How long do you run your generator

Don Baer

Moderator
Staff member
I been playing hooky from work this afternoon and with the onset of hot weather it is time to prepare for our monsoon season and with that we can look forward to electrical outages :(. I decided to run the generator since it hasn't been run since last summer. It started on the third pull I ran it for 5 minutes then put away. So Frank and others out there how long do you run your generator for to keep it ready for when you need it.
 
About ten minutes with a load plugged in every spring and fall plus several hours to days in actual use every year when we had a portable. We put in a ng standby about a month ago--it runs itself every Monday at noon for about 5 min.
 
Last summer a storm knocked out power here for a couple of days. The first time in many years. I hadn't started the old Honda since the last outage. Put gas in it, pulled the rope twice, turned on the ignition, pulled the rope once and the old bugger started. Ya gotta love it!
 
I've been doing it monthly and I always put it under a load once it has warmed up. Usually I just hook up my shop vac or something to it and let it run for 5 minutes. What I've got to remember to do is change the oil before hurricane season.....
 
I've been running my 7500 watt Generac about once every couple months for the past five or six years. I start it up, let it run for a few minutes, then shut the fuel petcock off and let it keep running until it runs out of fuel - probably another three or four minutes. So, overall, I'd guess it runs for somewhere around 7~10 minutes each time.

A couple months back, I got a good deal on a whole house generator, permanently installed, with a proper load transfer switch. The generator runs on natural gas. It's set up at the factory to 'exercise itself' once a week for twelve minutes. It starts and runs every Saturday morning. Paperwork says that twelve minutes is long enough to bring the engine up to normal operating tems, and also to recharge the starting battery. So, using that as a guideline, I'd guess a 10 ~ 12 minute test run would be good for most 'manual' generators, too.
 
About every second month I run it for 20-30 min. I figure letting it get up to full temp is good for it. I change oil every 50 hours of running time. I keep six 5 gal. cans of gasoline on hand. Gas has stabilizer in it. I use that gas for my other small engines and that (sorta) keeps the fuel fresh and rotated. I'll be getting one or two more cans to have on hand. That 2009 ice storm taught us a lot and put the fear into me. We were without power for six days. A lot of people were without power for six weeks.
 
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