Portable Backup Generator – Tri Fuel Conversion (Part 1)

With peak hurricane season bearing down to mid-Atlantic residents, everyone living in such areas should prepare for the “what-if” emergency scenario.

As you may be aware, I ended up losing power for 14 days during 2012 Hurricane Sandy and the only saving grace was my Briggs and Stratton backup portable generator.

However, although my “emergency plan” was good, the plan failed because I didn’t anticipate such large swath of gas stations losing powers and not being able to pump gas.

After driving over 40 minutes each way to a working WaWa gas station (Flemington store, you guys rocked!) and suffering through hours of 1970’s style gas lines, I vowed to do something about it for the 2013 hurricane season.

My solution? A conversion kit that will allow me to run on natural gas, propane or gasoline.

Because my home uses natural gas for heating, it was an easy decision to use it as my primary source of fuel for the generator. However, if you live in a rural area, propane gas might be a better solution for you.

Couple of key performance parameters I desired from my fuel conversion kit:

1. I should be able to switch between natural gas, propane or gasoline with minimal amount of work;
2. Kit should include both high-pressured and low-pressured systems (I’ll get into this little bit later).

Manufacturers/Vendors of Tri-fuel kits

Sadly, Briggs and Stratton does not manufacture their own fuel conversion kit, but their tech support recommended that I check out Generator Sales. But Generator Sales mainly contained already-converted generators, including Briggs’s competitors so I decided explore other options.

After some researching, I was surprised at the limited number of vendors selling tri-fuel kits but here is a list of what I found (not affiliate links):

• Nash Fuel
• US Carb, Inc
• Propane Carbs
• PNG Technologies
• Century Fuel Products (a.k.a. US Gemini)

I will need to do some calling to ask more detailed questions so stay tuned…

REFERENCES

• Briggs and Stratton Storm Responder – Manuals and Parts (030430B-00)