Folks,
Haven't posted here in about ten years but I'm back and have a quesiton.
We recently purchased a Westinghouse iGen 4500 inverter generator for use as an emergency backup for our house. As many others do, we have a good amount of food packed away in the freezer so we don't need to visit the grocery store during the pandemic. We did the upgrade as we really don't want to risk losing the food and our old generator (Champion 3500/4000) has a lot of harmonic distortion and is pretty noisy. I have installed a load side 10 circuit transfer switch and we tested it out the other day and every thing works great. The Westinghouse iGen runs everything critical in the house without breaking a sweat and it looks like we will get about 16 hours of run time on 3.4 gallons with most appliance ands lights pulling a load at the same time.
Anyway, reading the manual (wife's suggestion) the manufacturer recommends a very strange oil range that is a "smidge" irritating to because we live in the mid atlantic and can easily experience all three "zones" in the course of a week, especially in the Spring and Fall.
5W30 for under 35F
10W30 for 35F-80F
15W40 for over 80F
We won't be using the generator very often and frankly I can't see myself changing the oil every 6 months just to accommodate the recommendations. I've been thinking about just going with a 10W-40 and calling it a day.
Recommendations?
thanks!
Haven't posted here in about ten years but I'm back and have a quesiton.
We recently purchased a Westinghouse iGen 4500 inverter generator for use as an emergency backup for our house. As many others do, we have a good amount of food packed away in the freezer so we don't need to visit the grocery store during the pandemic. We did the upgrade as we really don't want to risk losing the food and our old generator (Champion 3500/4000) has a lot of harmonic distortion and is pretty noisy. I have installed a load side 10 circuit transfer switch and we tested it out the other day and every thing works great. The Westinghouse iGen runs everything critical in the house without breaking a sweat and it looks like we will get about 16 hours of run time on 3.4 gallons with most appliance ands lights pulling a load at the same time.
Anyway, reading the manual (wife's suggestion) the manufacturer recommends a very strange oil range that is a "smidge" irritating to because we live in the mid atlantic and can easily experience all three "zones" in the course of a week, especially in the Spring and Fall.
5W30 for under 35F
10W30 for 35F-80F
15W40 for over 80F
We won't be using the generator very often and frankly I can't see myself changing the oil every 6 months just to accommodate the recommendations. I've been thinking about just going with a 10W-40 and calling it a day.
Recommendations?
thanks!
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