, and just when you need it, IT WON’T WORK.     

 Your generator has a small carburetor with small passages and jets, and as gas ages, it will gel.  This old gas will block the jets  or fuel lines,  and your generator won’t run.   You might get it to start on full choke, but it will sputter and run erratically and won’t generate electricity.   And you won’t get it to run properly unless and until you disassemble the carburetor completely and clean it out.    In the middle of a power outage, who has half a day to remove, rebuild and replace a carburetor?     How many people even know how to do that? Everyone starts out with good intentions of babysitting the generator and fuel supply, but life gets in the way and you too, will forget. All the money you spent on a generator won’t do you any good, because it simply won’t run when you need it to.   Guaranteed.

Fuel stabilizers will help, but you still need to change the treated fuel at least every six months, religiously.   

There is a better fuel. And it’s cheaper than gas or diesel. And safer to store. It’s Propane. It seems that propane does not degrade and never goes bad, so if you want a generator you can depend on, buy one that runs on propane or natural gas.    Almost everywhere in the United States, propane is stored in a tank on your property, while natural gas is delivered by way of an underground pipe.

The best solution is a whole-house permanently mounted generator, but they are expensive to buy and expensive to install.** The real advantage of these type of systems is that properly installed, they’re fully automatic. They know when your power goes and start and stop automatically in response to your need for emergency electricity. These systems test themselves every week to make sure they’re online and ready when needed.

If you can’t afford a whole-house standby generator that runs on propane or natural gas, what can you do?  There are companies now that sell propane conversion kits for small gas-powered generators, which makes them dual-fuel.    There are now portable generators that you can buy that come as dual fuel. This solves the problem of fuel degradation, but you still need to remember to purchase and store a sufficient supply of propane. And you have the issue of connectivity, which I will deal with in another post.

 ** I have a propane powered whole-house generator fed by a 2000 gallon propane tank, but I live in a rural area.  This may not be an option if you live in the city.   I’m also an Electrical and General Contractor, with a lot of experience installing generators, so it was easy for me.