Potentially Dangerous Generator Failure
This spring, bought a 1200 Watt Firman generator from Home Depot in Canada. It seemed like a good deal -- $249 plus tax, delivered right to the house, with a three year warranty. On the second o...
Forum Discussion
Reddog1 wrote:
The OP's experience should be a lesson for us all. When running something like a generator for the first time, always fuel it in an open area with the fuel valve closed. A little fuel will be enough to see if the valve leaks. Open the valve and insure there are no fuel leaks in the rest of the system. At this point you might even start it and run that bit of fuel. The odds are if you have a safety issue you will know with a 1/2 cup of gasoline. I am sure most of you know this already.
I wasn't quite as stringent starting up this genny as you describe, but before I left it, I was satisfied that it was running normally and safely. It was 5 or 10 minutes later that we started to smell gas -- the vibration of running must have caused the valve to fail. This was the 2nd time it had been used in a camp since spring. I'd run it at home for 15 minutes before leaving to make sure it was ok.
