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So last Wednesday, after much rain and sudden drop in temperatures, the trees started falling on the powerlines. Thursday, I went into Little Rock and picked up their 9000w generator. It was on sale for $799. (got sold the wrong wheel kit). So for 4 days of running this gen, I realized one thing. Electricity is cheap. LMAO.. 8 gallon tank, twice a day gets expensive.
But I'm glad I had it. I wired in the necessities and had some thick extension cort that came from a 220 pump. I doubled it and ran it to my water heater for hot shower and dish water every night.

The power was back on this morning. I woke up and noticed my ceiling fan turning. Without coffee, it took me a few seconds to realize what was going on.

Good to hear you survived

Agree. Making your own electricity is expensive. We get the opportunity after Hurricanes. Thankfully, we use the boat as our emergency fuel supply.

Some folks on the other side of town are still days without power.

For us, keeping the refrigerators and freezer powered is more important than cooking on the electric stove or lighting and air conditioning. We can cook with LPG on the BBQ or burner outside. No problem. Loosing the stuff that needs refrigeration is a bigger deal for us. I have two portable generators.....because two is some, one is none....just in case.
As a fireman, I had to always be ready to button up at home, always be well supplied and stocked up and head to the firehouse when Hurricanes came.
Glad you’re all back to normal. Those winter storms y’all go through can wreak havoc.

Glades Cat said:

For us, keeping the refrigerators and freezer powered is more important than cooking on the electric stove or lighting and air conditioning. We can cook with LPG on the BBQ or burner outside. No problem. Loosing the stuff that needs refrigeration is a bigger deal for us. I have two portable generators.....because two is some, one is none....just in case.
As a fireman, I had to always be ready to button up at home, always be well supplied and stocked up and head to the firehouse when Hurricanes came.
Glad you’re all back to normal. Those winter storms y’all go through can wreak havoc.

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Especially around here. It's timber country. 60ft pine trees, for miles and miles, only 30ft from the powerline. Seems it would be cost effective, at least in areas like this, to bury powerlines. Because this is a bi yearly thing. Winter and then again when the spring storms come through.

Seriously, if they can bury water lines, phone lines and fiber, I don't see why the electric companies can't bury their power lines.

I am probably luckier than most. I live just outside a small rural village and i am on the same service line as the village sewage plant and the water well. When the wind and ice storms take down power lines one of the first lines fixed in my area is mine. I can see both from my house but i am on well and septic. Go figure. A few years ago a wind storm dropped probably a hundred dead ash trees on power lines in the area. Lots of folks were out for 5 days. Mine was back on in one day.

PTmowerMech said:

Especially around here. It's timber country. 60ft pine trees, for miles and miles, only 30ft from the powerline. Seems it would be cost effective, at least in areas like this, to bury powerlines. Because this is a bi yearly thing. Winter and then again when the spring storms come through.

Seriously, if they can bury water lines, phone lines and fiber, I don't see why the electric companies can't bury their power lines.

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Because it costs about 10 times to bury the power lines up front and all decision making is limited to the end of the current financial reporting period and this regardless of the fact that it would pay for itself in 5 years in repair costs let alone insurance costs when power wires cause forest fires that cost the power companies insurance company billions .
And of course recovery from natural disasters can not be factored in because while you could average over the past X years that does not mean next year it will be $ X/T so the economist will not factor it into the costs .

My brother lives at the end of a county road. No electric poles passed his house. His electricity is always several days later than others getting turned back on.
So the other day, like 3 days after mine was restore, he called and told me that his transformer was hooked back up and humming. The wires were connected back to his meter, but he still didn't have electricity. Come to find out, his meter was bad. It took them another two days to bring out another meter.
He was glad to finally get it restored. But pissed that the electric company guy didn't check to make sure the power was back on.

Well mother trucker. Power went out so rolled the generator out of the barn, put fuel in it. Plug it into the transfer switch and it starts on the first pull and no output??????? Worked fine when i put it away a year ago. After testing looks like the AVR died from setting in the barn. Really?

Hammermechanicman said:

Well mother trucker. Power went out so rolled the generator out of the barn, put fuel in it. Plug it into the transfer switch and it starts on the first pull and no output??????? Worked fine when i put it away a year ago. After testing looks like the AVR died from setting in the barn. Really?

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Crank it up, plug in a drill, pull the trigger on the drill and rotate the chuck by hand. I'm not sure which direction. But rotate it pretty fast.
Don't grip to hard cause when the drill starts turning on it's own, it'll be full speed.

I have a customers gen that's only putting out about 35v, so I looked on Donny's Youtube.

Tried that, didn't work. Did the resistance and voltage tests. AVR gets volts in from exciter coil but no volts out to brushes. If i disconnect AVR and apply 12v to the brushes it puts out 130v. Just kind of amazes me it takes a dump sitting in the barn.

Hammermechanicman said:

Tried that, didn't work. Did the resistance and voltage tests. AVR gets volts in from exciter coil but no volts out to brushes. If i disconnect AVR and apply 12v to the brushes it puts out 130v. Just kind of amazes me it takes a dump sitting in the barn.

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Thanks for the tip. I have one that's only putting out 35. So If I disconnect the AVR, I can test the leads from the windings while it's running?

On MOST not all generators you can disconnect the AVR from the brushes and while running apply 12v from a battery to the brushes and generator should put out around 70vac. Be sure to watch the polarity. You normally get a couple volts from the exciter coil while running and AVR normally puts out around 10-15vdc to the brushes. Different generators will be different the numbers will be close enough for testing.
Here is a link to a manual that might help

Hammermechanicman said:

On MOST not all generators you can disconnect the AVR from the brushes and while running apply 12v from a battery to the brushes and generator should put out around 70vac. Be sure to watch the polarity. You normally get a couple volts from the exciter coil while running and AVR normally puts out around 10-15vdc to the brushes. Different generators will be different the numbers will be close enough for testing.
Here is a link to a manual that might help

https://onan.xmsi.net/00-Other%20Gensets/86262GS%20BriggsPortable%20Generators%201.pdf

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I have an adjustment screw on this AVR, and have given it several turns in both directions. But the voltage doesn't change.
I'll try that 12 test tomorrow. So what's the purpose of that? To sort of shock it?

WOW, talk about customer service. HF just called and apologized for selling me the wrong wheel kit for the gen I bought that day. Told me to bring the wheel kit back to them (65 miles from me) and they were going to refund the wheel kit, give me the new wheel kit and knock 15% off the price of the generator that I bought.