I live in Florida, the land of hurricanes. I bought a standby generator and was hoping to be able to siphon gas from my Escape for the generator. But how do you do it? I used the emergency fill spout but could not get the siphon tube to the gas - used a 5’ tube and hit a stop…
There is a roll-over valve at the bottom of the fill tube, don’t damage it.
I thought cars these days had siphon prevention devices in the filler neck?
Anyway, I ran into this problem once when a big fat snow storm resulted in my road being impassible for a couple of days (downed trees and stuff). I normally have about 15gals on hand, but ran through it before the road opened up.
I have a Ranger that had plenty of gas in it. I pulled the stem from the Schrader valve on the fuel rail, clamped on a 1/4" (or so) length of fuel line, and jumpered my fuel pump relay to pump it out into a can. Worked great. I ended up doing it yet one more time after that for some reason.
Maybe you don’t want to use gasoline with ethanol in it. The carburetor in my snow blower gets gummed up when I use E10 even though I use Stabil and run it dry at the end of the season. It seems to me that your generator will also be an occasional use engine. You may neeed to run it monthly at least to prevent stale gas and the fuel system gumming up.
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You won’t be able to siphon gas. I also doubt there is a fuel pressure test port on the fuel rail you could tap into to PUMP the gas out… My '13 Mustang doesn’t have one.
I live in Florida and have a generator, too.
My old Chevy has a pressure test port. I hook a hose to it, jump the fuel pump relay and I now have access to 31 gallon of gas. But I own four 5 gallon fuel jugs and the generator holds another 6.
Buy and store gas jugs for the next seaon.
I did use the hose from my fuel pressure tester to get some gas once. I have no idea what my fuel pump flow rate is. I don’t recall if I did it with motor running or not?
We didn’t get a model year, so I couldn’t look it up. The Ranger is a '97 - back in the day when it was pretty normal to have the basic test port.
I also pumped the gas out of a minivan once - b/c it was nearly full, had a blown head gasket that I wasn’t going to fix, and was on it’s way to scrap. For that one, I had to disconnect a fuel line…
But your suggestion to increase storage capacity is a very good idea. I thought I was ok at 15 gal in the garage plus 6 in the genny … but then that storm.
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We have been lucky. Apparently we are on a leg that includes a nursing home. That gives us preferential response of a 3 day max for power outages.
2.5 days (and about 9 gallons of fuel) for a power outage after Ian.
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I go through about 5 gals about every 10-12 hours. And in the summer or winter outages (most common) I need to keep my heat pump working. So I basically have to run it around the clock.
For the snow storm I referenced, we were out for about 6 days. Not the first time. Hurricane Isabelle (2003) was similar, as was a 2010(?) derecho, and an ice storm around 2021. I’m on a rural backroad - not exactly ever on the top of the critical list. My power company is strictly for-profit or they’d worry more about the basic condition of the infrastructure. There’s a co-op that serves places not far from mine that is much better about it and the outages are fewer and shorter.
That was my situation in Ohio. Low priority with power lines that lost their insulation. The wind blows, the wires touch and the transformer trips. We had nat gas but if the furnace isn’t powered… no heat! I was close to installing a whole house nat gas powered gennie before we moved.
My gennie can’t run the AC or water heater but it covers everything else. Fortunately it is usually cooler after a hurricane. Plus we have a single-room portable AC I can set up in the bedroom at night if needed.
Where I am it’s usually about the trees. Heavily wooded area. The bad storms blow through and stuff falls over/breaks off and breaks lines.
The cooling in the summer is less about comfort than practicality (tho both count). My first floor is basically half basement. Without the air handler/AC running the air remains rather humid and stagnant inviting mold issues. I’ve got to keep it moving with some dehumidification.
In the winter…well, yeah, its about comfort. But if you spend something like 6 days with overnight temps well below freezing it can get a little more dire than that. My gen will only run the compressor/air handler, but not the supplementary/back-up electric heat. I just disconnect the thermostat wires that trigger the electric heat coils and start a big fire …
The heat pump (whether on heat or cool mode) takes a good 10K W to kick on but that initial kick is all of a second. Once it’s all running it’s only about 3500W to run it. The gen is 8500 running / 11K peak so it works well enough. I keep thinking I should put a soft starter on it to get rid of that initial 10K kick.
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I have considered that for my AC, too. It only draws about 1.5 to 2 kW in the lower speeds of the variable compressor. The variable speed may have already solved that problem without me knowing. Maybe @bcohen2010 could shed some light on that as an AC tech.
I’d appreciate that input as well.
Well I think that is to prevent stealing gas or spewing vapor into the air. For your own good. You’d have to disconnect a fuel line and pump it in.
Most people would just have a separate gas can and would use a fuel stabilizer that you wouldn’t use in your car. The other thing would be to convert to lp that you could also use in your gas grill.
Funny, my HVAC guy was just telling me a few weeks ago about doing a soft start on the HVAC unit for a generator, I guess I should have paid more attention now… lol
But it was something about not needing nearly as big of a generator when using the HVAC unit if it had one, or something along those lines, basically, if you had a smaller gen just to give you lights and your fridge and stove working, that you could also run the ac unit if it had it, but not if it did not… He recommended installing a soft start, if I got a back up gen…
Now I want to hear what bcohen2010 has to say about it also…
My house has 3 separate central air systems (not splits, conventional central air) along with three companion furnaces. The largest one alone causes power line dips on start up. At least it did 
and when two or more decide to start at the same time, it was concerning even with 200A mains. Frankly, I don’t know why the compressors don’t come with a soft start circuit to begin with- perhaps the newer ones do now. At any rate, I made my own before I found out how inexpensive they actually are and for ones that have learning capability to boot. Mine is very simple but completely eliminates the huge surge even though the start caps are all in perfect working order. Just google soft start A/C and see what’s available for less than $400…
It’s function is a rollover valve as mentioned earlier by Nevada. It’s a floating ball type of valve with a cage/seat so no (reasonable for siphoning sized) tubing can be snaked past it. Some also help prevent overfilling the tank and polluting the vapor recovery system. Been that way for a long time now.
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That is the sensible solution for most people.
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In the old days of even/odd gas purchases, I used to keep two ten gallon gas cans in the garage. Just to make sure I could get to work again or more importantly get home. We all learned to do what we gotta do to survive. I dare those dang turkeys to show up in my back yard again.
If you plan to get into this, figuring it out isn’t that hard. Find the spec label on the compressor. It should provide a LRA number - Locked Rotor Amps - the kick it takes to get the compressor motor running. Multiple that by about 240 (volts). Mine is only a 2 ton unit and the LRA is 38A. I use 250v since I know I get about 125v on each of my 120 legs. 250 x 38 is 9500 Watts. My gen is only rated for 8500W running, but can handle brief surges up to 11.5W. That 9500W kick is all of a second or less so it’s not a problem. The soft starter kills that huge kick.
The running amps should also be on that label next to RLA (rated load amps). It’s the max amps it should draw while running. Mine is 7.7A so x 250 it’s not even pulling 2,000W once running. You add in the fan too. Mine pulls only about an amp, so adding another 250W, when up and running the total system is only pulling a little over 2,000w / 8.7A The difference between starting and running is huge.
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