Generator fuel Question

[Jay Jolliffe]

I have a Honda gas 7500 kw that will run the whole house. Where I am the gas does damage to small engines because of the Ethanol that they add. The generator gets used maybe 4-5 times a year so the gas is sitting in the tank. I was told to keep it full it will keep the condensation down. So I'm trying to decide to change it to Propane. I live on an Island so there is no natural gas. Everything is in either 5gal can or 100 lb propane tanks....Will the propane last as long as a tank of gas which is 5gal....If it wasn't for the additives that they put in the gas I would stay with gas...Will I benefit from propane?

[Ruperto Mendiones]

From what I've read, you get some decrease in power but you have a very stable fuel. Two of the manufacturers of propane conversion kits have good discussions of the pros and cons.

[Dan Hintz]

Another option would be to replace all of the items that ethanol kills. For example, my chainsaw eventually died... turns out the ethanol melted the rubber fuel line. After replacing it with an ethanol-safe version (along with the plugged fuel filter and injector), no more issues. Do the same with your fuel line and whatever rubber gaskets are in there... you should be good to go. A LOT cheaper than switching it over to LP or buying a new one.

[ray hampton]

do the boat engines use the gas that you are talking about

[Brian Elfert]

Ethanol free gasoline will still cause issues with gasoline engines not used regularly. I can get (and I do use) non-ethanol gas locally at a high price, but I still drain the gas at the end of the season to avoid issues. The local power equipment repair place says to put fuel stabilizer in gas if you won't use it up within 30 days.

There is at least 20 gallons of propane in a 100 lb tank. Propane has 75% of the BTUs of gasoline so a 100 lb tank should be about the same as 15 gallons of gasoline.

[John Coloccia]

Just drain the gas, put it in your snow blower, and forget about it. Don't over complicate the issue.

[Lee Schierer]

My neighbor had problems with his out board engine for his boat 3 years ago. He took it in for repairs and the technician recommended using Star Brite Star Tron Enzyme fuel additive since his boat sets for days at a time with out use. 282596He tried it and has not had an issue since. I also added it to the fuel tank on my boat because I was having idling issues with my 4 cylinder boat engine. Like magic, the idling issues went away shortly after adding the enzyme. It prevents the growth of slime in your fuel system.

[Matt Meiser]

I think you are worrying too much. I used the 10% ethanol gas sold around here for years in my portable generator and didn't have a problem. I kept it full (5 gallons) and just made sure to religiously use Stabil in any gas that was going to be used ant of my equipment. I've since switched to Star Tron at my power equipment dealer's recommendation--he says its even better. If we were getting close to a year without an outage, I'd siphon out as much as I could, put that in a car and put fresh in the generator. I'd also be sure to run the generator for about an hour spring and fall with something powered off each phase. When I needed it, the generator would always start on the 2nd pull and would run for a few days no problem. We owned the generator about 9 years before getting natural gas a couple years ago and getting a standby unit.

Oh, and the portable was powered by one of those "junk" Briggs and Stratton's.

[Scott T Smith]

Jay, 7500 watts of any generator may be inadequate to run your house if you have an electric range, well pump, heat pump, electric water heater, etc.

If you don't want to run an air conditioner, and your stove and water heater are propane, then it should be more than adequate.

Lee / Matt: Thanks for the tip about that other additive. First that I've heard of it; I'll check into getting some for my stuff.

[Myk Rian]

Just drain the gas, put it in your snow blower, and forget about it. Don't over complicate the issue.
That's what I do. Same for the lawn tractor.

[Mac McQuinn]

I ran into this last year w/ my Honda Generator. I've found the solution to my troubles to be draining the carburetor after every use. Since I've been doing this, Gen starts 1st pull. I also keep Star-tron in the tank with about 1 gallon of fuel to get it started. If it looks like power is going to be off longer, I transfer fuel w/ Star-tron from a 5 gallon container I keep exclusively for the Gen. Once every (3) months, I transfer this fuel into either cars, lawnmower, Motorcycle or Sno-blower depending on time of year. I refill with fresh gas and Star-tron. We lost power (5) times last year so the initial (1) gallon of fuel in Gen always gets run out.
Mac

[Jay Jolliffe]

Scott...It does run our whole house....We have a gas stove, gas water heater, we mostly heat with wood with oil as supplemental heat. So the only big draw is the well pump & that doesn't run all the time. The only time the generator complained is when we turned on the clothes dryer. We forgot we were on generator. The last time we lost power it was for seven days & it worked with no problem....The only pain was filling it with gas....We also shut it off at night..and to top everything off it was at Christmas & I had to have my Gallbladder out....seeing as all the gas is stored in 5gal cans they were a little hard to lift to put the fuel in...

[Rick Moyer]

Another recommendation for Star-tron. Seems to be keeping my small engine stuff running. For the weedeater, I just buy the ridiculously expensive non-ethanol premixed gasoline sold in quarts. I only use about a qt. a year so it's worth it for the peace of mind.

[Mike Wilkins]

Sta-bil was recommended to me on this forum after I posted about some running problems with my riding mower. Use it with every new can of gas and works like a charm. Also use it in my weedeater.

[Brian Elfert]

My goal with my stand-by generator was never to be able to run the whole house. The main things I wanted to run were the refrigerator, furnace, and sump pump. Anything else I can run is a bonus. The 8,000 watt generator I have is actually big enough to run my central air which I did last summer during an outage because it was so hot and humid. I have a propane stove and a propane grill I can use outside to cook if need be.

If I do a whole house generator at another house I might set the generator up to handle the entire house and just manage loads myself instead of having just selected circuits powered.

[Charlie Velasquez]

Brian, exactly what I have been looking at. Plan was to get a 6500-10000w generator and connect via an interlock, then selectively energize circuits as needed. But, while researching I keep seeing stuff about "dirty" electricity from gensets that can ruin delicate electronics.

Just had a high efficiency gas water heater and furnace with variable speed fan installed. Seemed like half of that install was circuit boards. Plus the usual assortment of routers, modems, computers, home theater setups, most new appliance are circuit board controlled.

Are regular generators still viable in today's electronic age, or do I need to go to those ultra expensive inverter style generators (Honda 6500w inverter generator lists at $4500)?

[Matt Meiser]

If I do a whole house generator at another house I might set the generator up to handle the entire house and just manage loads myself instead of having just selected circuits powered.

Kind of getting off topic but the problem managing them yourself is what happens if you aren't home? You probably wouldn't be using the stove but what if your your AC and an electric water heater come on at the same time? Obviously you need to look at your own situation there. Generac will manages up to 4 for you. Ours interrupts the compressor control wire to the outdoor unit. My parents added a load shed module which interrupts all supply power to the outdoor unit on their mini-split. Both houses have gas for all the heating appliances so those were our only really large loads. I assume others have this feature as well. We bought a couple small interrupters from Woodcraft that we put on larger plug-in loads like the laser printer. If the device loses power they stay off until you cycle the device power.

[Jim Matthews]

Scott...It does run our whole house....We have a gas stove, gas water heater, we mostly heat with wood with oil as supplemental heat.

What kind of gas is used for these? Sounds like you're already getting fuel delivered for those, if there's no Natural Gas pipeline.
The vapor pressure of Propane drops with temperature, that means lower output from your motors when it's cold, without preheating the tank.
http://generatorjoe.net/html/genfuel.asp

If you already have a heating oil tank, I would investigate a generator that could draw from that source.
Provided you heat the house with wood when the lights go out, it should last until you can dig out again.

I'm generally opposed to putting gasoline into a hot engine, and that's a problem with smaller gasoline powered generators.

As mentioned above, a larger output generator might be more stable under load.
We installed an auto-starting 12Kw on a pad, after Hurricane Irene left us in the dark
(with no water from our well) for 6 and a half days.

I would recommend something that will work, unattended in the unlikely event you
are incapacitated. It's not a fault-tolerant backup, if you can't get to it...

[Art Mann]

Gasoline with Ethanol has been the predominant motor fuel for decades now. Engine manufacturers know how to build engines that tolerate it. The real risk to generators being left in a fueled state for long periods of time is a type of varnish that is inherent to gasoline and deposits itself on the interior surfaces of the carburetor. This material will eventually clog up jets and cause float mechanisms to become sticky. For short periods of time (months to a year), fuel stabilizers such as Sta-bil will help prevent this. Carburetor cleaners such as Sea Foam will dissolve the material if it isn't too bad. The best protection against carburetor deposits is to refresh the gas every few months and to run the engine for several minutes every month or so to flush out the deposits.

[Kev Williams]

Back to the original question:

I have a Honda gas 7500 kw that will run the whole house. Where I am the gas does damage to small engines because of the Ethanol that they add. The generator gets used maybe 4-5 times a year so the gas is sitting in the tank. I was told to keep it full it will keep the condensation down. So I'm trying to decide to change it to Propane. I live on an Island so there is no natural gas. Everything is in either 5gal can or 100 lb propane tanks....Will the propane last as long as a tank of gas which is 5gal....If it wasn't for the additives that they put in the gas I would stay with gas...Will I benefit from propane?

Ethanol will not hurt your engine proper. Does cause problems, but won't damage it.

What the alcohol in the fuel does attack certain rubber and plastics. It's also a great solvent. This can cause some rubber fuel lines to become brittle, and/or soft and gooey, from the inside out. The solvent action can clean accumlated crud built up on the walls of the fuel lines. As the stuff comes off the walls of the fuel line it ends up in your carb or injectors. Much of it dissolved and just gets burned with the gas. Some doesn't... On my older lawnmowers, and the carbs on my houseboat engines in the past few years, this problem has manifested itself as little squishy balls in the float bowls that resemble small salmon eggs, and is jelled, very much like the goo that comes in your can of Spam. This stuff will block the fuel from entering your carb's main jet(s). Which is exactly what happened to my old mowers and our houseboat!

Alcohol is also a great water absorber. If gas is sitting and air can get to it, ethanol can absorb humidity, and the water ends up at the bottom of the storage container. This is usually your gas can, gas tank, or carburetor float bowl. On small engines, one way to troubleshoot water in the fuel is simply if the engine ran fine, but doesn't want to start a few days later. This is because water in the gas has settled UNDER the gas, and it's the first thing the carburetor will suck up when trying to start the engine. In my experience, whenever I've found water in my fuel, I've determined it almost always came from the gas station with water in it.

If your generator was built within the past 5 years, it should have the proper fuel lines and seals, diaphragms, etc in the carb. If not, or just for piece of mind, the seals and fuel lines can be changed for a few bucks and a few hours time.

[Dave Lehnert]

How is Star Brite Star Tron better or different than Stabil?

[Rick Moyer]

I believe Star Tron is formulated to counteract the effects of ethanol, whereas Stabil is formulated to counter the effects of the old fuel "varnishing".

[Tom M King]

Ours doesn't run that often, but I keep a spare, new carburetor, and fuel line on hand. Fortunately, we are back to being able to buy ethanol free gas here now. I just drain the gas, and run it all out of the carb for storage anyway.

[Scott T Smith]

Scott...It does run our whole house....We have a gas stove, gas water heater, we mostly heat with wood with oil as supplemental heat. So the only big draw is the well pump & that doesn't run all the time. The only time the generator complained is when we turned on the clothes dryer. We forgot we were on generator. The last time we lost power it was for seven days & it worked with no problem....The only pain was filling it with gas....We also shut it off at night..and to top everything off it was at Christmas & I had to have my Gallbladder out....seeing as all the gas is stored in 5gal cans they were a little hard to lift to put the fuel in...

ok - this makes sense.

Jay, I think that your inclination to change to propane is a good one. For a variety of reasons, I have 9 generators here on the farm and in my wife's Veterinary practice, in gasoline, diesel and propane, ranging from 5500 watts up to 225KW. The standby unit for our house is a propane unit with an automatic transfer switch.

One thing that you'll need to ensure is that your propane tanks can vaporize enough of the liquid in order to keep up with the generator demands. My 5500 watt LP generator is fed by a 125 gallon tank and a 3/4" infeed pipe. You may need to gang multiple 100 lb cylinders together on a manifold in order to have adequate gas feed.

Propane is a great fuel source for generators because it does not go bad and it won't gum up carbs (like gasoline), gel or develop enzymes (like diesel).

[Al Launier]

My neighbor had problems with his out board engine for his boat 3 years ago. He took it in for repairs and the technician recommended using Star Brite Star Tron Enzyme fuel additive since his boat sets for days at a time with out use. 282596He tried it and has not had an issue since. I also added it to the fuel tank on my boat because I was having idling issues with my 4 cylinder boat engine. Like magic, the idling issues went away shortly after adding the enzyme. It prevents the growth of slime in your fuel system.

Third this. Used it when ethanol E10 came out for cars. Did a real number on rubber fuel lines, gaskets, etc. Had to install a Racor fuel filter & used StarTron fuell treatment for the boat and for longer term storage over the winter. The StarTron worked well. Would definitely recommend this for you!

[Ty Williams]

I have a Honda gas 7500 kw that will run the whole house. Where I am the gas does damage to small engines because of the Ethanol that they add. The generator gets used maybe 4-5 times a year so the gas is sitting in the tank. I was told to keep it full it will keep the condensation down. So I'm trying to decide to change it to Propane. I live on an Island so there is no natural gas. Everything is in either 5gal can or 100 lb propane tanks....Will the propane last as long as a tank of gas which is 5gal....If it wasn't for the additives that they put in the gas I would stay with gas...Will I benefit from propane?

Some background so you know where I'm coming from: I'm a professional mechanic. Due to where I am, I get a fair number of customers who are design and testing engineers for one of the biggest automakers in the world. When they bring their cars in for me to work on, I get to ask them questions about a lot of car related stuff and one of the ones I've talked a LOT about with them is the problems they're having with the introduction of ethanol into gasoline.

So, ethanol mixed into gasoline, even in amounts as small as 10%, is a major problem and especially so for an engine like a generator which doesn't run on a regular basis. First, the ethanol acts as an oxidizing agent in the fuel and will reduce the storage life somewhere between 50% and 75%. In other words, "pure" gas will store somewhere between 2 and 4 times as long without problems as gasoline with ethanol mixed in. Second, the ethanol attacks many portions of the fuel system causing them to fail much sooner than they would on pure gas. The engineers who have me work on their cars spent a LOT of trouble and time on this in the 2008-2012 time frame. The government was giving significant incentives for manufacturers to produce "flex fuel" vehicles that could run off of pure gas or up to E85 (85% ethanol) gas. What the engineers were finding was that even the "certified E85 safe" fuel components they could buy from OEM suppliers were failing in the presence of ethanol. It was a MAJOR problem for them because they couldn't get the test engines to survive the warranty period when used with ethanol. The company's solution? The cars were designed as flex-fuel vehicles to get the government credit but the public was never told that their car could run ethanol contents higher than 10%. Still that way to this day, as far as I've heard. So yes, ethanol in gasoline is bad as it will spoil faster and will also damage parts on your fuel system faster (which is especially important for your generator).

If you need to run on gasoline, there's 3 important things you can do. First, store gasoline in metal, sealed, air-tight cans whenever possible. It's fine to have a red plastic can for the gallon or two of gas you're using in the lawn mower and weed whacker, but if you're storing emergency fuel for your generator, store it in metal. The reason for this is that the plastic cans are semi-permeable. The lighter (smaller) chemicals in the gasoline can slowly (VERY slowly) leach out through the plastic; benzene is the most important of these. The reason that's critical is that the lighter weight components (especially benzene) are the only thing that can support combustion when the engine is started from cold. So when they leach out through the can, you'll be unable to start a cold engine with that gas. Second, treat all your gas when you obtain it with a stabilizer/preservative. The ONLY two I'll recommend are PRI-G and Stabil. I use PRI-G personally and have had very good luck with it but really either one works well. With PRI-G, you should be able to store E10 (10% ethanol) gas for about 6 months without any problem and 9 in a pinch. With PRI-G, you'll get a minimum of a year with pure gas and possibly as much as 2 years under ideal circumstances. Third, attempt to find a source of E0 gasoline locally. Many marinas and harbors sell it because many maritime engines aren't certified to run on gasoline with any ethanol in it at all. The website pure-gas.org can help you find E0 in your area.

Finally, I have a Yamaha generator that is intended to run on gasoline. I converted it to "tri-fuel" operation which means that by changing one hose and the spark plug, I can run the generator on gasoline, propane, and natural gas. The generator is stored ready to run propane and our emergency fuel that we store for the generator is propane as well. We have the ability to convert the generator back to gasoline solely as a backup plan if we're unable to find more propane after we use up all our stored fuel. Propane is much nicer to store than gasoline! Basically, with propane you get your tanks filled by a reputable vendor, run the generator on each new tank for 5 minutes or so to verify that the fuel is good, and then shove it in the back of the garage. It'll store basically forever with no spoiling or maintenance so long as you keep the dirt and rain away from the bottle (to keep the valve working well) and keep it at a temperature in which you'd be comfortable. So it's MUCH, MUCH easier for us to store 14 days of fuel for the generator in propane because, unlike gasoline, we don't have to treat it and then make sure we use it up and replace it before it goes bad. We just buy it once and it's ready when we need it. I strongly recommend converting the generator to propane for that reason alone however, you also get the extra benefits that the generator burns cleaner and maintenance intervals are extended.

[Mike Cutler]

Wow!!
There's a ton of good info in this thread!!!

Jay
My personal choice would be to stay with gasoline, as others have stated you just need to develop a "PM" routine for the generator. You might also want to look at an "extended" tank for your generator, and a hand operated pump to fill with.
The last three storms in CT. knocked out power for days and two of the fuels we had trouble sourcing were Propane and NG. Why the local NG supply/distribution network had no backup power system in place escapes me. Propane and NG require electricity to pump and the supply points are not as plentiful as gas stations.
You might have to drive a ways to get gasoline, but of the three fuels, it is the easier to get in my experience.

[John Coloccia]

Wow!!
There's a ton of good info in this thread!!!

Jay
My personal choice would be to stay with gasoline, as others have stated you just need to develop a "PM" routine for the generator. You might also want to look at an "extended" tank for your generator, and a hand operated pump to fill with.
The last three storms in CT. knocked out power for days and two of the fuels we had trouble sourcing were Propane and NG. Why the local NG supply/distribution network had no backup power system in place escapes me. Propane and NG require electricity to pump and the supply points are not as plentiful as gas stations.
You might have to drive a ways to get gasoline, but of the three fuels, it is the easier to get in my experience.

Around my area (Bolton), gasoline was impossible to get too. No power, no gas pumps :) What a mess that was, eh? I was out for a total of about a month. What I did for the last storm is I filled every can I cold find, including my diesel cans, with gas, and I also filled every piece of power equipment I could find. I think I managed to store about 30 or 40 gallons of fuel. I treated them with a conditioner...I forget which one. That was about 1 1/2 years ago and I just used up the last of that fuel a couple of days ago in the snow blower. Works as well as any other fuel I've ever had.

But I agree. In a pinch, I could have driven an hour to get fuel somewhere else. When the propane trucks aren't running, there's really nothing you can do.

[Mike Cutler]

John

Yeah you guys got hammered those few storms.
I have a 35 gallon transfer tank for gas, Tractor Supply sells them for gas and diesel, so I was driving up to Mass and Providence to fill them up.
I've always used either Stabil, or just added SeaFoam to keep the gas from "going flat".
The first time I pumped 65 gallons of gas at one whack, I about had a heart attack!
I learned from the first storm to hit the ATM before they all went down. No electricity, no using credit cards or ATM cards. I've also learned to keep a spare carburetor rebuild kit with the generator. ;)

[Brian Elfert]

Kind of getting off topic but the problem managing them yourself is what happens if you aren't home? You probably wouldn't be using the stove but what if your your AC and an electric water heater come on at the same time? Obviously you need to look at your own situation there. Generac will manages up to 4 for you. Ours interrupts the compressor control wire to the outdoor unit. My parents added a load shed module which interrupts all supply power to the outdoor unit on their mini-split. Both houses have gas for all the heating appliances so those were our only really large loads. I assume others have this feature as well. We bought a couple small interrupters from Woodcraft that we put on larger plug-in loads like the laser printer. If the device loses power they stay off until you cycle the device power.

I thought about having an electric water heater after my post. I suppose you could have an electric dryer too, but that isn't used as much.

There are pros and cons to both a sub panel and running the whole house to the generator. I have a sub panel and after having power out for several days I wished I had the generator wired to everything. It got to be a pain with things like no lights in the bathroom. I also couldn't wash clothes and didn't want to move the machine to run an extension cord.

[Matt Meiser]

Ours has a subpanel but we were able to put most stuff in there. We can't do laundry, and have no receptacles or lights in the garage besides the opener--stuff like that. And my shop isn't on the subpanel of course. Same thing for my parents.

[Val Kosmider]

This whole question is one of those mysterious issues.

Why is the largest number of complaints about ethanol problems confined to Maine? Particularly the central coast area?

I run ethanol fuel in my weed whacker, snow blower, and lawn tractor and have never even remotely had any sort of gelling problem. Some of this equipment sits for months and starts up on the first pull with no problems. I use a little splash of Stabil in anything which is going to sit for an extended period.

My family lives along the central coast of Maine. They constantly complain about ethanol fuel issues in their similar equipment, and from their friend's chain saws, boat motors and other small engines.

Why does this problem seem to be contained to Maine, in particular? I assume it is 'real' as in the engines won't run, or they run poorly, or the degradation from fuel takes it's toll on shortened engine/fuel system life?

Is it the coastal air, the salt, the harsh winters, the fuel mixture, or is it urban legend? I can't believe the latter as there seem to be a large number of folks with the same complaint and presumably have the gunked up parts to prove their claims.

What's the story?

Now, about that salt brine......

[Ole Anderson]

I have been thinking about adding a whole house generator. I see that most of them are available with either a multi circuit sub panel that limits which circuits you will power up, or a main transfer switch, usually 200 amp, which simplifies wiring, but relies on you being able to manually shed larger loads such as the range and dryer and maybe your higher horsepower shop motors, in order to not overload the generator. Generators are often sized on the largest motor starting amperage. I have sized gen sets for starting large municipal well house pump motors, often 100 hp, and it gets interesting. Personally, I would probably go with the 200 amp auto transfer switch. But I am having trouble justifying a whole house generator as we don't loose power all that often, and if it is in the summer, I just pull my RV up to the house and tap into its quiet 7 kw generator. If the RV is in storage in FL during the winter, I just pull out the old, but very noisy, 4 kw generator and fire it up. Never been able to not start it, even though I am not meticulous with its fuel storage, often going well over 6 months without running it.

[Sean Troy]

http://www.interlockkit.com/

[Matt Meiser]

Large shop motors shouldn't be a problem to manage manually as those typically have magnetic starters and won't auto-restart.

Our gen came with a 100A transfer switch so we installed a 100A subpanel and moved the circuits we wanted on standby. I'd have preferred a 200A but the 12KW package we bought was too good a deal to pass up.

[Jim Matthews]

I would hazard a SWAG that temperature is a factor in this.

Whatever "soft parts" dissolve in warmer temperatures under the solvent action of ethanol
might be forming a heavy gel in colder weather. Colder temperatures likely occuring at the
same time as power outages - that's when it would be apparent.

My folks live across the Mountain from you in North Carolina.
No problems like this reported their, either.

It gets cold, in that latitude for certain but not COLD.
No what I'm sayin?