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Things age, it’s a fact of life – cars, homes, computers, and more. But that doesn’t mean you leave them to simply wither away. Instead, you try and preserve their freshness and quality with regular maintenance.

Think about it.

What would you do if your car was getting old but you still relied on it to take you places every day? Let it sit collecting dust in the garage?

Of course not. You’d do whatever it takes to keep it running for as long as possible; change the oil, fix any internal issues, change the tires – whatever it needed to perform at its best.

And it’s exactly the same with your generator. If you’re trusting your generator to protect you, you need to invest in preventative maintenance, and the best way to do that is through load bank testing.

 

What is Load Bank Testing?

Load bank testing is a form of preventative maintenance that evaluates all generator components to make sure they’re working in accordance with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards.

During a load bank test, an artificial load is placed on the generator in increasing increments to test its capacity and ability to continue functioning for extended time periods.

This ensures that your generator is capable of producing the highest horsepower required while maintaining an adequate temperature and pressure levels.

The result?

Assurance that your generator is ready to handle whatever nature throws your way.

 

Reliable Performance

Load bank tests should be conducted on an annual basis to extend the life of your generator and ensure it will reliably perform during the event of an outage.

Just as you wouldn’t leave your bike out in the elements for months on end and expect it to work perfectly when you finally go to ride it, you shouldn’t leave your generator sitting idly by without checking it.

These powerful machines need regular maintenance to perform properly so that they can provide you with the peace of mind you’ve come to rely on.

Prevents Wet-Stacking & Cleans Out Carbon Deposits

Similar to leaving your bike out in the rain and letting it rust, your generator will form soot build-up over time. When a generator is used infrequently, unburned fuel and soot often build up in the exhaust system, known as “wet-stacking”. Wet-stacking ranges from problematic to incredibly dangerous, contributing to poor engine performance or operational failure caused by internal damage, and can even be a potential fire hazard.

But you can prevent these and other issues by simply arranging an annual load bank test.

 

Cuts Costs

In this day and age, almost everything comes down to cost. People want to live as comfortably as they can for as little as possible.

And by performing annual load bank testing on your generator, you’ll actually end up saving yourself a significant amount of money. That’s because generator problems that are detected early, such as during a load bank test, are substantially less expensive to address from the onset than after they’ve festered.

Without proper maintenance, you’d likely find yourself coming face to face with a bad domino effect – one thing goes wrong which triggers another thing to misfire, and on and on down the line costing you more and more money.

Instead, save yourself the cost and aggravation by scheduling regular load bank tests to check for any issues and address them immediately.

If you’re unsure about the condition of your generator, stop living in the dark and get in touch today for a free generator assessment. Our professional technicians will evaluate your generator, providing sound recommendations for preventative maintenance to keep it running in peak condition.

Because at the end of the day, you want a generator you can safely rely on.

 

 

Kristopher Schwind is the proud owner of National Standby Repair.