Westinghouse 12,500-Watt Home Backup Gas Powered Portable Generator Expired

THD is rated < 23%. That's really high - you would need something like a UPS with sine wave to not fry your electronics.

Just a thought for the gallery.....up to 13 hours on 6.gallons. Let's call it 12 gallons per day. If you feel like you are covered for the event of say a 3 day outage, you're going to need to buy some gasoline storage.

There are whole house stand-by generators designed to handle longer duration outages that usually run on LP or natural gas. Storage and delivery is less of a problem (usually). And, yes these are $$thousands installed. I am not comparing the posted deal to these for the sake of price, only to stimulate consideration of what the actual function will be.

A large and inefficient gasoline generator is a pretty minimalist approach and would likely only serve for 24-48 hours due to its thirst for fuel. A much smaller and much more efficient inverter generator might be a a good companion to such a behemoth. Something like recent 4kw offerings will run your refrigerator/freezer and a whole bunch of other convenience items in your home and only use about 4 gallons of gasoline per day.

No knock on the OP deal. I am just suggesting there would best be some consideration regarding how a generator such as this fits into one's emergency power plan.

Everything I'd be using would be 120v

Just a thought for the gallery.....up to 13 hours on 6.gallons. Let's call it 12 gallons per day. If you feel like you are covered for the event of say a 3 day outage, you're going to need to buy some gasoline storage.

There are whole house stand-by generators designed to handle longer duration outages that usually run on LP or natural gas. Storage and delivery is less of a problem (usually). And, yes these are $$thousands installed. I am not comparing the posted deal to these for the sake of price, only to stimulate consideration of what the actual function will be.

A large and inefficient gasoline generator is a pretty minimalist approach and would likely only serve for 24-48 hours due to its thirst for fuel. A much smaller and much more efficient inverter generator might be a a good companion to such a behemoth. Something like recent 4kw offerings will run your refrigerator/freezer and a whole bunch of other convenience items in your home and only use about 4 gallons of gasoline per day.

No knock on the OP deal. I am just suggesting there would best be some consideration regarding how a generator such as this fits into one's emergency power plan.

Just a thought for the gallery.....up to 13 hours on 6.gallons. Let's call it 12 gallons per day. If you feel like you are covered for the event of say a 3 day outage, you're going to need to buy some gasoline storage.

There are whole house stand-by generators designed to handle longer duration outages that usually run on LP or natural gas. Storage and delivery is less of a problem (usually). And, yes these are $$thousands installed. I am not comparing the posted deal to these for the sake of price, only to stimulate consideration of what the actual function will be.

A large and inefficient gasoline generator is a pretty minimalist approach and would likely only serve for 24-48 hours due to its thirst for fuel. A much smaller and much more efficient inverter generator might be a a good companion to such a behemoth. Something like recent 4kw offerings will run your refrigerator/freezer and a whole bunch of other convenience items in your home and only use about 4 gallons of gasoline per day.

No knock on the OP deal. I am just suggesting there would best be some consideration regarding how a generator such as this fits into one's emergency power plan.

Just a counter point. If I am without power long enough to pull out a generator, I'm using it for more than a couple thousand watts. Around here, we use gas for things like the lawn mower, so it isn't like gas is sitting around going stale. This means we have gas available at a moments notice to get started if need be. Last time I needed the generator (7500W Westinghouse in my case) I borrowed a second gas can and would go fill up two 5 gallon cans daily. If this were Florida where massive areas were expected to be out of power due to hurricanes, maybe I would be more concerned, but it has worked well (and pretty cheaply) so far.

Doesn't matter. The way 240v is fed into your house, imagine that you have a line down the middle of your breaker panel* where that voltage is 0. The left side of the panel is -120v to 0, so a 120v difference, and the right side is 0 to +120, so also a 120 difference. Small circuits, like TVs and lights, only go halfway across. If you hook up a big appliance from left to right, you're going from -120 to +120v=240v. So a 240v generator feeds both sides of the panel, which is the whole house. A 120v generator could only do left-to-middle or right-to-middle, but not both. This one will run the full 12k over that 50A plug, and split the load between the two sides of your panel.

*Slight over simplification for explanation purposes.

THD is rated < 23%. That's really high - you would need something like a UPS with sine wave to not fry your electronics.

Just my two cents, but my big win for this model on sale is the 220/240V capability. I can do without most 220/240 appliances in my home, except for my well pump. This might be overkill for an emergency, but lack of water was a deal breaker for most smaller units.

For the price and capability, I maybe jump on this.

OR I will wait with it in my cart for too long and the sale will be over, haha.

Just a thought for the gallery.....up to 13 hours on 6.gallons. Let's call it 12 gallons per day. If you feel like you are covered for the event of say a 3 day outage, you're going to need to buy some gasoline storage.

There are whole house stand-by generators designed to handle longer duration outages that usually run on LP or natural gas. Storage and delivery is less of a problem (usually). And, yes these are $$thousands installed. I am not comparing the posted deal to these for the sake of price, only to stimulate consideration of what the actual function will be.

A large and inefficient gasoline generator is a pretty minimalist approach and would likely only serve for 24-48 hours due to its thirst for fuel. A much smaller and much more efficient inverter generator might be a a good companion to such a behemoth. Something like recent 4kw offerings will run your refrigerator/freezer and a whole bunch of other convenience items in your home and only use about 4 gallons of gasoline per day.

No knock on the OP deal. I am just suggesting there would best be some consideration regarding how a generator such as this fits into one's emergency power plan.

A well pump should be able to be run off of pretty much any generator that is sized to do 240v, generally starting around 6kw. Well pumps don't typically run over 2.5kw of load, often less, and with a 5-7kw starting surge.

This one should be able to do both a well pump and a water heater, and possibly a window a/c window unit.

Good thoughts all around, I'll continue this conversation.

This generator surely has the capability to keep essentials running during even somewhat-extended outages though. As long as you're willing to start and stop it 2-4 times a day to charge up, use water, cool down/heat up the house, and have it off during the day or night (depending on season/location). The main downside for this unit is really that it's not designed to be outside during inclement weather. During some outages not a big deal, however during winter outages you'll want to be setting up a folding table over the top of the generator, with a tarp or something laid on top of the table to assist with easy removal of snow accumulation; once again, not by design and potentially a hazard for people not keeping an eye on it/watching the outdoor temperatures/weather.

What you save though is a tradeoff. This generator is pretty low upfront cost for someone starting with 0. This: $800, a 5-quart of 5w-30 (this generator service manual says oil changes every 50 running hours, but realistically could be stretched to double that if service has been maintained up to that point) for $30, an interlock + 50A receptacle installed by a local electrician for $2k (or if you want to squeak by with a 30A receptacle for just a well pump + other smaller loads then $1.5k), a UL listed 30-40 gallon fuel caddy for $750, 35 gallons of non-ethanol gas + stabilizer for $175 and you're all set to go. A rather conservative estimate of <$4k for a[n ideally rarely used] backup source of power that you can wheel into a shed/garage when not in use. This also requires some minimum amount of knowledge of self-load managing your main panel in your house and turning on/off circuits not in use while also not overloading your generator. Also with its rated TDP, if you have fancy TV's and/or computers with low quality power supplies, it likely won't damage them, however they may just not turn on. I've had a LG c1 refuse to turn on on generator power, however worked perfectly fine later when back on grid power.

An at home-standby generator will be permanently outside in the elements and ready to go in the middle of a storm without wheeling it to the receptacle location. There won't be a need to throw a folding table over top of the at-home standby generator or do anything else that's not by design. You can still self manage loads to make your fuel last longer. Maintenance on a home standby generator, while not too difficult, is a permanent burden that doesn't disappear until either removed or you stop wanting emergency power and let it lapse/go into disrepair.

A home standby generator will be significantly more expensive starting from 0 though. Generator will run $4-6k depending on size (installers will only generally sell you what will power your whole house, so this means you're going to be buying an 18kw at the least, and likely 22-26kw since they need to take into account the lowest common denominator as far as people's knowledge and their ability to self-manage loading), install being another $4-6k with an automatic transfer switch. Generally we suggest a minimum of 200 gallons of propane (2 x 120 gallon tanks) which with install/hookup/fill-up generally runs another $3-5k, plus if this is your only use of propane then you're going to probably be paying a rental fee on those tanks ($100-200/year). If you choose to buy your tanks then add another $2-4k, and you're taking on the liability of doing the testing required by your state. So you're looking at generally around $15k to have an at-home standby generator installed, and it's going to be permanently outside for everyone to see. That being said, I've been seeing quotes for home installations of 24kw standby generators recently, and the prices have realistically been more in the $18k-24k range when fully installed (in my area, central east coast) along with a 1-4 month lead time following initial deposit. There's also service plans you can purchase where someone else comes out to do all your maintenance for $300-500/year.

Both of these will last 10+ days with proper self managing loads, keeping an eye on oil/servicing, and turning them off when not in use. The at-home standby could be expanded with more propane tanks or with a 500 gallon tank (~400 gallons of propane) with it's own requirements per your state as far as where they can be put. This would be an easily solution for if you get a standby generator, you can easily extend it's outage run time without much more modification. Self managing that setup could string it out to easily 20+ days.

But at the end of the day, one of your main points is really key here. What is the use case? Do you want 1-2 days, 5-7 days, 10+ days, 20+ days? If you've never had an outage for 7 days before, there's no point in preparing for a 20+ day outage, but maybe set yourself up to be good for 3 days, and if it's really bad just use your generator every second day.

Some terrible storms came through here early this year. Plows couldn't even get down my [very much-so major] road for 4 days. To give you an idea of that severity: On the 3rd day of that, nothing was plowed and it was basically like driving through a forest that had toppled over, there was 11 straight miles of trees laying on distribution lines; there are still trees laying by the road from that storm. I had to drive over 3 sets of downed powerlines to get into town that day, normally a 13 minute drive away. Had power back 3.5 days later (6.5 days without power).

Really the main things for a generator is what do you value and/or what's your knowledge base:

What's your budget?
What do you need powered in foul weather?
How long do you want it powered/expected outage durations?
Do you want the ability to power some nice-to-haves?
How long/often do you want to run those nice-to-haves?
Do you have a spot that you can put 2x120 gallon propane tanks/larger?
Do you have a spot to store gas/generator at, preferably indoors?
Do you know about how much each circuit on your house demands as afar as loading?
Are you comfortable with self-managing those loads?
Can you do your own maintenance/okay with an annual service fee?
Is there someone else in your household you need to worry about not having that knowledge incase you're not home to manage/start a generator?