Customer reviews for Westinghouse 18,000/14,500-Watt Tri-Fuel Gas, Propane, Natural Gas Powered Portable Generator with Remote Electric Start, 50A Outlet forPowers almost everything
I had to wait a long time to find one of these in stock, but eventually received one a week ago. The (large) box was placed in my garage by the delivery company. Assembly was easy sitting on it's wooden pallet. Getting it off the pallet is a different proposition. Be sure that you appreciate how heavy 600lbs really is. You need something capable of lifting that. At the limit, four reasonably strong men could probably take a corner each and lift it while someone pulled the pallet out from beneath it. I used the front loader on my tractor with the bucket removed. The weight is the only negative so far, but I knew that when I bought it. On the topic of weight, I would be very reluctant to try to move this down any sort of hill/slope by hand. I initially put just over a gallon of gas in the tank. It wasn't enough. Given the size of the tank, I wasn't surprised. Added 5 gallons more, and it started with no problem. Is it noisy? Well, any generator that runs at 3600 RPM is going to be noisy, but I have a 6kw generator that I have been using to power essential items, such as freezer, water pump, family room lights, microwave, kettle etc. This is, subjectively, no noisier. It is obviously a different sound, twin cylinder vs single, large cooling fan etc. But placed in the same location where I used the old generator, with the doors closed, it is practically inaudible, as was it's predecessor. Adding a second socket to power the rest of the circuits I was able to power the entire house and run different appliances, water heater, etc. I also tried out the AC, which fired up ok. I don't dare switch it into heat-pump mode though, it has twin 20kw heat strips, and my thermostat is a little too liberal with their use, and there is no way to disable them. One comment on using the less expensive 50A plastic covered cables. I tried them out in 65°F weather, and even at that temperature, they are very stiff. Mine also have right angled plugs rather than straight which makes plugging them into the generator difficult unless you do it right. The wheel gets in the way if you try to plug in directly. The trick is to lay the cable behind the wheel and plug in the front/leftmost first, then lay the next on top of that and plug in the second. It's easy this way (see the attached photo). Alternatively, pay a lot more for rubber covered cables and/or find cables with straight plugs rather than right angled. It's also worth noting that the plastic covered cables become MUCH more flexible when they are warm, so you might consider storing them indoors rather than next to the generator.
What a great generator!
I received the wgen12000df in a relatively short time after ordering. After initial setup, this thing fired right up. It had no problem powering everything I threw at it (all house led house lights, fridge, sump pump, fans, tv's, 3 ton ac unit, ect). I very impressed with how the generator maintains the 60 hz at various loads.
74dB? Not! This is crazy loud!
That 74dB in the specs is at idle, producing no power. Running, it checks out at 79-80dB at 27ft even at no load. Same as my 20yo Generac but feels louder. But it runs great on propane and produces clean power, a steady 120VAC at 60Hz. Except at idle, where the voltage runs as high as 149V on each leg and Hz up to 75. I'll just make sure to NEVER connect it to any load with it set to idle. Since it is about the only genset of this size that offer clean power AND runs on LPG, I'll live with the flaws.
Startup & Run didn't go well
I purchased March 18 2022, received March 31 2022, stored in garage until June 10 2022 for initial startup & run...followed all startup procedures. Then ran under moderate load for about 5-10 mins then it shut down. Ran again in an hour or so w/o any load and it shut down within 5-10 mins. I then called customer service.
Terrible service regarding warranty
I bought this unit 2023 so it's still under warranty. Mechanair is unable to provide a service center to me to have my unit repaired. It's no longer producing power though the engine works fine. I run a sprayfoam business and the downtime has cost me 20k in lost revenue. Given no other options I've had to buy a new unit to replace the broken one and now I'm having problems with that one too. I've bought these machines with a three year warranty. I deserve a working machine.
Hi, Thank you for letting us know about this, we are genuinely sorry to hear about it. I have passed your feedback to our quality control team to ensure that we are producing the best units possible. Please contact us at westinghousevip@wpowereq.com and we will escalate your case to ensure you get the help you need. Thanks, Sydney, Westinghouse
Easy Assembly
Once I removed the generator from the shipping box, I was able to assemble the front supports and attach the wheels in about 15 minutes. Since it was just me, it took a little bit longer. I was surprised to see that Westinghouse provided a spark plug wrench and an installation wrench in the box. That was super helpful and I didn't have to try and figure out what wrench to use on the bolts. It's currently raining, so I haven't had the chance to add fuel and fire it up. That can be another review.
Best Generator For the Price, By Far!
Installed wheels, oil, & connected battery... Unit fired right off. Used continuously for two days (on propane), not one issue. Ran A/C, two refrigerators, computer, lights... Best investment I've made in a long time. Only drawback is it's made in Vietnam, not American made.
Excellent features and extremely powerful
I was looking for a gasoline powered generator that had enough power to run my whole house as I do not have access to natural gas where I live.I was pleased to find out that the initial setup was a breeze and when it started on the first try I was very pleased, for a huge generator I was quite pleased that it was actually quieter than the General I had at my previous residence.
Great Product
I originally wanted a whole house generator in case of a hurricane. I also wanted a generator that I could take with me when I downsize and this one fit the bill. A "standby "generator would have to be sold with the house no money added to house value. This portable generator is big enough to power my current house and mobile so that when we downsize it will be able to power any smaller size house and have room to spare.
Great generator
Only complaint is it is transfer switch ready. But you have to use arduino or do some serious research to get the st switch wire functions to be able to connect this to a real ATS unit. I use an Eaton ATS and have an arduino to accept the remote start/stop wires on the ATS unit to send a three second ground out pulse to simulate the push of the start/stop button. A slight pain in the but if you don't know coding but there are enough open source fully functional code scripts that you can utilize to make it work. It makes no sense why they claim it to be transfer switch ready but then don't allow you to use the startup feature of a real automatic transfer switch. Instead they only offer the st switch which doesn't utilize the 50amp out, doesn't give you a one minute timer before cutting the generator on or off incase it's just a flicker vs an outage, and is way overpriced for its overall lack of usefulness given it wasn't even designed to be used at the recommended distance from your house. Sure you could use it in conjunction with an ATS to start the generator and just have a 9watt led light bulb plugged into it to get it to turn on and stay on but that does rob you of a few watts and I don't know the long term effects for using that and the 50amp plug. From what I have heard it can cause your breaker to trip on startup rendering the whole purpose of an ATS useless. They should make a plug in module for the ST switch plug that you could plug your industry standard two wire remote start/stop wires from an ATS switch. (Hey Westinghouse that suggestion is for you.). That said I got mine to work using an arduino and have my generator permanently mounted (wheels removed) on a concrete platform with an aluminum weatherproof case that is ventilated outside so there is no concern of it auto starting inside the garage. This portable unit provides enough power to run my living room, microwave and fridge, water heater, well pump, septic pump, my master bedroom, and one of my heat pump a/c units. I also went and had my heat pump breakers bridged so I can switch between my main level one my upstairs unit for night time running. I have my unit connected to a 250 gallon buried LPG tank but I do run the unit first and foremost with gasoline. I have a timer alarm that sends me a buzzer and I requires the fuel switch to be inside my ATS load center panel so I don't have to walk outside to switch the fuel. This generator is very good in that you can swap from gasoline to propane without restarting it. To avoid any surges I have three (yes three) whole home surge protectors. One is in the ATS load center, one is in my main service panel, and the other is on my service entry. It is overkill to a degree but if you have ever lost power you know that you will get a surge from the outage and switching to and from the generator power. Of course if you have a batter backup you can use an AGS module that starts the generator when your batter falls below the battery voltage threshold. You might be wondering why use a portable? Well when my surplus diesel finally died I quickly found that the availability of them was hard to come by and new diesels started at 15k. Even standby LPG generators start at 2k more than these amd usually less power. Plus these generators truly are the king of portables not to mention they are just one heck of a generator. They are so good while not recommended for medical equipment (no one officially or on the record recommends a generator for this purpose.). Many people around the world trust Westinghouse even over Hondas to power their small medical equipment. Just check the specs and you will see why. I love these so much I am saving to buy a second and run a second to permanently connect the other ac. Anyway highly recommend these.