Whole House Generators

It depends on what you want running at once rather than on the square footage. Essentials only, meaning refrigerator, furnace, some lighting and a few outlets, needs about 10kW to 14kW. A typical San Diego house with 200 amp service, one air conditioning compressor, a range and normal appliances lands on 22kW to 26kW. Add a second compressor, a pool, a well pump or an EV charger and you are looking at 30kW and up in a liquid-cooled unit. We do a free load calculation that counts motor starting loads, which is where undersized quotes usually go wrong.

A portable generator is a wheeled unit you store in the garage, roll out during an outage, fuel with gasoline or propane, and connect either through extension cords or through an inlet and interlock kit. It costs a few hundred to a few thousand dollars and somebody has to be home to run it. A standby generator is permanently installed on a pad, connected to natural gas or propane, and wired through an automatic transfer switch, so it starts on its own within about ten seconds of an outage and shuts down on its own when the utility returns. Standby units are quieter, far more powerful, and need no attention during the outage at all.

Natural gas wherever you have a meter. It never runs out, needs no tank and requires no deliveries, which makes it the obvious choice for most homes in San Diego, Chula Vista, Carlsbad and Poway. Propane is the answer on rural parcels with no gas main, and it stores well for years, but the tank size sets your runtime so a 500 gallon tank is worth the extra cost over a 250. Diesel is more efficient per gallon and much more powerful, which is why industrial and large commercial units use it, but it needs a fuel tank, periodic fuel polishing and more maintenance than a homeowner usually wants.

We install Generac, Kohler, Cummins, Briggs & Stratton and Champion generators, and we service those plus Onan, Winco and most diesel units regardless of who sold them. Generac has the widest residential range and the biggest parts network locally. Kohler runs heavier iron with a longer standard warranty. Cummins generator installation is what we suggest when somebody wants the commercial engine family at home. We are not tied to one manufacturer, so the recommendation follows your fuel and your load.

Most complete installs in San Diego County run between $5,000 and $15,000. A 14kW to 18kW unit on a simple natural gas lot with a load-center transfer switch sits near the bottom of that range. A 24kW to 26kW unit with a service-rated 200A automatic transfer switch, a long gas run and a panel upgrade sits near the top. Liquid-cooled units above 30kW go beyond it. The quote covers the generator, the pad, the gas line, the transfer switch, the electrical work, the permit and commissioning, itemized so you can see where the money goes.

The on-site work is usually one to three days. The whole project, from signed quote to a commissioned unit, typically runs four to eight weeks, and most of that is permit turnaround plus unit lead time on anything not already in the warehouse. HOA architectural review can add two to four weeks on top, which is why we submit that package at the same time as the permit rather than after it.

Yes. Every jurisdiction in the county requires an electrical permit for the transfer switch and the tie-in, and a mechanical or plumbing permit for the gas line. We pull both, submit the plan set, coordinate the inspection and handle any corrections. Permit fees vary by city and are itemized in the quote. Skipping the permit creates a real problem later, because an unpermitted transfer switch shows up in escrow and can void a homeowner insurance claim after a fire.

It is a switch that sits between the utility feed and your panel and decides which source powers the house. When it sees the utility voltage drop, it signals the generator to start, waits for the engine to come up to speed and stabilize, then transfers your load onto generator power. When utility power comes back and stays steady, it transfers you back and shuts the generator down after a cooldown. It also physically prevents generator power from backfeeding onto the utility line, which is a safety requirement and the reason a permanent install legally needs one. Without it you are running extension cords by hand.

Manufacturers require roughly three feet of clearance at the sides and rear and five feet from any window, door or vent, with clear space above and nothing combustible against it. Local code adds distances from property lines, gas meters and air intakes. In practice that means the side yard on most suburban lots, and the rear corner on narrow coastal lots in Encinitas, La Jolla, Coronado and the older parts of Chula Vista. We check placement on the site visit, because it is the constraint that most often changes the design.

Modern air-cooled standby units run about 60 to 66 dB measured at 23 feet under normal load, which is roughly the same as a central air conditioning condenser and quieter than a lawn mower. The weekly exercise cycle is closer to 70 dB but only lasts five to twelve minutes. Liquid-cooled units are louder and generally sit further from occupied space. We set the exercise cycle to a reasonable weekday hour and orient the exhaust away from neighboring windows, which handles almost every noise complaint before it happens.

Appraisers and real estate data generally put a permanently installed standby generator at roughly a 3 to 5 percent increase in home value, and homes with one tend to sell faster in areas where outages are common. In the parts of San Diego County that sit inside the public safety power shutoff footprint, Escondido, Poway, Ramona, Alpine and the eastern hills, it reads to buyers as infrastructure rather than a luxury. Keep the permit records and the service history, because that is what an appraiser will actually want to see.

Yes. We work with several third-party lenders that specialize in home improvement and standby power, and terms typically run from 24 to 144 months with approved credit, including deferred-interest promotional options at certain times of year. Manufacturers also run periodic rebates and financing promotions, and we will tell you when one is live rather than letting you miss it. Most households compare a monthly payment against what one bad outage costs them and decide from there. Call for a free estimate and we will lay out the options with the quote.