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Is your house total electric or a mix of gas and electric?
You can easily run 90% of the house on a 8kw generator so long as you have gas heat and hot water, otherwise turn teh breaker off to the hotwater tank and Central heat.
the average total electric heater has a 15-20kw heat strip and running that with teh whole house would require a 40kw generator, hot water tanks will have two elements that are between 3750 watts (3.75 kw) and 7500 watts (7.5kw) each so draw from these two sources will dramatically increase the size of teh generator required.
I keep a 7500 watt generator with a plug made to plug into a 100amp 220v ac breaker in the main breaker panel, turn teh main breaker off and the breakers for teh hotwater, and central heat and it runs teh house with no issues.
Our hot water heater is electric but the heat is propane. Dh might need to talk generators w you. We have been back & forth on size. I say bigger is better. Dh says smaller is cheaper. Think we were looking at $5k for 20 or around $10k for 35-- Don't know if we looked at a 40- the cooling system is what makes the price of the generator so high, but I do remember the brutal ice storm & don't want to be in the dark all the way out here! The generator is through caddo electric, so we get 20% off our electric in return for using our generator during peak times in summer. This yr think they said it was 18hours that generators ran. So it needs to be able to run the a/c as well. I personally don't want to be without hot water if we don't have power for 2 or 3 wks. I want to know I have heat, hot & cold water, fridge & freezer those are my priorites. when we build we may do a propane hotwater heater. Right now our build time is up in the air. We are waiting to know when dh is leaving Ft sill. If he gets picked up for a new position we have time to build a house next yr. If not we wait
until the army says he will be home long enough to build a house. Worse case I am living in a single wide trailer for 5 yrs. Fingers crossed he lands a new position soon!
Feel free to call, I can also show you a very nice Solar Heating system (air not water) that will heat 1200 sq ft with no issues. I have an extra panel right now they work very well (when the sun is out).
Generators are fairly easy to both properly size and set up, much less expensive if they are on a manual disconnect, the propane powered generators last the longest with fewer maint. issues.
I will be happy to talk to him about anything that will help you out.
) and fix THAT... so I can re-insulate my house, bring down the electric and gas some, and try figure out solar options and how to put a fireplace into my house.
