Riverside Generators

It depends on what you want running at once rather than on the square footage. A typical Riverside home with one air conditioning system and normal appliances is comfortable on 18kW to 22kW. Two air conditioning systems, a pool, a well or an EV charger usually needs 24kW to 26kW. Very large homes move to liquid-cooled units from 32kW upward. If you only want essentials, 10kW to 14kW often covers a refrigerator, internet, lighting and one cooling zone. We size from a load calculation at the panel, using the worst realistic case, which here is a 105-degree afternoon with both compressors starting together.

We install Generac, Kohler, Cummins and Champion. We service those plus Caterpillar, Briggs and Stratton, Onan, Detroit and MTU, including equipment installed by companies that no longer exist. Generac has the widest range and the best parts availability locally, Kohler tends to be quieter in several size classes, Cummins is the workhorse on commercial and large residential jobs, and Champion competes on price for essential-circuit installs. On an inherited machine the first visit is normally a full inspection and a load test.

Most complete residential installations in the Riverside area run between $5,000 and $15,000, covering the generator, the automatic transfer switch, the pad, the gas and electrical work, the permit and commissioning. Essential-circuit systems sit at the low end; large liquid-cooled machines, panel upgrades or long gas runs sit at the top or above it. The equipment is usually about half the total. We quote a fixed price after a site visit, and financing is available with terms from about 12 to 84 months subject to credit.

Industry surveys generally put it at roughly 3 to 5 percent of home value for a properly installed and permitted whole house system. It carries more weight in areas that actually lose power: the Corona canyons, north Rancho Cucamonga, the Redlands and Yucaipa foothills and the Verdemont side of San Bernardino all sit in fire-season shutoff territory, and buyers there have lived through multi-day outages themselves. The permit matters for this, since an unpermitted install is a problem during escrow rather than a feature.

A portable is movable, cheaper, started by hand and fuelled by hand, and connects with cords or through an inlet box. A standby unit is permanently installed, permanently connected to natural gas or propane, wired to an automatic transfer switch and starts itself within seconds whether or not anybody is home. It also tests itself weekly. For a short blip a portable is fine. For a multi-day fire-season shutoff, standby is the only one people are still happy with on day three. Never run a portable in a garage or near an open window.

Residential standby units in modern enclosures run around 60 to 70 decibels at the distance manufacturers quote, which is between a normal conversation and a vacuum cleaner in the next room, and typically no louder than the air conditioner sitting beside it. Larger commercial and diesel units are louder, with sound-attenuated enclosures available where it matters. Most neighbours only ever hear the weekly exercise cycle, which is why we schedule that for the middle of a weekday rather than early morning.

Yes. A permanently installed generator needs electrical and mechanical permits and an inspection, and the gas connection is inspected too. In the City of Riverside that goes through Building and Safety; each surrounding city runs its own process. Stationary diesel engines above a threshold size also need a South Coast AQMD permit to construct and to operate, with emergency standby engines limited to a set number of testing hours a year. We file all of it and hand over the signed-off paperwork.

On natural gas, as long as the outage lasts, since the fuel keeps arriving by pipe. On propane, it is a tank question: a 500-gallon tank at around half load will typically carry a home standby unit for several days. On diesel, it is a base tank question, commonly 24 to 48 hours on smaller standby units before a delivery is needed, and as long as you design for on larger commercial sets with bulk storage. We size fuel storage around the outage you are actually preparing for, which in this area means multi-day rather than multi-hour.

One professional service a year for a home unit, or every 100 to 200 running hours if it works harder than that. Commercial and industrial sets run quarterly or semi-annual inspections with an annual full service, plus annual load bank testing where insurers or code require it. A service visit covers oil and filters, air filter, plugs on gas engines, battery load test, coolant, controller check and a transfer test under load. Dead batteries cause more failures than every mechanical fault combined, and they are the cheapest part on the machine.

Yes, and for a defined project it is almost always the right answer. We rent portable units, towable diesel sets from 20kW to 200kW and larger industrial machines, by the day, the week or the month, delivered and set up. That covers construction sites without permanent power, weddings and events, warehouse fit-outs, planned utility work and covering a building while its own system is repaired. If you find yourself renting for a second fire season, ask us to price a permanent installation alongside it, because by then the arithmetic has usually changed.

Yes, with the caveat that the compressor start is what sets the size. An air conditioner draws several times its running current for the first second or two, and that surge is what the generator has to absorb. One five-ton system is comfortable on a 22kW unit; two systems starting together usually want 24kW to 26kW, or a load management module that staggers them. A soft-start kit on the condenser cuts the surge substantially and can save a whole size step on the generator, which normally pays for itself several times over.

Yes, and it is a large share of what we do. Between county and city facilities, medical buildings, industrial sites along the 215 and decades of residential installs, San Bernardino and Riverside have a lot of equipment whose original installer is long gone. We take those on, and the first visit is normally a full inspection and a load test rather than a quick look, because until a machine has carried real load nobody can honestly say what condition it is in.