Hiding Generator Noise...

[JD31]

In the event of a real SHTF scenario, it seems that running a generator outside, so you don't kill yourself with carbon monoxide, would telegraph the message that you have what those wandering around hungry and cold would need.

How have you planned to dampen or eliminate the sounds coming from your running generator? (Sorry if this has been covered before, but a quick search did not reveal any related thread.)

 

[Farmritch]

My Generator is an older commercial unit and it runs at 1800 RPM it's a 2 cylinder and for the most part quite quiet.
I cut it in at one of my barns about 300 feet behind the house.
My earler post told of us using it the other day.

The funny part about this, but you really need to think about this.

After I had it up and running it was not the noise but the fact that we had lights brought a neighbor over to use our phone. He said...... our power did'nt come back and there must be a problem still and he wanted to let the power company know.
At this time my wife informed him we did not have a working phone either and we were running on generator.

Then the other neighbors are sitting in the dark having dinner by candlelight and after dinner obviously bored so she gets on facebook on her blackberry and starts spouting off that she wished her husband was as smart as her neighbors and wished they had a Genny too.

Believe me in a SHTF situation anyone who knows anything about you will be banging on your door before you can say Rumple Stiltson, not to mention the obvious signs.

I also noticed after cuting it in and powering up the house my doorbell lights as dark as it was with no lights near by and cloud cover over head those little things almost looked like 50 watt bulbs from the barn.

 

[JD31]

Black plastic and duct tape can help with the light discipline, but hiding the sound from the generator is a harder problem to find a fix for. Would digging a pit and keeping it out of sight make it any harder to detect the sound or location?

 

[IndyBeerman]

After I had it up and running it was not the noise but the fact that we had lights brought a neighbor over to use our phone. He said...... our power did'nt come back and there must be a problem still and he wanted to let the power company know.
At this time my wife informed him we did not have a working phone either and we were running on generator.

Then the other neighbors are sitting in the dark having dinner by candlelight and after dinner obviously bored so she gets on facebook on her blackberry and starts spouting off that she wished her husband was as smart as her neighbors and wished they had a Genny too.

My plan is to use it for running the furnace at night and recharging all my rechargeable batteries because I'm going to act like I'm off the grid also.

I have my generator in the garage and I'm working on a exhaust system that runs outside to a diffuser lower into 55 water filled drum to baffle the noise. My garage is very sound proof, and the loudest piece of equio=pment I have is my air compressor and with the doors closed and down you can barely hear it 25 feet from the house and the road is 125 feet. Genny is was quieter than the compressor engine wise, so if I can get the exhaust noise down I'll be set.

Nice thing is we did a test run last winter on heating the house and a 30 minute run on the furnace every 2 hours keep it above 55 degrees with the outside temp at 20, so my 30 gallons of gas can be stretched out quite a bit (gen uses 5 gallons for up to 11 hours @ a 50% load). So I if I run it every 2 hours for 30 minutes I should be able to stretch that 30 gallons to almost 8.5 days max, that us unless something happens and I have to run it longer and power more items.

Never know exactly unless a shtf or a teofwawki event happens, guess I might need to do a real time off the grid test run for a weekend.

 

[wabash]

has anyone tried a car muffler on a generator?

 

[Stove]

I gave up trying to keep mine quite. IMHO it is next to impossible to keep a gas powered unit quite, unless you can put it in a barn, but others will still hear it. Mine is barely audible in the house, so I am fine with that. To keep it safe, I log chain it to my 1200 gallon LP tank when it is running. With a 3 year old, I let it run all night if it is cold out, and have had to do that for 3 days straight.

 

[Arm America]

The exhaust directed outside in a barrel of water will provide the most quiet running.
Just don't forget a few gallons of RV anti freeze to prevent winter freeze up.

Running a small inverter off of a car battery also can be impressive to neighbors.
You can run interior lights, computer, cell phone chargers etc. and not divulge
the generator out back.

Side note, the fake white Christmas snow that is meant to be sprayed
on interior windows not only blocks most signs of interior light at night,
but is easly removed and cleaned up once the power comes back on.

 

[JustGone]

has anyone tried a car muffler on a generator?

Ya if you can make a 5.7L v10 fairly quiet why couldn't we do it with a generator, I wonder if someone manufactures a genny exhaust/muffler system

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

My Generator is an older commercial unit and it runs at 1800 RPM it's a 2 cylinder and for the most part quite quiet.
I cut it in at one of my barns about 300 feet behind the house.
My earler post told of us using it the other day.

The funny part about this, but you really need to think about this.

After I had it up and running it was not the noise but the fact that we had lights brought a neighbor over to use our phone. He said...... our power did'nt come back and there must be a problem still and he wanted to let the power company know.
At this time my wife informed him we did not have a working phone either and we were running on generator.

Then the other neighbors are sitting in the dark having dinner by candlelight and after dinner obviously bored so she gets on facebook on her blackberry and starts spouting off that she wished her husband was as smart as her neighbors and wished they had a Genny too.

Believe me in a SHTF situation anyone who knows anything about you will be banging on your door before you can say Rumple Stiltson, not to mention the obvious signs.

I also noticed after cuting it in and powering up the house my doorbell lights as dark as it was with no lights near by and cloud cover over head those little things almost looked like 50 watt bulbs from the barn.

Yeah, I agree - the mere fact that you have power when no one else does would probably be the biggest giveaway.

However, assuming some good blinds/curtains/duct tape for that to keep intruders in the dark that you aren't in the dark, and the noise is the primary concern, maybe put it in a small, fairly shallow concrete enclosure lifted on a concrete pedestal, camouflaged as necessary?

Hm, this could be tricky.

Still, I think if you were able to keep it somewhere fairly soundproof and out of standing water, it could be done. Would require some pre-preparation, but I think it'd stand a good chance of working decently well.

 

[WhitleyStu]

Several years ago I purchased a 20' roll of flex exhaust that just fits over the exhaust pipe on my generator. In the winter I can leave the garage door up aprox 3" and run a 6' piece outside and aim it in any direction I want. There is a good sized muffler on the generator so the flex pipe is just getting the exhaust outside. From outside there is little noise.

 

[evansvillethompsongunner]

The exhaust directed outside in a barrel of water will provide the most quiet running.
Just don't forget a few gallons of RV anti freeze to prevent winter freeze up.

Running a small inverter off of a car battery also can be impressive to neighbors.
You can run interior lights, computer, cell phone chargers etc. and not divulge
the generator out back.

Side note, the fake white Christmas snow that is meant to be sprayed
on interior windows not only blocks most signs of interior light at night,
but is easly removed and cleaned up once the power comes back on.

Sorry, didn't really pay attention the first time. That's a good idea with the fake snow. Lots of places sell it for fairly cheap, and it's reuseable once you let it dry out... sodium polyacrylate, I think... United Nuclear Scientific Supply sells it (or used to) for fairly cheap, but I'm sure it can be found on eBay and the like. Saran Wrap enough of that to a window and it'd probably do the trick. Might have the neighbors wonder why your windows are all-white, but behind some curtains or something, it'd do wonders, it gets pretty thick with enough water in it.

 

[Indy317]

The first thing you would want to do is think about your total power needs. It would be really hard to do a costs comparison, but it would be possible. Example:

Lighting needs.
How much light does one really need. Obviously if you light your house up at night, people are going to know you have power. One thing that I like is the Coleman florescent bulb lanterns. They run on eight D cells, but the light is bright enough for a whole room, and there is a "night light" setting that powers a small yellow bulb. You use the night light setting when you are sleeping, or when no one is in the room. The you turn on the main light when you need more light. Coleman has recently come out with a really neat lighting system. It is a unit that has four side units that remove from the base. Check it out: Coleman - Quad Lantern -

When we had a power outage, before I had the battery Coleman lantern, I used a chemical light stick to hand from my fan chain in the bedroom. Provided plenty of light to be able to get up and hit the bath room. Also, you can get cheap head lamps from Walmart and other stores. They would work well and keep light to a minimum.

So for light needs, I would personally focus on battery lights/chemical sticks.

Now, when it comes to other things, I would also try to focus on batteries and how to charge them. For me, I have a wood stove insert. As long as I can run my blower motor, I will have heat (I actually only need to run it about 16 hours/day). It doesn't draw that much, so a simple deep discharge battery and inverter will work find. I would also look at batteries to power radios, TVs, computers, etc. to get information when needed. This set-up could be as large as you wanted. You could get a few batteries and an inverter that solar homes use. They would store plenty of energy, maybe to at least run the blower motor on a natural gas furnace, a water well, or the fridge every so often?? Not sure if you can hook these kind of batteries up to be charged from generators though. Another thing is that if you go with portable batteries (I like the Optima Blue top batteries. Good prices from Sam's Club), you could get some solar cells to lay out to charge them during the day. No noise, but obviously could be seen by neighbors or what not. I have seen some generators that have hook-ups to recharge DC batteries, but I am not sure if that is the best way to recharge them. I have heard the best way are trickle/maintenance charges, which is what I use/on mine.

It all depends on what your needs are. For more information, look at buying a book called Solar Living Source Book by a company called Real Goods. I have the 11th edition and they are new edition available. The book is heavy on solar, followed by water, but they information they have on using batteries to store energy are detailed. In my edition, they set aside a chapter on emergency power, where you are living on the grid, but use generators for power outages. You can find the older editions pretty cheap, but you can also find most of this info free on the internet as well.

 

[femurphy77]

Do a search on the interweb for info on quieting your generator. MANY good articles on this very subject. Exhaust noise isn't the only problem, you will also have to deal with the mechanical noise although it won't be as bad.

 

[Jack Ryan]

In the event of a real SHTF scenario, it seems that running a generator outside, so you don't kill yourself with carbon monoxide, would telegraph the message that you have what those wandering around hungry and cold would need.

How have you planned to dampen or eliminate the sounds coming from your running generator? (Sorry if this has been covered before, but a quick search did not reveal any related thread.)

Just start it up when you need some one to cut and split wood. Have the last tresspasser go ahead and dig the next one's hole.

 

[6birds]

In the event of a real SHTF scenario, it seems that running a generator outside, so you don't kill yourself with carbon monoxide, would telegraph the message that you have what those wandering around hungry and cold would need.

How have you planned to dampen or eliminate the sounds coming from your running generator? (Sorry if this has been covered before, but a quick search did not reveal any related thread.)

You can't hear mine run, but you can smell it (1200 rpm Diesel), and figure they'll know either way, as I'm in town. From reading here, everyone is going to leave town and live in the bush like they see in Discovery, so I'll be all alone here with no one to bother me!

Look out Jack, they're headed your way!!

 

[Woodsman]

Don't some of the marine duty generators have water jacketed manifolds?

That might be one option to dampen the noise. Another benefit might be to use the radiator and jacket heat for heating the home too. (assuming you don't have an air-cooled gen-set though).

 

[jeremy]

In the event of a real SHTF scenario, it seems that running a generator outside, so you don't kill yourself with carbon monoxide, would telegraph the message that you have what those wandering around hungry and cold would need.

How have you planned to dampen or eliminate the sounds coming from your running generator? (Sorry if this has been covered before, but a quick search did not reveal any related thread.)

Black plastic and duct tape can help with the light discipline, but hiding the sound from the generator is a harder problem to find a fix for. Would digging a pit and keeping it out of sight make it any harder to detect the sound or location?

In the Army we used to either dig a slight pit and sand bag walls around the GENSET or just build sandbag walls around it.

In the Civilain worl you could just build an insulated building around the GenSet to sound deaden the unit. Remember to keep a lot of space around the unit for ventelation.

 

[Bill B]

Waaaaaay back when I was in the Army we had 5kw diesel generators that were fairly loud. A conversation while standing next to it had to be shouted.
Being in a S & S company we had to have the generators running. To quiet them we dug a pit deep enough so that the top of the generator was about 24 inches below ground level. We then applied overhead cover like you would for a foxhole or a bunker, leaving a gap on one side for ventilation. On the other side was the entrance to the bunker.
The side that had the entrance was loudest, you could hear the gen. from about 50 feet. On the other sides you had to be within 20-30 feet to hear it good enough to localize the sound, past about 50 feet you couldn't hear squat.
The larger generators (15-30 kw) were trailer mounted and had sound proofing kits installed. Basically it was a box that went around the generator made from sheet steel, on the inside was 3/4 inch of open-cell foam covered by heavy aluminum foil.
While it didn't make them silent by any stretch of the imagination, it did reduce the noise by about 50%. Another thing we did, on occasion, was to build sandbag walls around the generators. Not as effective as putting them in a pit, but pretty useful.

 

[Dr Falken]

One thing to think about using batteries, if you have cigarette style adapters for all of your items, you could run them off 12vdc. That way you might not have to use your smaller cells until you actually go mobile. Additionally, you wouldn't be using an inverter to go from DC to AC to DC (radios and the like).

I think it was on the Rubicon, Alpha Disaster Contingencies site, they had a retrofit of an ATV muffler to your gen-set. I don't remember how effective they said that it was, but it seems a good idea to me. The ideal situation would be to NOT need your generator for day to day needs, as it is expensive, loud, and attracts attention.

 

[Jack Ryan]

Light light lights, what's the obsession with lights?

If lights are all you are worried over you sure don't need a generator. Get a dual fuel coleman lantern and convert that gasoline directly to light. You'll get a lot more light for your money and heat for the winter too.