MEP report post Hurricane Michael

Some more pics...All aluminum and heavy duty. I had to replace the brake handle. Last picture is what it looked like when I got it...

I have an 804a, were in port st joe, just east of panama city, it's been running two ac units and hot water heaters as well as electric stove. Currently at 240hrs no issues until an hour ago it developed the no fuel indicator fault. Currently running in battle short overnight and hopefully will diagnose the problem in the morning when the rain stops. Consistantly just under 1gph fuel usage.

Ran my 803 for right at 100 hours. The fuel return line decided to take the opportunity to start leaking, but it wasn't really bad till the end. I estimate that I burned 55-70 gallons in that time. I wasn't topped off when I started, and I've only put 55 gallons back in, so really not sure on the total. We were running the whole house as though nothing was wrong. Well, AC, pool pumps, laundry, TV(plasmas), 4,800 watt home theater, xbox, etc. Water heater is propane, as is the stove, so those helped. I don't think I can even get my generator above 100%, and then only with all of the heavy hitters running at once.

I'll be buying replacement fuel hose tomorrow and tackling the the return this weekend, then change the oil.

lonesouth said:

Ran my 803 for right at 100 hours. The fuel return line decided to take the opportunity to start leaking, but it wasn't really bad till the end. I estimate that I burned 55-70 gallons in that time. I wasn't topped off when I started, and I've only put 55 gallons back in, so really not sure on the total. We were running the whole house as though nothing was wrong. Well, AC, pool pumps, laundry, TV(plasmas), 4,800 watt home theater, xbox, etc. Water heater is propane, as is the stove, so those helped. I don't think I can even get my generator above 100%, and then only with all of the heavy hitters running at once.

I'll be buying replacement fuel hose tomorrow and tackling the the return this weekend, then change the oil.

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Thanks for the report. Im hoping more generator reports trickle in as things settle down.

On a side note I just arrived back here. No internet yet but have cell, Still running over power lines in the road to get to the land/house, have power, and I can hear gas generators in 2 different directions, one being real close. Thats 17 days for this area.

Dropped off a freshly picked up from GP M105A2 to help hauling brush around and hoping to get some gen maintenance done between neighbor visits. I wanted to pick both trailers up but I didnt want to push my luck as the GP guy was very accommodating by letting me pick up the trailer from the yard at 9pm. This would be my 2nd time dealing with Larry (jacksonville / lake butler yards) and he definitely goes above and beyond for facilitating pickups.

Demoh said:

On a side note I just arrived back here. No internet yet but have cell, Still running over power lines in the road to get to the land/house, have power, and I can hear gas generators in 2 different directions, one being real close. Thats 17 days for this area.

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WAIT, your location says St Pete?

csheath said:

WAIT, your location says St Pete?

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Howdy,

Go back and read the thread.

csheath said:

WAIT, your location says St Pete?

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Yes, I live in St Pete, but long story short when something like this happens I spring into action, especially if family is involved (brother and his fiance, her family, my dad/grandparents are all up here in panama city area). Im on my 3rd trip up here now. I was here for close to a week immediately after the storm, St Pete 3 days then back up here every weekend since then.

Still chainsawing and clearing our less used paths on the land, have some equipment we cant get to, and now performing generator maintenance and related. One of the 803s that I brought is my for-sale units so once I do a final service on it and then load bank it for 6 hours at 100% Ill post it up locally so I dont have to haul it back to St Pete (I live in the city and dont have a forklift or tractor at my house) so that would be super convenient. Other than that pretty much out of the woods (pun very intended) and my trips after this would mostly just to move equipment around and haul stuff back home with me.

Ive come to find out disaster recovery is my calling. To me arriving at day 1 and getting right to work is very calming for me. Or even being there during day 0. The only part I didnt care for was a mis-identification of friend or foe by a neighbor at 3am and having warning shots sent my way.

If I wasnt one of the critical managers at work with huge backlogs I would have not gone back to st pete yet. Ive been with the company 12 years and I really dont want to jeopardize that steady check.

Since here are some photos of the different setups at each of the houses. Backside of the 831 has much more clearance so there wasnt an airflow issue.

Demoh said:

Yes, I live in St Pete, but long story short when something like this happens I spring into action, especially if family is involved (brother and his fiance, her family, my dad/grandparents are all up here in panama city area). Im on my 3rd trip up here now. I was here for close to a week immediately after the storm, St Pete 3 days then back up here every weekend since then.

Still chainsawing and clearing our less used paths on the land, have some equipment we cant get to, and now performing generator maintenance and related. One of the 803s that I brought is my for-sale units so once I do a final service on it and then load bank it for 6 hours at 100% Ill post it up locally so I dont have to haul it back to St Pete (I live in the city and dont have a forklift or tractor at my house) so that would be super convenient. Other than that pretty much out of the woods (pun very intended) and my trips after this would mostly just to move equipment around and haul stuff back home with me.

Ive come to find out disaster recovery is my calling. To me arriving at day 1 and getting right to work is very calming for me. Or even being there during day 0. The only part I didnt care for was a mis-identification of friend or foe by a neighbor at 3am and having warning shots sent my way.

If I wasnt one of the critical managers at work with huge backlogs I would have not gone back to st pete yet. Ive been with the company 12 years and I really dont want to jeopardize that steady check.

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Great job helping those in need!



I didn't do much in the way of physical help but I've made some donations. Sent some feed and diesel fuel to a couple of farms in gulf county by way of the person organizing animal aid.

My daughter has made a few feed and hay runs to Blounstown. Our family members have been helping her with fuel for the deliveries she has made. Cost about $80 in fuel for each trip to haul a stock trailer full.



I forgot to report on that DuroMax generator I bought for my daughter earlier in the year. It ran for 100 hours with no real troubles. My S-I-L build a small shed to put it in that caused it to overheat when the sun came out so they had to pull it out in the open but other than that it ran everything except their AC. They are all electric and on a well. She said they were getting about 12 hours on an 8 gallon fill.

Chainbreaker said:

Your experience sounds a lot like the experience we had during our epic ice storm event winter of 2016. I was running 2 generators for both service entrances to our property and had a couple of unexpected "lil-gremlin like failures" arise despite all my previous genset preparation. Thankfully I had some spare parts on hand that were needed and received some great troubleshooting advice from this forum's members that got me through the week long outage. I am now much better prepared and fueled for whenever the next outage hits.

Good to hear your experience and thoughts on the MEP-831. I've been on the fence about adding one of those to my stable of generators.

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What where the small problem is you had encountered during your usage


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I have 4 MEP-803a in Panama City right now. One was running for 16days straight. another one was at my cousin's inlaws and then was moved to another family members house. The other two haven't been used...they arrived last Wed and most people had power. One arrived with a stuck throttle (can't adjust or lock frequency)

I have 4 MEP-803a gen-sets in Panama City right now. One was running for 16days straight at my aunts house. another one was at my cousin's inlaws and then was moved to another family members house. This one would use up the batterys while running, so we kept battery chargers on both batteries (could not find an extra fuse) The other two haven't been used...they arrived last Wed and most people had power. One arrived with a stuck throttle (can't adjust or lock frequency). Finding diesel wasn't as difficult as in Miami last year after Irma. But I filled up 2 55gal drums in Tallahassee on my way to Panama City. Now I need to go up and pick up the generators and bring them down. FYI if your house is on well water, insurance company will pay to rent the generator rather than pay the insured to move to a hotel.

I would be willing to bet that all the rental generators were long gone even in the days before the storm.

How do those IBC totes hold up in the FL sun? Im looking for something to store heating oil. There are tons of old steel 275gal tanks but there all sludged up from years of service/sitting.

Great updates from everyone. Keep them coming

Bmxenbrett said:

I would be willing to bet that all the rental generators were long gone even in the days before the storm.

How do those IBC totes hold up in the FL sun? Im looking for something to store heating oil. There are tons of old steel 275gal tanks but there all sludged up from years of service/sitting.

Great updates from everyone. Keep them coming

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Dont use IBCs for anything other than an emergency or transfer. Storage of diesel in a translucent material tends to have adverse effects (growing of algae, etc..). Cant comment on heating oil / kerosene though.

I use exclusively aluminum tanks now. Im up to about 300 gallons capacity plus whats in the truck. If needed I could commission half a dozen 55 gallon drums. Tanks are either kept full or bone dry do combat condensation due to expansion/contraction sucking in florida's high humidity air. Since I cycle through a LOT of fuel I dont bother with biocides but if I have a tank that I know is going to sit for more than 6 months it will get treated. All my fuel gets a slight overdose of PS diesel kleen


And yes for common folk the rentals would be long gone. Companies normally keep generator companies on retainer with clauses that state when they get priority on the sometimes over-committed generator rentals. I have a client that had a shipping container generator (something stupid, they kept overloading it and it was 1600 amps 208/120) and their contract worked great. A few months before Irma the new manager was like 'this is a waste of money' and cancelled their retainer. Well Irma hit and guess what, that stupidly large generator was not available to rent and their entire facility was down for 2 weeks. Every other day when I would deliver fuel to their server room generator the guy would ask a different way if he could run his air compressors and boilers of the 20kw he had, or if he could get enough gasoline generators to make it work. That guy single handedly ran that company into the ground.

I bet he didnt learn his lesson and STILL hasnt reinstated a retainer with their generator company. Their generator is in dire need of maintenance (hasnt been maintained since Irma) and they refuse to do anything with my warnings. The owners love this operations guy but they dont see what we (their IT company) see. We lead the horse to water, many times, but we cant seem to get the horse to drink. (we even tried flavored water.)

As for diesel availability I didnt really have any problem. Nobody had gasoline but I was able to get diesel all throughout Irma. Although for Michael I never pumped a drop of diesel from any of the affected areas, I was seeing the same concept, diesel was available but gas wasnt. I had enough capacity where I was refueling on my way into town and only had to deliver fuel once a week for Michael.

curious as to how high the rated percentage went up with the 3A/C units running.

TheAlfredo said:

curious as to how high the rated percentage went up with the 3A/C units running.

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30-40%, this are 1 year old dual stage compressors (not inverter drive). I dont know how to check if its in low or high (nor did I care at the time) but they ran and was very surprised they did.

My single 2.5 ton R22 system draws what these 3 drew combined.


Disclaimer: this is a special case and the average house with 3 air conditioners is going to draw a lot more.

Sidenote for disclaimer: I have successfully gotten my friend's 3 ton air conditioner (LG inverter multizone ductless with 4 heads running) running off of solar using the "secure power" 120v 2000w backup power from a Sunny Boy inverter fed through an autotransformer to boost from 120v to 240v and it doesnt know the difference. Reason I mention it is because I am involved with some super efficient AC builds which means generator sizing can go down because the whole draw of the system goes down even before you count solar. That same test we also were able to run his GE heatpump water heater which is basically the draw of a small refrigerator. Amazing how technology is progressing.

lonesouth said:

Ran my 803 for right at 100 hours. The fuel return line decided to take the opportunity to start leaking, but it wasn't really bad till the end. I estimate that I burned 55-70 gallons in that time. I wasn't topped off when I started, and I've only put 55 gallons back in, so really not sure on the total. We were running the whole house as though nothing was wrong. Well, AC, pool pumps, laundry, TV(plasmas), 4,800 watt home theater, xbox, etc. Water heater is propane, as is the stove, so those helped. I don't think I can even get my generator above 100%, and then only with all of the heavy hitters running at once.

I'll be buying replacement fuel hose tomorrow and tackling the the return this weekend, then change the oil.

Click to expand...

Do you know if there’s a specific comments threads for the fuel return lines prices sizes links etc.


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Daybreak's listing for MEP parts is the best one I've found: https://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?160992-MEP-802-803-Filters-and-Parts .

[url]https://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?139370-MEP-802-803-fuel-return-improvements&p=1780281&viewfull=1#post1780281
[/URL]

maniatopoulosg said:

Do you know if there’s a specific comments threads for the fuel return lines prices sizes links etc.

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I used Gates fuel hose on mine. Works great and available at O'Reilys.
The 1/8" (3.2mm) is part number 27000 and the 1/4" is 27002.

csheath said:

I used Gates fuel hose on mine. Works great and available at O'Reilys.
The 1/8" (3.2mm) is part number 27000 and the 1/4" is 27002.

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I'll be putting a 25 ft roll of that 1/8" on the shelf for sure.