Generator

[dumper]

How big a generator would I need to act as standby on my house?
three people electric central heating pump, lights three freezers,one shower immersion heater

[GarethM]

You'll probably want a 1500 rpm diesel if you're running it for any length of time.

 

The immersion heater is that a 3kw in a hot water tank or an actual electric shower ?.

 

If it's an immersion, you'll run your whole house on 10-11KVA circa 10kw.

Edited August 10, 2022 by GarethM

[Conor Wright]

Shower alone could be 7kw, immersion, heating, kitchen... adds up quick 12-16 to run all as normal but 6 or 7 would get you out of trouble for a few days I guess. We have a 6.5 petrol gennie for power cuts. It does the job but no way would it run a house at normal usage levels. (It's the startup that kills them) Have been looking at pto generators with an idea to wire it in at the meter but it's been put on the long finger for now.

[dumper]

So a 20 kva should do it?

[dumper]

1 hour ago, GarethM said:

You'll probably want a 1500 rpm diesel if you're running it for any length of time.

 

The immersion heater is that a 3kw in a hot water tank or an actual electric shower ?.

 

If it's an immersion, you'll run your whole house on 10-11KVA circa 10kw.

Both 7kw shower and 3 kw immersion

[GarethM]

I'd have thought 20kva would have had enough poke to run everything, it's usually better to run them hard than on tick over.

 

If it was me I'd just not have a shower and use the immersion instead and a smaller generator.

 

Make sure you install a changeover switch to prevent sending power out to the grid

[Justme]

Our house runs on 10kw max 100% of the time.

As thats the limit of our twin inverters.

In theory when genny is on we can double that as they can work together.

 

Our genny is 11kVa & actually runs at about 8-9kw when recharging that bats / covering any loads.

 

Recently the genny had a fault so we had to use the PTO genny.

Due to cable size & length I had to turn the input down to 4kw.

So on batts we still had 10kw but the chargers were down to 4kw.

Just took longer to recharge but not double as the charge slope off as it fills is less steep with a slower charge.

It did however use double the fuel that the genny does.

 

We run

Dishwasher

washing machine

Tumble dryer (heat pump)

Internal water pressure pump 400w

External borehole pump 1kw

If solar thermal is low or rayburn off them the 2kw immersion as a top up.

Then all the usual stuff like tv's ect.

Our supply also runs the static caravan that my lad uses as his space again with washer / dryer, water pump tv's computers ect.

 

 

[GarethM]

Yeap, it's all about the size of your cable.

One would assume a diesel generator with changeover switch would be hard wired with 6 or 10mm.

 

But speak to a decent spark as you'll want to hard wire the connection to maximise the amps of any connection.

 

As a blue plugs are 16,32 or 63a and rated for 6,8 or 16 hours of use.

 

I've a 40kva for the firewood processor and a 3 phase extension 5x6mm and a small mortgage for it.

Edited August 11, 2022 by GarethM

[dumper]

I’ve found an 11kva going to wire it as auto start with auto change over.mum is on EOL care so don’t want to take a chance this winter can’t tell if doom mongers are over hyping the power problem

Edited August 11, 2022 by dumper
Spelling

[GarethM]

It's more than likely very over hyped, but atleast you can fill it on red diesel and be safe in the knowledge you've got backup be it ww3 or just your normal storm outage.