Toukow
January 24th, 2009, 08:22 AM
Hello All: I found this forum by happy accident. It’s beneficial to see the issues that some of you have encountered like the poor battery charging system, etc. and your relatively easy and sound solutions.
I know it is easy to get an unfair, biased view of the reliability of any vehicle or product on such forums because we see the problems but don’t really know the number of units in service (at least I don’t). But I’m curious as to the reliability, among other things, of these units given their function for most of us.
My 12 kW unit went into service during a windstorm and I noticed the lights were too bright. Grabbed a meter and it was 157 volts at the outlets. I determined a bad regulator and given a long storm might be in the making, I contacted a local shop for the part. We had been out of power during prior events for 5 days and 7 days as well as shorter events. In the end the episode cost over $600 for regulator replacement and the furnace control board, which had blown due to over-voltage, was around $500. My home unit (Model 44562, 12 kW) had less than 200 hours on it. That said, I was surprised how little additional damage occurred.
So my questions are:
1. How common is a regulator failure per this forums experience and is the failure mode typically over-voltage? The technician would only say ‘it’s a serviceable part’ which to him meant he replaced them but would not say how often. I searched this forum under ‘spare parts’ to see what people bought for such circumstances and the only thing I saw was your basic stuff for maintenance. Given these seem to cost around $150 it would seem prudent to have one on hand.
2. Couldn’t get a response from the ‘post it up and we’ll find it’ for this list. Can you recommend good parts suppliers for these units?
I was going to ask if you would you buy one of these again but see the responses to another poster's similar question today. If these things do have a failure mode for regulators of over-voltage and have frequent failures, I find the design unacceptable and will replace it.
I find it frustrating that I’ve purchased this unit for critical duty and when it fails it doesn’t just go out of service, it blows up the stuff that is most important in such circumstances like the furnace. Even if I buy a portable back up unit given this unit’s issues, my propane furnace will be out of commission under such failure mode.
In the past few weeks we have gone through what truly constitutes a blizzard in the Seattle area and this unit does not give me the confidence in my preparedness that I had hoped. Thanks for letting me vent, Dean
I know it is easy to get an unfair, biased view of the reliability of any vehicle or product on such forums because we see the problems but don’t really know the number of units in service (at least I don’t). But I’m curious as to the reliability, among other things, of these units given their function for most of us.
My 12 kW unit went into service during a windstorm and I noticed the lights were too bright. Grabbed a meter and it was 157 volts at the outlets. I determined a bad regulator and given a long storm might be in the making, I contacted a local shop for the part. We had been out of power during prior events for 5 days and 7 days as well as shorter events. In the end the episode cost over $600 for regulator replacement and the furnace control board, which had blown due to over-voltage, was around $500. My home unit (Model 44562, 12 kW) had less than 200 hours on it. That said, I was surprised how little additional damage occurred.
So my questions are:
1. How common is a regulator failure per this forums experience and is the failure mode typically over-voltage? The technician would only say ‘it’s a serviceable part’ which to him meant he replaced them but would not say how often. I searched this forum under ‘spare parts’ to see what people bought for such circumstances and the only thing I saw was your basic stuff for maintenance. Given these seem to cost around $150 it would seem prudent to have one on hand.
2. Couldn’t get a response from the ‘post it up and we’ll find it’ for this list. Can you recommend good parts suppliers for these units?
I was going to ask if you would you buy one of these again but see the responses to another poster's similar question today. If these things do have a failure mode for regulators of over-voltage and have frequent failures, I find the design unacceptable and will replace it.
I find it frustrating that I’ve purchased this unit for critical duty and when it fails it doesn’t just go out of service, it blows up the stuff that is most important in such circumstances like the furnace. Even if I buy a portable back up unit given this unit’s issues, my propane furnace will be out of commission under such failure mode.
In the past few weeks we have gone through what truly constitutes a blizzard in the Seattle area and this unit does not give me the confidence in my preparedness that I had hoped. Thanks for letting me vent, Dean