Planning for winter - can I run my combi boiler off a genny?

And any probs then the original diesel powerstation is kept in stanby to take over

 

Nice one LD

 

(a) Don't worry about voltage spikes or fluctuations from a gennie - chust as bad comes out of your mains. And a boiler's circuit is hardly that sensitive - by the time it's been transformed-down to the 5 or 12V DC required for the 'lectroniks, any mains flucuation would have been reduced by a similar ratio of at least 20:1. And then there's the voltage regulator on the board supply to blah blah blah...

(b) The SF gennie is plenty good. Jeepers, it's only going to be required for a day or two - every 5 years. Streuth.

(c) The battery-inverter is akshully a pretty nifty idea 'cos many power cuts last only a matter of a few hours. In which case all Jim-babes would have to do it drag a battery into wherever the boiler is situ'd - a 2 minute jobbie - and hook up. Should the power cut continue beyond this, then haul in the gennie.


KISS, sparks

 

I just bought a Honda EU 10 i so that there woudn't be any problems with waveform, but just connected it to my Bosch Worcester Greenstar 30 CDi System boiler and it won't ignite. The Honeywell controls work fine, the boiler begins it's start up sequence fine, but after a couple of minutes instead of igniting, the blue light starts flashing a fault and the display shows code EA.

Does anyone know a way around this ?

 

If you are going to run ANY electronic kit from a genny, be aware that unless the genny is specifically guaranteed to provide suitable clean and filtered supply...you are asking for trouble.
RS

 

I have looked at petrol generators for the coming winter,but have decided to go with one with LPG conversion again,one advantage your still able to run the generator on LPG as well as petrol.
The last LPG 3kw generator I had,came off Ebay, lasted 5 years until it fell out the van.
A 19kg propane bottle would last around 35 hours or so, depending on load, it was a lot cheaper to run than petrol & a lot safer, plus propane doesn't deteriorate if left unused.

You can pick up 47kg propane bottles fairly cheap on a well known auction site.
Had a look at the Wolf WP7500E around £479, a brand I'm not familar with though to see if it could run on LPG, & Villers V6000ES which can with the conversion kit.

 

Honda say that the EU 10i is uses inverter technology to make it computer safe and voltage stability is +\- 1%. This means I'm not sure what to try next as it seems I've got the right sort of generator for sensitive electronic controls like the boiler.
I switched off the "running rabbit" switch which means it's running at full power instead of in economy mode but this hasn't helped. I think the next thing is to load it with lights or something to see if that smooths it out. Otherwise I'm still stuck so if anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate it.

 

Quite often, a nice resistive load helps.

 

to be honest if your house is well insulated it will take a week or 2 before frost on the extremities will be problem to the plumbing unless its well exposed to through draughts
of course your personal comfort is important but a say 22 degree well insulated house will still be 15% plus after 3 days with any solar gain from sunshine or heat input from say cooking slowing the process down
and yes i know its an old thread lol

 

I have seen a similar issue with an inverter controlled genny before. It was down to the way the inverter generates the sine wave. We swapped to a standard genny with no inverter and the problem went away. I suspect that the electronics in the boiler doesn't like the waveform it is being presented with.

 

OK. I've tried resistively loading it, first with the TV and satellite box. These draw 0.8 amps. I then added a slow cooker which brought up the current draw to 1.7 amps. As this is a 1KW generator that leaves 2.3 amps for more loads.

Next I plugged in the Bosch Worcester boiler. As it began it's start-up cycle the total draw rose to 2 amps. At the point of igniting it returned an error code as before. I suppose I can try and find a 500 watt load to bring the current draw up to the rated 4 amps of the generator, but it's beginning to look like I there's something odd about Bosch Worcester boilers as the TV electronics are fine.

I can't think of a 500 watt load at the moment but I've already spent (possibly wasted) £750 on the generator so I don't mind buying something. Does anyone have any ideas ?

 

500watt Halogen floodlight?

 

I lived in Spain for a while we used the gennies often .......... Expensive to run and that was just cheap **** for lights and boost the coolers

 

A tv and sky box is not a resistive load.

A 500watt halogen light would be good to try, or two 400watt even.

We used to use small generators for outside PA events, and you would run into all sorts of issues unless you bunged a PAR can in too.

 

As pointed out earlier any delicate electronics will be destroyed by an erratic supply

 

If your going to buy a genny, look for one with AVR, this should be fine with sensitive equipment, if basically keeps the voltage at a constant so that lower or higher voltages cannot damage this equipment, and in a house pretty much all equipment has sensitive components, from a tv, fridge , boiler, not worth the risk

Ally

 

Get your granny to run on the generator treadmill and keep her warm for the winter at the same time providing power to the boiler.

 

Ok, I've bought a 500W Halogen heater and tried the boiler again with the heater running. Still get a 'no flame detected' fault.

So I borrowed a 2.5kw generator without an inverter and the same thing happens.

It's -2c outside, we have a power cut but at least we can huddle round the 500W Halogen heater!
I'm exasperated. Any other ideas ?
Thanks

detected

 

I would say any generator with an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) should do the job. There are generators without AVR's they use parallel and series windings so with no current draw the parallel winding holds it at 230 volt and at 80% load the series winding holds it at 230 volt and between those two settings it can vary wildly. I used them on the Falklands mainly to power flood lights and these generators can cause problems.

There are also generators designed to tick over when there is no load. These two would be a problem. I am not talking about inverter generators where Hz is not linked to engine speed but typical generators used on building sites where as soon as you use a power tool it revs up and returns to 50Hz these will not be suitable.

But once your using an AVR it does not really matter 1kVA or 400MW it's still a generator controlled by an AVR. I remember looking at all the brushes on a 600MW brushless alternator and I suppose any brushless generator will likely have less spikes than one with brushes but brushless refers to a type with rotating diodes rather than it having brushes or not.

Where noise can be a problem then the inverter generator comes into it's own. But although they do use less power they cost so much more they would need to run for weeks before they paid for themselves.

I would steer clear of any duel voltage models as some times the earth is 55 volts from neutral and this can upset some boilers.