I'll bet your home was the bright spot on the horizon last night!
Quiet - Not very. If you go outside, near the generator, it's quite loud. However, even though it's more or less right outside my bedroom window, from inside, it sounds like a background hum - not bad at all.
I'd been looking at this model for a few years. It's a GE 20KW with the Symphony transfer switch. It's not the new model - I saved nearly $500 by buying the model that is being discontinued. But it still has some basic load management features that will allow it to shed stuff to bring other stuff on-line, and then bring the stuff that was shed back on-line after things fire up and get through their initial surges.
I finally decided to buy it because my father wanted to come live with us from Florida, and so we needed to finish the basement for him, and thus, we can no longer tolerate periodic little (or occasionally big) floods in the basement. We can no longer tolerate loss of power to the sump pump. As well, he's old and infirm, and we can't have a situation as we had during multiple winters of having no heat, no water, no running toilets, and no way to get out of our driveway, no less over to the nearest hotel.
The whole installation, with the propane (which we're leasing the tank, not purchasing - saved $2400 that way) and everything - installation, inspections, etc., came to about $7000, not including the cost to fill the propane tank the first time (which was over $800, yikes!!).
It's still running, and I expect will be for a couple of days at least, and from here in the sunroom, which is on the other side of the house, I can hear a dull, low rumble of the generator.
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