htxag09 said:

---

Is champion the only tri fuel inverter around the 10-15kw range?

---

We have a dual fuel 16000 inverter. I'm told the tri-fuel in the model we have is coming out around Thanksgiving. From Duromax.

aarontx said:

---

You were running central HVAC and only burning 10gal/24 hours? If so, makes me want to pull the trigger on a ~10kw inverter.

I was burning ~12gal/24 hours running two 2500 watt inverters in parallel plugged into my panel via 50 amp inlet. No central air, but two fridges, a freezer, lights, fans, tv, router, and a portable 12k btu AC unit.

---

We're running our 5 ton AC on an inverter. During the day, it uses about 1 gal/hr. At night it's about 0.7 gal/hr. So around 18 gallons per day.

terradactylexpress said:

---

jaggiemaggie said:

---

I keep going back and forth on whether to get a tri fuel inverter like the champion for the cleaner power or the Westinghouse trifuel 14500 for the higher output.

---

Pretty sure the 14.5kw has been discontinued... I've had one on order for months

---

It's a new release

AJ02 said:

---

htxag09 said:

---

Is champion the only tri fuel inverter around the 10-15kw range?

---

We have a dual fuel 16000 inverter. I'm told the tri-fuel in the model we have is coming out around Thanksgiving. From Duromax.

---

Expect that to be nearly $6-7k for a tri-fuel inverter

Most likely. Our dual fuel was $5000 but worth every penny to us.

People could probably just buy two smaller inverters and daisy chain them together. Might be cheaper.

Oh that's the one replacing the 11500 it seems, the 1150 is the one I've been trying to buy

After some research of what's available think I'm going to hold off for the next models to see what's coming.

Have a couple on my Amazon wish list and if they come down (doubt it) I'll pull the trigger. Westinghouse 12,500 W tri fuel & Champion 9K watt tri fuel inverter

But ordered the soft start for the ac and pretty sure my f150 onboard generator will power it (7200 W). It really is convenient but think that convenience wears off for anything longer than 30ish hours……

Ymmv but they park Generac units 18" from houses all day long, plenty of them on side yards where the neighbor's house isn't 20' away either. Do do your own risk assessment but the 20' from the house measurement strikes me as a serious CYA from the manufacturers and AHJ hoping people don't run them in attached garages or with the exhaust pointed at an easy place for exhaust to infiltrate the house.

Noise is definitely going to be an issue in that space though. I offered to let neighbors put stuff in my fridge and come in to cool down as a peace offering for the mega decibels I was churning out. Nobody took me up on it but they can't say I wasn't neighborly.

Limited-time deal for Prime Members: DuroMax XP12000HX Dual Fuel Portable Generator-12000 Watt Gas or Propane Powered Electric Start w/CO Alert, 50 State Approved, Blue https://a.co/d/ftPhkU7

This is dangerous advice. The Generac generators that you see that close to houses have been approved for that location by the Southwest Research Institute. If your generator doesn't have the SwRI sticker on it then I would not locate a generator that close to your house. NFPA 37 defines minimum clearances around the generator and you also need to consider potential CO entry points.

Btw...DuroMax updated their language around THD to be "around 5%." for the normal generators.

So THD is less of a concern unless you have specially sensitive equipment that absolutely requires the lowest of THD.

Hypothetical question:

Could you get a small home standby generator (e.g. Kohler 10kw) and run it like a portable with an interlock and quick connect gas supply? Basically forget about the ATS and run it manual?

Sea Speed said:

---

Limited-time deal for Prime Members: DuroMax XP12000HX Dual Fuel Portable Generator-12000 Watt Gas or Propane Powered Electric Start w/CO Alert, 50 State Approved, Blue https://a.co/d/ftPhkU7

---

I have this generator which I bought after the freeze, because it was the biggest portable one I could find, and tri-fuel wasn't really a thing at that time. 230 hours on it, and it's been a workhorse.

I'm converting mine to run NG and putting an Easy Start on my AC.

That's a great deal.

If I'm understanding what you are asking, thats basically what we are all doing with our Duromax and Westinghouse units. There is just more to troubleshoot at start up, and you have to coordinate the plumbing and electrical install (if you can't DIY).

jbanda said:

---

Hypothetical question:

Could you get a small home standby generator (e.g. Kohler 10kw) and run it like a portable with an interlock and quick connect gas supply? Basically forget about the ATS and run it manual?

---

Don't see why not. But why?

htxag09 said:

---

jbanda said:

---

Hypothetical question:

Could you get a small home standby generator (e.g. Kohler 10kw) and run it like a portable with an interlock and quick connect gas supply? Basically forget about the ATS and run it manual?

---

Don't see why not. But why?

---

This. Get the biggest generator you can afford or feel comfortable moving around.

This. Duromax brands its multi-fuel gens with the highest fuel rating. So the 13000 is the output on gasoline. It's something like 11000 on propane and 9-10000 on nat gas. Still enough for our houses, but might not be for others.

You will always get the least power output with nat gas.

don't think those standbye's have any plugs, so you'll have to wire them to a panel for it to work.

That alone would kill any "portability" strategy for me.

Agree with others wondering why this would be a good idea.

My guess is it's appealing because the generator is in a weatherproof housing and can be kept outside.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of moving mine around and would prefer something that is enclosed. But something like the Kohler would have been almost 2x what I paid for the Duromax.

And I do want to be able to take it with me if I ever move.

sure....but the trade-off is you need a forklift to move them around. Just not a realistic use case.

TXTransplant said:

---

My guess is it's appealing because the generator is in a weatherproof housing and can be kept outside.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of moving mine around and would prefer something that is enclosed. But something like the Kohler would have been almost 2x what I paid for the Duromax.

And I do want to be able to take it with me if I ever move.

---

You could spec a little plastic Suncast or Rubbermaid-style storage shed to store the generator outside, or you could always build something. Plenty of youtube videos and articles with people doing that for sound control.

https://www.lifetime.com/lifetime-60212-horizontal-outdoor-storage-shed#

Right…you wouldn't be moving it. And you're just paying extra for all the electronics to do an auto start that you wouldn't be using.

Yeah, I've looked at all that. At first, I thought I wanted something like that, but I'd prob still have to pull it out when in use to keep CO from building up and tripping the sensor.

I'm lucky that I have a deep covered patio on the side of my house, right near my gas meter. I think I'm just gonna cover it and keep it there.

I think you would definitely want to divert the exhaust out of the shed and probable rig up a ventilation and/or fan setup to get fresh air in.

I got a tri fuel Firman 10,000 generator.

Had a interlock kit and transfer switch installed.

When running on gasoline, I can run both fridges, about half the lights in my house and our 3.5 ton upstairs AC unit (without a soft-start). It won't run my downstairs 4 ton brand new AC system...I am thinking that I need a soft start for that to maybe work.

Anyway, its a much smaller investment than a whole house generac system.

Next step is to have a connection built to run on natural gas then I don't have to worry about gasoline....

Seamaster said:

---

I got a tri fuel Firman 10,000 generator.

Had a interlock kit and transfer switch installed.

When running on gasoline, I can run both fridges, about half the lights in my house and our 3.5 ton upstairs AC unit (without a soft-start). It won't run my downstairs 4 ton brand new AC system...I am thinking that I need a soft start for that to maybe work.

Anyway, its a much smaller investment than a whole house generac system.

Next step is to have a connection built to run on natural gas then I don't have to worry about gasoline....

---

Is that 10K starting or running? Running both of those AC's would be a bear

Diggity said:

---

Seamaster said:

---

I got a tri fuel Firman 10,000 generator.

Had a interlock kit and transfer switch installed.

When running on gasoline, I can run both fridges, about half the lights in my house and our 3.5 ton upstairs AC unit (without a soft-start). It won't run my downstairs 4 ton brand new AC system...I am thinking that I need a soft start for that to maybe work.

Anyway, its a much smaller investment than a whole house generac system.

Next step is to have a connection built to run on natural gas then I don't have to worry about gasoline....

---

Is that 10K starting or running? Running both of those AC's would be a bear

---

Starting…

And that's with gasoline. It's 8k on Nat Gas.

I don't think it's run both ACs but maybe it would run the downstairs one instead of the smaller upstairs one.

htxag09 said:

---

hunterjr81 said:

---

Ag_07 said:

---

I have serious doubts about whether the nat gas supply and infrastructure will be able to handle the insane increase of all these whole home generators.

---

Why so? Pretty much every home has a gas heater and never have an issue there.

I have a tri fuel generator that can run off natural gas. Bought it at Costco a couple years ago. It sure is nice to not have to worry about buying gasoline. I'm at the point now where I'm going to have an interlock kit and power inlet installed to make things easier to power instead of running extension cords everywhere. Have been researching soft start kits on the home ac so I may be able to run it to off the generator I already have.
I don't think these big backup wole home generators are necessary if you have a soft start kit for your ac. I'm certainly going to test it out soon when I get it all installed.

---

Why so?

Quick google shows a water heater uses 2-5k BTU's an hour. A whole home generator can be 300k BTU's.

It's not unreasonable to see how an infrastructure set up to supply 5k BTU's per hour per house could struggle with 60x that….

---

1 BTU = 0.234 watts, for those who aren't engineers and prefer to use modern recognizable units.

A whole home generator is like a pool or a rental property. Think really hard before you add one more headache to your short life.

Window unit, refrigerator, wifi. Double it. Buy open frame inverter that size. Just my 2 cents. Dual fuel if you want for emergencies, but grill tanks are too expensive to run for more than a few days. Also, that size is small enough to boondock. Added bonus.

yeah, with a soft start, you could likely power one or the other.

My plan is to just run the AC system for our master bedroom/playroom area. That would suffice in a pinch. Trying to run both just doesn't seem worth the extra investment.

Honestly...I started my DuroMax on Monday at 6am...right before the eye passed by and things got real nasty.

I did have it on my patio, but beyond that, I had the GenTent on it, and it ran like a champ during the worst of the storm.

These things are made to take some abuse.

Diggity said:

---

Seamaster said:

---

I got a tri fuel Firman 10,000 generator.

Had a interlock kit and transfer switch installed.

When running on gasoline, I can run both fridges, about half the lights in my house and our 3.5 ton upstairs AC unit (without a soft-start). It won't run my downstairs 4 ton brand new AC system...I am thinking that I need a soft start for that to maybe work.

Anyway, its a much smaller investment than a whole house generac system.

Next step is to have a connection built to run on natural gas then I don't have to worry about gasoline....

---

Is that 10K starting or running? Running both of those AC's would be a bear

---

You could honestly get away with a 12k tri-fuel with hard/soft starts on your AC(s) and get both running.

My brother ran both his in a bigger house than yours and he's got a 12k DuroMax.

Seamaster said:

---

I got a tri fuel Firman 10,000 generator.

Had a interlock kit and transfer switch installed.

When running on gasoline, I can run both fridges, about half the lights in my house and our 3.5 ton upstairs AC unit (without a soft-start). It won't run my downstairs 4 ton brand new AC system...I am thinking that I need a soft start for that to maybe work.

Anyway, its a much smaller investment than a whole house generac system.

Next step is to have a connection built to run on natural gas then I don't have to worry about gasoline....

---

Nice size, but after burning 35% more gasoline per day running a 3500 watt than I was paying in electricity for 3400 square feet, I wouldn't want to run my full AC. Save that money for cutting up trees, lol.

My best advice, is whatever you decide to go with, do a test run before the power goes out.

We started mine up after the storm and were troubleshooting a couple of problems that would have been much easier to fix in normal operating conditions.

I mentioned previously that mine didn't want to start (brand new out of the box), either with the remote or the push button. We had to use the pull (and had to do that multiple times).

And you can't plug a fridge into the GFCI outlets. They will trip when the compressor kicks on. My BF wired up a homemade 30 A plug, and we plugged the fridge into that outlet, but again, it took way longer than it should have to get that done. There was not a ready to use one for purchase at any of the home improvement stores.

A 13000 Duromax is also way overkill and a waste of fuel if you're not going to take the time to hook it up to your breaker box and run more than a fridge and box fan.

Thanks for all the replies. The question was based mostly as an intermediate solution. I hear CP has to come by and sign off on the system in an auto mode before you can use it. I was wondering if you could set it to run manually if there was a massive power outage between the time you received the generator and the time CP came out to inspect.