With considerably smaller house power needs, we did well with our old 2000w Honda camper unit. As long as no more than 2 of the 3 freezers kicked on at the same time, no issue.

Admittedly, it didn't like the microwave, and our 220v home well pump or the electric stove were not usable.

With wood heat and no A/C demand, most basic needs were pretty well served.

Over about 15 years, several outages lasted more than overnight. A few went 4 or 5 days.

Recently upgraded to a 5000w Honda set up. Haven't done full test yet, that's soon.

quote:

Shutting breakers off is an easy fix so that wives and others can't use items the generator won't carry.

This is the method I use, to prevent the use of any 220 appliances, pool pump, dryer, oven.

You just have to make it clear to everyone in the situation it's running that certain things cannot be run when the generator is the primary source of power.

quote:

Originally posted by goingbroke:
I had a whole house system put in years ago and never looked back!

It is supplied by a 500 gallon propane tank since we are way out and kicks on after twenty seconds of lost power.

You never miss a beat nor lose anything in the refridgerators...

I assume you have your computers on a UPS?

flashguy

 
I have an Onan 20kW genset, and a 200 amp DPDT transfer switch that lights up the entire main panel. Obviously I cannot run everything. I prefer to exercise the unit and transfer load manually (cause I am home all the time), but the GE TS has the capability for auto-exercise and automatic transfer.
 
We've not had to use it much in the 19 years here. To prevent boo-boos by myself or my wife, I have breakers in the main panel marked to switch off when on genset power. This prevents any oven, washer, dryer, welder, or other high amp draws from being "accidentally" run. We can run a couple of mini-splits, microwave, lights, food refrigeration, and computers just fine, and we are good with that for the duration of the outage.