Most generators fail because they sat, not because they wore out.
The unit that will not start when the power goes out has usually been idle for months with old fuel and a flat battery. We come to the site, find out why, and get it running before you need it.
- Open 24 hours, seven days
- No hourly minimum
- What it’ll cost before the truck leaves
- Standby sets, tow-behinds and portables
Sitting still is what kills them
A generator is an engine that spends nearly all its life switched off, and that is the whole problem. Fuel goes stale. Diesel grows water in the bottom of the tank and then grows the bacterial sludge that plugs a filter on the first hard run. Gasoline in a portable turns to varnish in the carburetor over a summer. The starting battery, which is doing nothing but self-discharging between exercise cycles, quietly drops below the voltage needed to crank a cold diesel.
Then there is everything that is supposed to keep the set ready. Block heaters fail silently, and nobody notices until a winter start takes four times as long as it should. Coolant that was installed when the unit was new stops protecting anything after enough years. Trickle chargers fail. Belts perish sitting still rather than running.
None of that is dramatic, and none of it announces itself. That is exactly why the first outage of the season is when so many people find out their standby set has a problem, at the worst possible moment, in the dark, with the rest of the block also calling somebody.
Signs it will let you downCranking slower than it used to, a start that needs several attempts, a block heater that is cold to the touch, fuel that has not been turned over in a year, or a set that has not run under any real load since installation.
CostYou know what it’ll cost before the truck leaves, and with no hourly minimum a quick battery and filter visit stays a quick battery and filter visit.
Who calls usJob sites, ranches, wineries, shops and homes across Napa and Solano, plus regular work in Contra Costa, Alameda, Marin and Sonoma. Check the coverage map.
Running for a minute proves almost nothing
Plenty of people test a generator by starting it, listening to it idle for a minute in the yard, and walking away satisfied. An unloaded engine will run on bad fuel, a marginal battery that got one good crank out of itself, a cooling system with a problem it never got hot enough to show, and an alternator that cannot actually hold voltage when something is plugged into it.
Load is what exposes faults. Under real demand the engine has to make power, the cooling system has to carry heat away, the fuel system has to keep up, and the governor has to hold frequency steady. That is the difference between a set you hope will work and one you know will.
So when we service a standby unit we are interested in how it behaves working, not idling: what the voltage and frequency do when demand comes on, whether temperature stabilizes or keeps climbing, whether it holds steady or starts hunting. If a set has never been exercised under load since it was installed, that is the single most useful thing that can be done to it.
What goes wrong, and what we do about it
Most generator calls resolve to fuel, battery, cooling or charging. The skill is in finding which one before spending money on the other three.
Fuel systems
Stale diesel, water in the tank, plugged filters and lift pumps that gave up while nobody was watching. Gasoline portables usually want the carburetor cleaned out.
Starting batteries
The commonest reason a standby set does nothing when called on. Tested properly rather than swapped on suspicion, along with the charger meant to be maintaining it.
Cooling and coolant
Old coolant, weeping hoses, a radiator packed with dust and chaff, and thermostats that stick after long idle periods.
Charging and controls
Block heaters, trickle chargers, transfer switch signals and the control panel that is supposed to be telling you something is wrong.
The engine itself
When the fault really is mechanical: compression, injection, exhaust and the oil and filter service the set has been overdue for.
Other site machinery
Places with a generator usually have an air compressor and other fixed equipment nearby, and it is generally easier to deal with all of it in one visit.
Power that matters more in this part of California
Anyone who has lived in Napa or Solano for a few years knows the pattern. A dry autumn, a wind advisory, and the utility shuts off power across the hills to keep lines from starting fires. It can last hours or it can last days, and it tends to arrive in exactly the weeks nobody has spare time.
For a home that is an inconvenience. For a ranch it is water pumps, stock and cold storage. For a winery in the wrong week it is a real problem. For a job site it is the difference between working and going home. All of those are people who bought a generator precisely so an outage would be somebody else’s problem, and every one of them is badly served by a set that turns out not to start.
Which is why the work worth doing on a generator is the work done before the wind comes up. A battery test, a fuel check, fresh filters and a proper run are not a big job. Getting a dead set going at two in the morning during an active shutoff is a much bigger one, and we would rather you never needed that call. If you do need it, we are out at all hours anyway.
We do not charge hourly minimums and we do not leave anybody stranded. That was the whole reason for starting this.
Patrick Freeman, owner
Questions people ask about standby sets
Anything not covered here is a quick phone call. Somebody picks up at any hour, including during an outage.
My generator has not been started in a year. Where do we begin?
With the battery and the fuel, because that is where the answer usually is. A starting battery that has sat through a year of self-discharge often will not crank a cold diesel, and fuel that old may have water or growth in it. Those two checks take very little time and they resolve the majority of long-idle no-start calls before anything else gets touched.
Is it worth servicing before an outage season rather than after a failure?
Considerably. A battery test, fuel check, fresh filters and a proper run under load is a modest job done on a calm day. The same set failing during a public safety shutoff means you are waiting in a queue with everyone else whose generator also sat untouched all year, in the dark, with the problem now urgent. The work is the same work. The circumstances are not.
Can you test it under actual load, or just start it up?
Idling proves very little. An unloaded engine will run happily on marginal fuel, a weak battery and a cooling system with a fault it never got hot enough to reveal. What matters is how the set behaves when demand comes on: whether voltage and frequency hold, whether temperature stabilizes, whether it runs steady or starts hunting. That is the check that tells you if the thing will actually carry your property.
Do you work on portable and tow-behind generators too?
Yes. Jobsite and tow-behind units get the same treatment as a fixed standby set, and small gasoline portables are frequently a carburetor full of varnish from sitting with old fuel in them. Since we are mobile, it makes no difference to us whether the unit is bolted to a pad behind a building or sitting on a trailer in a yard.
The block heater seems cold. Does that matter?
It matters more than most people expect. A block heater keeps a standby diesel warm enough to start quickly and take load without a long cold crank, and when one fails it does so silently. Nobody notices until a cold start drags on far longer than it should, or the set stumbles as load comes on. It is a straightforward thing to test and a straightforward thing to replace.
What does a generator call cost?
You get one figure before we set out, covering the trip and the work, and no hourly minimum applies. Plenty of generator visits turn out to be a battery, a set of filters and a run, and there is no reason for a short job to be billed like a long one. If what we find changes the scope, you hear the revised number before anything else gets done.
Find out now, not during the outage.
Tell us the make, roughly how long since it last ran, and what it does when you hit start. That is enough to know what to bring. One number reaches the mechanic directly, at any hour.
HoursMonday to Sunday, 24 hours
Based inAmerican Canyon, CA
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