Generac Guardian Series™ 5504 - 17kW Essential Circuit Standby Generator System

Good Products.

This is an upgrade to replace an 8K Generac purchased in Spring 2001. I sold my old one to a friend who couldn't afford to purchase a new one.

I've only had the new one installed for 1 day but here are my observations: This one has a horizontal crankshaft as opposed to the vertical crank on the old 8K. Much less likely to leak oil through the crank seal. This one also has a valve cap oil filler with a dip stick down the side. The old 8K had a little tube coming out of the oil sump with a plastic cap dip stick.

Because of the design it would take 15 to 20 minutes to put a quart of oil in, a terrible design. Other new features are the electronics with frequency meter and volt meter included in the software, and the fuel change over from Natural Gas to LP is so simple even a Cave Man could do it.

The one aggravation installing the new generator is that my old 8K had the battery charger built into the generator cabinet. This new set up came with the battery charger built into the transfer switch. Since I am retaining my old transfer switch I had to move the battery charger to the new generator cabinet and run a separate 120 volt power line to run the charger.

I am also not a fan of the new transfer switches with all the auxiliary circuit breakers. I ended up paying $200 or more for a bunch of wiring and circuit breakers I didn't need.

I also wonder why the short conduit to the main panel is waterproof conduit and the one going to the transfer switch is metal flex, which is not waterproof. Unless you can install the little junction box inside, this conduit will be exposed to weather. Engineering marketing decisions sometimes baffle me.

All in all, I am much happier with the design of this new unit but only time will tell how satisfied I will be. The unit runs a little louder than I expected but has more than twice the capacity.

In 9 years I have had to replace 2 utility side coils in transfer switches (we have 2 standby generators on adjacent properties) as well as 1 electronic relay and 2 MICR switches.

The transfer switches are cheaply made but if you know how to trouble shoot them, parts are relatively inexpensive. Other than the coils themselves, relays and switches are much cheaper from Graingers.

Now you know everything I know.