If you've been strolling along the home appliance aisle searching desperately for the best generator for home use; sit down, take a deep breath, and rest your feet for a while.
Buying a home generator is not something you should do on impulse. It's important to cherry-pick the best one that's suitable for your lifestyle.
So enough with the dilly-dallying and let's tackle on the top 5 tips for choosing the best home generator for you.
The number of appliances you're planning to power up will be of the essence when choosing the type of generator. While a portable generator is, well, portable and convenient to carry around; it doesn't match up to the beastly power of a standby generator. The latter can run for days on end and will need minimal maintenance.
When choosing the best generators for home use, it's important to always allocate a space to store and keep them safe. So choosing the size is also vital during this phase.
Diesel or Petrol Fuel Type?A diesel-powered generator is more fuel-efficient than a petrol fuel-type generator. Of course, its fuel efficiency comes with a price and high-maintenance costs. So you may have to think it over and see what works within your lifetime budget when using generators.
If you care for the environment, diesel generators emit more carbon monoxide gases per liter than its counterpart. Petrol generators, on the other hand, are acclaimed to be more capricious than diesel because they tend to heat up more and will pose major damages to the parts in the machine in the long run.
How Much Power Do You Need?In the event of power outages, which appliances would you like to continually use? Every home appliance has a different wattage requirement. What you can do is, check which appliances you'd like to power and list down their wattage requirements located at the back or inside the door panels. Then add up everything and multiply the total by 1.5 since appliances demand excess power to kickoff.
To give you an idea, here's a list of the most basic household appliances and their corresponding wattage requirements:
Refrigerators - 700 to 1,200 watts
Television sets - 300 watts
Microwave ovens - 600 to 1,200 watts
Laptop computers - 300 watts
Air conditioners - 1,500 to 2,000 watts
Do You Want a Quiet Generator?If Spiderman said, "With great power comes great responsibility" (or was that Uncle Ben?); in the world of generators, manufacturers also claim that more power equals more decibels! And there is no other way around it. While this might be obvious, it's important to note that the bigger the engine, the more rumble it's going to reverberate. In addition, the more appliances are powered by your generator, well, the more noise your generator is going to make too!
What Additional Features Do You Like?Other such features that homeowners are keen about when choosing the best generators for home are an electric or automatic start, a fuel gauge, a low-oil indicator and shutoff option, multiple outlets, and even a simple set of kicks for easy transport. These are just some of them and all you have to do is find out which feature suits you best.
Now that you have a clue on how to choose the best generator at home, there's no need to be at a loss anymore. If you're still having second thoughts on purchasing one or not, let me remind you that the frill of having a generator on standby is beyond compare. Can you imagine being the only house in the neighborhood with a working TV amidst a blackout? The look on your neighbors' envious faces would be priceless!
