Customer Rating:  
Summary: Bought on Amazon, Deliv. OK -No Oper. Problems so Far.
Comment: Got it last year & installed professionally. Directions are good enough you can do it yourself on the elect.. If you don't already have gas you'll pay alot extra for install-you'll have to buy tanks (propane) or get nat. gas lines run. Unit comes on weekly to charge its battery. Had a power outage & it came on automatically after 10 sec.- whole house (3 ton AC & all)was running fine. Shut itself down when power came on. Has done this a few times during storms without delay or problems. I'm pleased so far & don't seem to have any problems.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Cheap insurance
Comment: Just to add a few things to the above reviews....This generator is NOT built to be used 24/7 - 365 days a year. But if your power goes out once or twice a year it should save your [...], or in my case about $50K in home theater equipment and maybe another $15K in tools. Like a lot of people, quite often there's no one home at my house when everyone is at work and at school. What do you do if the power goes out? You could have a basement full of water in a matter of minutes during a heavy downpour if your sump and ejector lose power. Sure you have insurance, but do you really want to go throught the hassel of replacing everything in a flooded basement? If you have a decent level of experience you should be able to install this unit yourself. If you're going to use NG (I did) you'll have to run a supply pipe with shut-off out to within a foot of the unit. This, of couse, could involve drilling through the brick on the outside of your house along with some 2" by. Everything is provided to hook the transfer switch to your breaker box but, once again, you will have to mount the box and possibly move the whip etc. All easy enought to do, but you do have to know what you're doing - and it will take the better part of a Saturday. A few more things - you'll have to buy a car battery to start the unit ($60 - $80 depending on the size of your generator), all of the pipe and shut-offs etc. to supply the NG, some sort of gravel/river rock to set the pad on and a breaker for your electrical box. I have the 15K unit so I needed a 70 amp Homeline breaker from Square D to fit my breaker box. Not a very easy size/model to find, but I was able to get one online for about $15. A good Fluke meter will tell you if the voltage and Hertz are within specs.I haven't had to use it, but it does work fine - it 'exercises' every week at 11:30 am - and it is supplying the correct voltage to all of the appliances hooked to it. I consider it cheap insurance for a basement full of 'stuff'.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 04390-03 NEW model number
Comment: This back up generator is an excellent piece of equipment when purchased for the right reasons. That would be as a stand by unit for use in power failures of relatively short durations, from one to ten days.
If you live off-grid, and are thinking of buying this unit for your primary back up unit which will eventually run hundreds and hundreds of hours, lots of them continuously, you are buying the wrong item. Generac developed this as a lightweight. When used as it was designed it is unbeatable.
If you need a constant source of power Generac offers water cooled models, same KW rating, that you can run forever and ten days. Better yet, get a diesel.
I saw a review from some guy off grid complaining about how it held up for him. He was probably running it at max capacity for days on end. Yep, it will get hot, but note that it does have shutdown devices which stop it if it over heats or over revs.
For 95% of us, this is more generator backup than we will ever need.
By the way, the problem with the high volume of NG required to run it has been fixed. Just make sure the model you buy has -03 at the end, and not 01 or 02.
I own 3 of these now, and am ordering my 4th from Amazon. The first has just over 980 hours on it. It still runs beautifully. Just keep it tuned and change the oil and filter even sooner than the book requires.
Finally, there is a 200 hour break in for this model. 50 hours at 25% load, 50 at 50%, 50 at 75%, and 50 fully loaded. Do take the time to do this and you'll have a generator that will far exceed your expectations.
Sirwriter
Customer Rating:
Summary: Perfect.
Comment: Ours is just over two months old. We fuel it with propane. It powers most of our circuits, even the heatpump. (3ton)
Installation was straight forward. The transfer switch wire curcuit feed conduit was too stiff and not adaptable to our recessed service box. I had to replace it with steel flex conduit. However the replacement available was only 1" in diameter, not the 1 1/4" size that is supplied. That made conversion difficult. It was the hardest part of the installation. As far as the rest of the job, we already were setup with propane to the generator site. The power feed was built-in to our home too. Just wish the cables with the new generator were easy to modify, but no luck. We would have had to run all the 'sense' and 'controller' wires anyway, so it wasn't worth the effort to use the old wiring. The result is that 30 feet of conduit from the generator shows now in our garage. And we have a spare 'whole house' manual transfer swich now. Oh well, there's always ebay.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good product for standby
Comment: This unit has very good products used throughuot. It does require preventive maintenance. Hired a plumber for the gas. I'm a electrician by trade. Piece of cake to install. I added a few amperage guages for monitoring and balacing loads. (Also needed for breaking in the engine properly). Satified with unit.
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