Portable Generator

[Whamo]

  Does anyone know the amperage and voltage required to run a Amia dialysis machine by Baxter?  I run it 11 hours a day.

[Charlie B53]

There should be an Underwriters data tab on or under your machine that spells out the voltage and current requirement of your machine.

A standard home electrical outlet is 110 to 120 volts AC supplied by a 10 or 15 Amp breaker.

A generator of 120 VAC providing 10 Amps should be sufficient however you need a LONG HEAVY cord so you can run the gen set OUTSIDE the home and you may not be able to run much of anything else at the same time.

Whole house gen sets are neat, but can get costly.  The trick is the switchgear required to shut off the outside power supply so you absolutely can not feed power back into the grid.

Linemen just hate it when a line is supposed to be dead, they grab it to work on it and find your generator is ON.

[Michael Murphy]

I will give my one piece of advice about generators, pay extra for one that uses propane or natural gas if you have it.  The problem with a gasoline generator is that modern gas goes bad quickly and a 4500 watt generator uses 5 gallons a day if you use natural gas it’s piped to your house so fuel is never a issue and if you use propane it stores for ever.

[Charlie B53]

Another huge advantage of propane is that it burns so much cleaner that tune ups and oil changes stay so much cleaner longer.  The engines will last much much longer than any gasoline engine.

[Blake nighsonger]