Recommend a diesel generator.

Fleabay has a Perkins 20kVA at under £6k new.

Z.

I was thinking about standby generators yesterday.

A few years ago one of my customers who had a standby generator that I didn't get involved with had some guys there to give it an annual service,  ppart of the service involved pumping the diesel out of the tank to polish it, then return it to the tank when clean.

Jump forward a few years to today,  how long can the diesel remain in the tank and fuel system? Is there additives that can be added to the modern biofuels that will allow them to remain in the tank and fuel system for a full year? 

Sparkingchip: 
 

I was thinking about standby generators yesterday.

A few years ago one of my customers who had a standby generator that I didn't get involved with had some guys there to give it an annual service,  ppart of the service involved pumping the diesel out of the tank to polish it, then return it to the tank when clean.

Jump forward a few years to today,  how long can the diesel remain in the tank and fuel system? Is there additives that can be added to the modern biofuels that will allow them to remain in the tank and fuel system for a full year? 

Yes, farmers use additives to stored diesel on farms to prevent growth in the diesel which will block the expensive tractor diesel filters and cause lost harvesting or ploughing time. Biocides are one example. Locally there have been problems with co-operative purchased farm diesel, which may have been bulk bought and sored, and contamination.

Most diesel engines have a water trap to catch water in the fuel before being introduced into cylinders.

Z.

 

Reliability, and user serviceable at least for minor services, are the most important features.

For a starter. What does the Local hospital/s use?. How many annual hours useage is anticipated ?. What degree of skilled/trainable maintenance bods are available ?. How often is it tested ?  What is the battery monitor and test procedure. ? What are the alarms for a failing battery ?

Jaymack  

When I was fifteen I had a part time job at a chicken hatchery just down the road from our house, my first job on a Saturday morning was to run the backup generator.

The backup generator was a huge diesel set off a ship, one of the bosses was an ex-merchant navy engineer and had set it up. As we were no where near the sea it was coupled up to a huge round corrugated iron water tank to cool it.

So eight o’clock every Saturday morning I had knock the mains supply off, then start the donkey engine and get it turn the seven cylinder generator engine over with the decompressors open, then bring each cylinder in one at a time until the main engine was running then knock the donkey engine off and switch the changeover to bring the power back on in the hatchery using the gen set supply, letting it run on the generator for half a hour, before closing the generator down and switching back to the mains supply.

Whilst I was doing this the alarms connected to the gaffers bungalows sounded, letting them kno that I had arrived at work, unlocked and had knocked the mains off ready to run the generator.

Can you imagine anyone letting a fifteen year old do that unsupervised these days?

My school year was the last that could leave at fifteen and I had actually started working at the hatchery when I was fourteen, so as far as they were concerned I could just be treated like any other worker because I could have been there full time. Over the summer I got a job in a factory working unsupervised on a machine cutting half inch square metal blocks that were to be welded on to the internal PTO shafts of Massey Ferguson tractors then tumbling them, again no one would let a fifteen year old anywhere near it these days.

 

Testing is expected to be under normal load, once a month, with extra electric heaters as a crude load bank if the building load is unusually low. Monthly test to be cancelled if the set has recently run “in anger”

Whilst times are normal, operating hours will be very limited, but in the event of an emergency then prolonged operation might be required.

Day to day maintenance will be by the owner, a retired railway locomotive workshop fitter.

Spare oil and air filters and fan belts to be stored on site.

Not certain about battery checks, beyond precautionary replacement every 4? years. would consider duplicating starter battery. If all else fails, jump leads from a vehicle battery are possible. Is the starter battery likely to be 12 volts?

Public supply is three phase at 100 amps. No three phase loads. It is proposed to generator back only one phase, having ensured that all smaller but high priority loads are connected to that phase.

L1 cooker, electric shower, outbuilding power.

L2 second cooker, two more showers, 

L3, generator back up, most lighting and small power, central heating, immersion heaters. Some form of automatic load control is proposed for the immersion heater, such that these will only run when the generator is lightly loaded.

Data logger shows load on L3 averages about 30 to 50 amps under normal conditions, but has reached 75 amps. Hence desirability of load control for immersion heaters. 

Sparkingchip: 
 

When I was fifteen I had a part time job at a chicken hatchery just down the road from our house, my first job on a Saturday morning was to run the backup generator.

The backup generator was a huge diesel set off a ship, one of the bosses was an ex-merchant navy engineer and had set it up. As we were no where near the sea it was coupled up to a huge round corrugated iron water tank to cool it.

So eight o’clock every Saturday morning I had knock the mains supply off, then start the donkey engine and get it turn the seven cylinder generator engine over with the decompressors open, then bring each cylinder in one at a time until the main engine was running then knock the donkey engine off and switch the changeover to bring the power back on in the hatchery using the gen set supply, letting it run on the generator for half a hour, before closing the generator down and switching back to the mains supply.

Whilst I was doing this the alarms connected to the gaffers bungalows sounded, letting them kno that I had arrived at work, unlocked and had knocked the mains off ready to run the generator.

Can you imagine anyone letting a fifteen year old do that unsupervised these days?

My school year was the last that could leave at fifteen and I had actually started working at the hatchery when I was fourteen, so as far as they were concerned I could just be treated like any other worker because I could have been there full time. Over the summer I got a job in a factory working unsupervised on a machine cutting half inch square metal blocks that were to be welded on to the internal PTO shafts of Massey Ferguson tractors then tumbling them, again no one would let a fifteen year old anywhere near it these days.

Many years ago I was called to a hatchery where the supply cables were so long and the loads had been increased so much that the suspended heaters just above the floor were not hot enough to do their job on cold days. The Volt drop was excessive. I was distressed that there was nothing that I could do at the time for various reasons.

Z.

The client sounds just the sort of person who play the decompressors on a big old engine like a piano.

Just chalk the sequence up on the wall as a memory aid.

Going completely off topic, one of the questions in my 16th edition exam was how far above piglets should the heater be.

There was a lot of moaning afterwards about how are we supposed to know that, I quietly pointed out we only had to look it up and it was one of the easiest questions to answer.

I don’t think that’s in the big book anymore, neither is all the regs for electric fences.

Sparkingchip: 
 

Going completely off topic, one of the questions in my 16th edition exam was how far above piglets should the heater be.

There was a lot of moaning afterwards about how are we supposed to know that, I quietly pointed out we only had to look it up and it was one of the easiest questions to answer.

I don’t think that’s in the big book anymore, neither is all the regs for electric fences.

Not less than 0.5m. 605.10.02. Although that seems a bit low for piglets, o.k. for chicks perhaps.

Z.