Home Generators Overview

This home generators overview will give you a clearer idea as to the various types of home generators that are available, and which particular type of house power generator is going to suit your power needs.

A home generator is designed to supply power to a variety of appliances in your home in the case of power outages and power failures. Losing power to your home can have a negative impact on your life for the time that you are without electrical power. You can lose your lights, heating for your home can be disrupted, and other necessary appliances can fail.

Having the means to supply backup power can make a real difference in the case of a power cut.

There are many types of home generators on the market, but they basically fall into two categories. There are whole house generators and there are portable home bsck up generators, and they both work in very different ways.

Whole House Generators Overview

As far as home generators go, whole house generators are the best on the market for residential use. They can supply all the power that you will need to make sure that all your power needs for the home are catered for.

A whole house generator is a generator that is installed and fixed in a permanent area. They are very heavy and supply a great deal of electrical power. Typically they run on either gas from your natural gas source, or from liquid propane. They can be installed in a way so that both types of fuel can be used in case one becomes temporarily unavailable.

Compared to portable home generators, whole house generators can be quite costly to buy. On top of this you have the extra installation costs to consider because they have to be attached to the main gas power source in your home and will require gas plumbing work that has to routed to the generator.

To run the whole house home generator by liquid propane, you will need to get yourself a propane tank which holds the fuel, and this tank will also require you to plumb in the tank to your generator.

Whole house generators require very little maintenance, as they practically run themselves once you have installed one. It will automatically start to send power to your home and all your electrical appliances once it has detected a power shortage or an outage. This is a fully automatic function which kicks in within seconds of you having lost power through your conventional power source.

Portable Home Generators Overview

Portable generators are much more affordable than whole house generators, but they do not provide anywhere near the power.

A portable house generator is ok if you want to run a few appliances at a time. It will all depend on how much power your particular generator can supply at any given time. However you can normally run your lights and a few other appliances at the same time, but a portable home backup generator cannot supply power to the whole house.

Low powered generators which can offer between 1000-3000 watts of power are generally used for garages or workshops. A good portable home generator needs to be offer a minimum of 5000 watts if you want to run a number of appliances.

Overall, whole house generators are the best ones to look at, but as I have said before, you need to ready to pay for one. Portable generators are handy if you are not expecting to be without power for long periods of time, and are relatively cheap to purchase.