RE: My UN-automated Home :-(

["Keith Doxey" <ukha.diyha@xxxxxxx>]

When Mark wired the house I believe he had a separate consumer unit for
"essential" services wired via a changeover switch with a socket
to plug the
generator in. He  just neglected to get the gennie!!

If anyone is considering fitting a generator, A CHANGEOVER SWITCH IS
ESSENTIAL.
You cannot simple connect the generator to your mains supply for a number
of
reasons.

1. Your self generated electricity will feed out of the house.
At best - you will light up your neighbours houses.
Slightly worse - your generator will be overloaded and possibly blow up.
Worst Case - YOU WILL KILL THE ELECTRICITY BOARD ENGINEER WHO IS TRYING TO
RESTORE POWER

2. There will be an enormous bang and lots of smoke from your generator
when
the mains is restored.

PLEASE CONSULT A QUALIFIED ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR IF YOU WANT A GENERATOR
HOOKUP.

Sorry for the shouting but this is Life Threatening stuff and should not be
taken lightly.

Even BT dont try to run everything in a building despite having huge engine
sets in the power rooms. Stuff like electric heating and cooking is
disabled. Some of the lights are also not operational. If you have gas or
oil central heating you only need a small amount of electricity to drive
the
boiler and pump etc.

If you want to run EVERYTHING you are talking serious money in the 10K+
range. Even Autostart does not come cheap as you not only have to start the
generator, you also have to have contactor controlled changeover and
restoration of power.

Be safe

Keith

-----Original Message-----
From: andy.powell@xxxxxxx [mailto:andy.powell@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 28 February 2001 10:28
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] My UN-automated Home :-(


Is that  his car or generator?? ;-)

It really depends upon the size of the house and consequentially the load.A
n 'average' sized house with all it's 'stuff' going is probably going ton
eed about a a 20kw generator ...smaller houses can probably get away witha
8kw unit.....

Like I said it depends upon how much electricity you are using - normal
procedure would be that the installer would monitor your supply for a weeko
r so to get an average power figure, and of course peak requirement -
i.e. everything is turned off, and then turned on again to see the peak
requirement...


If you use a genset (Generator and UPS) there should be no need for the
surge supressor - if there is then the installation is faulty. The idea
behind the genset is that there is *no* difference in the supply at all.

If you are just running a generator then you could (as someone's already
commented - seriously or not) just buy small UPS(s) for the PCs - which
are more likely to notice any power fluctuations - it/they wouldn't have
to be that expensive/big - just enough to keep the PC's running for a fewm
inutes while your generator got up to speed. You don't have to worry
about the lighting on a ups if you don't want to  - but I'm thinking
'ideal'  situation here.. Personally I'd love to have a genset for my
house (just to see the look on the nieghbours faces when they are in the
dark and we're still watching TV ;-)  ) bu it can get into silly money...o
f course when I will the lottery and build my own place it will be a
standard feature.... with a secondary fuel tank to keep it going for
around a week... but then I've got more chance of spontaneously combustingt
han winning the lottery!

A.






"Mark McCall" <mark@xxxxxxx>
28/02/2001 10:55
Please respond to ukha_d


To:     <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
cc:
Subject:        Re: [ukha_d] My UN-automated Home :-(

>Are you sure that a £350 generator is going to be able to supply
enoughj
> uice to you house??? or are you just thinking of emergency lighting?

My father-in-law has a Honda at that price.  A 2.2 or 2.3 Kv or something
like that??

It was running his lights, heating, fridge/freezer, even a microwave.
That's all I need really (and one PC).  I presume running a PC off a
generator I should use some sort of surge suppressor or something??

M.






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