My new place is wired for a generator and I know exactly nothing about them. I'm looking for something to just run a few small lights, the fridge, hopefully the water heater and charge phones. Where should I start looking?

Step one determine if you want a standby unit or something you have to manually connect and feed gasoline.

Step two determine loads you want to power.

Step three revisit top two steps and figure out what's really important to you.

Just to cover HWH you will need ~7kw (if electric). How important is hot water?

When you say wired for generator, is it a MTS or ATS?

You need to determine the amperage that your appliances will draw and then get a generator that delivers the needed amps. Watts divided by voltage gives amps. Inverter generators are quiet but expensive, "normal" generators are affordable but loud. Dual fuel generators give you an option of gas or propane. Propane will run quieter (I never ran one and don't know how much quieter) but propane gives about 2/3 the energy of gas and a decrease on amps delivered. You can get diesel generators but I'm not the one to give advice on those. I have a 2000 watt Honda (1600 continuous) that will run 2-3 lights, fridge, computer. Roughly $1250. But if you want to run the water heater then you need a generator that delivers 220 volt service and that is another step up.

Anubismp, what is your heat, hot water fuel? If it's not electricity, you can go smaller.

And working backwards, how much are you willing to spend for the generator. If you're thinking somewhere in the thousand dollar (plus or minus) range, your talking a portable / manual setup. IIRC, a permanent / automatic setup starts at $5K, and can go way up from there.

Also determine how much fuel you want to burn per day.

Sounds like you're looking for a simple portable generator. You really need to identify the power requirements of your water heater (given it appears to be your biggest load requirement) and fridge to finalize how much generator you need. Then its up to brand and how much you want to shell out for it.

I urge you to look into a natural gas or propane powered generator. Keeping enough fresh gasoline on hand to run a generator for an extended period can be a problem. Especially if the grid is down and gas stations can’t pump fuel.

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Originally posted by arfmel:
I urge you to look into a natural gas or propane powered generator. Keeping enough fresh gasoline on hand to run a generator for an extended period can be a problem. Especially if the grid is down and gas stations can’t pump fuel.

Or, you can use gasoline and buy a nice motorboat as fuel storage. My boat has a 100 gallon tank. This gives you a real good (?) reason to buy a nice boat.

Just be sure to pull the main disconnect on the house before starting up the generator so that you are not sending power back down the line....

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Originally posted by Blume9mm:
Just be sure to pull the main disconnect on the house before starting up the generator so that you are not sending power back down the line....

Yeah definitely dont want to kill any linemen. I've heard theres an auto disconnect that switches for grid/generators. Is that a thing or is it all manual switch?

If your water heater is gas you can get by with a much smaller unit. When I was a kid my folks had a 2500 unit that worked fine. You just have to be smart with letting one fridge/freezer power up at a time. I wouldn’t recommend a natural gas generator for this area. A bad enough earthquake will cause disruptions, or service shutoff for safety. Keeping a rotation of jerry cans isn’t that hard, especially if you use gas lawn equipment. Just make sure to keep an eye on the weather fall-spring to know when to top off everything.

My experience is with older Generac units, and I have read that current production isn’t what they used to be.

 
After you gather your total amperage needs, multiply that by 1.25, and that's the size you should be looking at. Most electrical devices should not be pushed to their maximum rating. For example, a 15 amp wall socket should not be used above 12 amps. This provides a safety margin against overheated wiring. You can do it (pull 15 amps from a wall socket), but why push the limit and take the chance.
 
My standby generator is 20kW, with a 90 amp/240v breaker. I chose that size after figuring my load to be about 70 amps. With a generator, this also allows for start-up draw on motors, like your fridge condenser or AC.

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Yeah definitely dont want to kill any linemen. I've heard theres an auto disconnect that switches for grid/generators. Is that a thing or is it all manual switch?

You said it's already wired for a generator. That shouldn't be an issue if done correctly and inspected by county.

Got any pictures? Do you have an inlet box with a manual transfer switch or do you have an automatic transfer switch?

A major factor in what you buy depends on the reliability of the electrical grid in your area. If you only experience rare outages than a small, manual generator will work. Our house is in a rural area that had a marginal grid when the subdivision was built and outages were frequent... two weeks one winter. We have a 21kva propane whole house generator, automatic startup on power loss, powered by a Nissan 4-cyl auto engine. The wife says that now she will never live in a house without a whole house generator.

Thinking about selling mine and getting a dual fuel generator, gas or LP, having the gas company come setup a connection point, and then have a transfer switch installed, pour a pad with a locking system.

The water heater is going to cause you to go up a few sizes in generator...……You'd need a 7500 watt running generator to cover most electric water heaters so about a 9000 watt running (assuming it's on a 30 amp breaker) to cover everything you want. If you excluded the water heater a 2000-3000 watt running would cover everything.

In order to have an auto transfer switch, you'd need a generator that powers the entire house, or in your situation A LOT of load shedding breakers which would be pretty expensive.

Here in Florida, even during/after hurricanes we never lose Natural Gas.

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Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Yeah definitely dont want to kill any linemen. I've heard theres an auto disconnect that switches for grid/generators. Is that a thing or is it all manual switch?

You said it's already wired for a generator. That shouldn't be an issue if done correctly and inspected by county.

Got any pictures? Do you have an inlet box with a manual transfer switch or do you have an automatic transfer switch?

I'm not actually closing on the place until the 8th of next month so I'm just researching for projects at the moment. I'll update when I actually get in there and get to look at it.