Generac: Is the warranty requirements worth it?

10 year warranty with mine and I had no service contract with anyone. Not sure if rules are different now. Also installed it myself.

I have a 5 year warranty on mine and no service contract. Where are you seeing that?

Best warranty in the business because you’re going to need it soon.
Buy Cummins and be done, you get a more robust machine for not much more $.

I'm in Houston and have a 24kw Generac purchased/installed through Generator Supercenter that was installed about 2 years ago. They were offering the 5 year warranty when I purchased and don't recall the maintenance plan being a requirement but did it anyway for like $39/month.

I will say that the warranty is worth it and the longer the better. We recently had the rotor & stator go out, which reading through our 5 year warranty, are the only parts that are actually covered for the full 5 years. Ours runs the weekly test and has been fine every time it's ran for the 2 years I've had it and the first time we had a small outage, these parts went out after running for a few hours. Then the "derecho" came through Houston in May and it wasn't fixed yet so needless to say, I was disappointed in not having it for the first, real prolonged outage I wanted/needed it for. Luckily, we got it fixed in time for Hurricane Beryl last week.

All of this say I'm 50/50 on the maintenance plan. On the positive side, you don't have to worry about the preventative maintenance if all things stay normal/no power outages. However, when there is an extended outage, you simply cannot get a hold of the company because they are so inundated with calls, etc. You basically need to check oils levels daily and replace oil every 100-200 hours of continuous use, which we certainly hit during Beryl. You need to make sure you can change the oil filter and oil yourself during times of extended use because they simply won't be able to respond to you due to the volume of calls. Most are in the business to sell and install generators. They simply keep the maintenance side to keep them in business during slow installation periods but don't have near the crews available to service all of their customers in a large outage (nor do I expect them to).

If you're not handy in those type of situations, I would recommend a local electrician/mechanic that you can depend on and that feels decent enough about servicing a generator or just a good neighbor who is handy but have spare oil, oil filters, spark plugs and air filters purchased and on-hand for events like this.

I would never recommend a generac to anyone,,,,seen lots fail when you really need them,,,,and wouldn’t recommend a 3600 rpm generator, they are loud and they run really hard and require oil changes every few days,,,,these things aren’t mean to run days at a time,,,,,Koehler makes a 24kw, LP/NG with a 2.4L that runs at 1800rpm,,,,,,most people want one that runs on NG or propane,,,,,,I decided against all those options and bought a KatoLight 30kw, very quiet, has a weeks worth of diesel and it’s industrial grade,,,,meant to run weeks on end,,,,bought it with 230hrs, $8000

I bought an industrial diesel generator, not one of those cheaply made generacs with all the electronics that give people problems

If you want diesel, try Central Georgia Generator. Cheap heads but they still last. Got 7 or 8 25k kubota several years ago and they all went 12k+ hours.

Had one at my old office that was serviced a week prior to Laura. I checked it the day Laura hit and it was low on coolant and wouldn’t start. Stole some coolant from a neighbor and topped it off and it started and ran. Came back 3 hours later and the motor had shite the bed. Never did get the service company back for the “warranty repair” before the boss replaced with a Cummins that was 4 times the machine.
Y’all’s little tropical storm can’t compare to a cat 3, gray wood had hundreds of genracs shite the bed.

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Boston911

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That all sounds like a massive pain in the arse for the average city family that doesn’t have a diesel truck or tractors. I’m glad it works for you and I doubt you ever have generator issues but that certainly wouldn’t work for me.

I have a Honeywell (Generac) 20kW that has been solid for a few years. Yes, it’s an air-cooled motor and requires a bit more oil changes and TLC than a liquid cooled. It’s also considerably cheaper and requires less maintenance since it doesn’t have an active cooling season.

If buying a whole home air-cooled standby unit one just needs to know the limits. It’s not something that can run for weeks on end with no checking of oil level or anything. If someone wants that they should cough up for a diesel or liquid-cooled unit as mentioned. But for the majority of the populace, an air cooled will do just fine.