Here is what the manufacturer will tell you:

• Natural gas — The unit runs as long as gas service holds. There is no tank to empty.
• Propane — Your tank size sets the ceiling. When it runs dry, the generator stops.

That answer is correct. It is also incomplete.

It assumes your house can feed the unit at full demand. It assumes your panel can take the tie-in. Those are safe assumptions in a home built five years ago. They are not safe assumptions in a home built fifty years ago.

Fort Worth has a lot of the second kind. Homes here were wired and plumbed for the appliances of their era. A standby generator is not one of them.

A standby generator is a large gas appliance. It pulls significant volume when it runs under load. That is the part homeowners miss. The utility line in the street is not the line running to your unit. What matters is the pipe on your property and the meter feeding it. Both have limits.

If either is undersized, the generator gets starved. The utility is working fine. Your house just cannot move enough gas to the unit.

Signs a generator is not getting enough gas:

• It hunts or surges instead of holding steady
• It drops load when the AC kicks on
• It shuts down under heavy demand
• The trouble starts on day two or three, not day one

That last one catches people. On day one the load is light. By day three, everything is running, and the line cannot keep up.

Older Fort Worth homes were not piped for this. The gas line was sized for a furnace, a water heater, and a range. Nobody planned for a generator.

The gas line is one half of it. Your panel is the other.

A generator does not connect to your house directly. It connects through a transfer switch, and that switch ties into your electrical panel.

Your panel has to be able to take it. Not every panel can. What we look at:

• Whether the panel has capacity for the tie-in
• Whether there is a safe place to make the connection
• The panel's age and overall condition
• Whether the brand and model has known safety problems

Some older panels fall into that last category. They cannot be safely modified, and they cannot be safely added to. In those homes, the panel has to be replaced before a generator goes in.

That is not an upsell. It is the order the work has to happen in.

We see this often in Fort Worth's older housing stock. The homeowner wants a generator. What they need first is a panel that can support one.

This is a condition check, not a guess. We look at your actual panel before we say anything about it.

Say the gas line is right and the panel is right. The generator still has limits of its own.

Manufacturers set an oil-change interval measured in run hours. A multi-day outage will reach it. They also publish a maximum continuous-run figure before the unit needs a cool-down. So your generator may need service in the middle of the outage. Read your manual now, not then.

Check these every day while it runs:

• Oil level
• Debris around the intake and housing
• Unusual noise or vibration
• Voltage swings inside the house
• Any automatic shutdown, even a brief one

Shut the unit down if you see any of those. Running a generator through a fault does real damage. It also leaves you dark at the worst possible moment.

We service and repair all generator brands, including Generac, Kohler, and Cummins. If your unit acts up mid-outage, we can get to it.

Plan for the worst outage you might see, not the average one. North Texas gives you two kinds.

Winter grid stress is the first. The February 2021 statewide event left millions without power for multiple days in dangerous cold. You can monitor current grid conditions on the ERCOT grid dashboard to stay ahead of developing stress events.

Summer storms are the second. Wind and hail take down local lines. Crews get stretched thin, and restoration can run well past a single day.

What that means for your runtime:

• Plan for days, not hours
• On propane, your tank has to cover that span
• On natural gas, your line size and maintenance become the limits

Fort Worth's older housing stock adds a wrinkle. Those homes carry older gas lines and older panels. The generator may be new, but the infrastructure feeding it often is not.

Our Berkeys Fort Worth team installs and services generators across Fort Worth and Arlington. The pattern holds in both.

Runtime is a property of your house. It is not a number on a spec sheet.

What we check before we quote a generator:

• Gas line size — Can it deliver the volume the unit demands under load?
• Meter capacity — Can it feed the generator and your other gas appliances at once?
• Panel condition — Can it take the transfer switch tie-in safely?
• Electrical load — What has to stay on, and what does that total?
• Permitting — Fort Worth requires permits and inspection on this work.

Four of those five are about your house, not the generator. That is the point.

Once the unit is in, run the monthly self-test. It confirms the generator will actually start. A unit that has not run in a year is a unit you cannot count on.

We handle the permits and the inspection as part of the install. You do not chase paperwork.

We check the gas line, the meter, and the panel before we ever quote a generator. Our licensed electricians install and service whole-house units across Fort Worth and Arlington. We answer calls 24/7.

Call (817) 799-6090 for a free generator consultation.

Business Address: 3001 W 5th St Suite 700, Fort Worth, TX 76107