What are some good ones? Whats a good power range to get for say the whole damn house?

Im bored at work and looking at Norwall's site and saw some range from 7000-40000 watts.....

I will definantly have one when I build, so im curious. (and bored)

the one I got for the whole house is a northstar with a honda engine in it 10,500 running watts
its pretty nice.

Check the survival section, much written on the subject.

Noted....heading that way. I keep forgetting about that damn section.

Quoted: Check the survival section, much written on the subject.

Careful now.  Getting a 15 kW unit might supply you enough to turn the AC BUT the efficiency running off the grid will absolutely suck.  There is the beauty in the economy of scale.

What you need to do is an energy assessment of your demand.  This shows the baseline plus your peak demand.  Somewhere between your peak and base losd is where you need to be.  

The best systems utilize a bank of batteries driving an inverter.  The batteries are charged with the generator and the system managed to require only a 40% generator on cycle.

But such a system is weak since a fault in either the inverter or the generator means the largest load is off line.

For ultimate independence, you need two generators and an inverter bank, each sized at half the peak load.  Fuel costs will kill you without cogeneration.  This is utilization of the 75% waste heat.  Running off a generator with waste heat recovery means you never run out of hot water.

First, you will NOT be running electric heat.    Waste heat from generators will be entirely adequate for most lattitudes.  A small heat pump, coupled with the waste heat from the generator engines will be entirely adequate.  

Second, fuel will be a question.  Propane and natural gas are good for ease of handling but suffer from efficiency.  Dual fuel in a diesel cycle is much better BUT requires complex controls.  Some can handle full diesel fuel if the propane/natural gas is not available.  Dual fuel in the diesel cycle involves injecting a small amount of the gas into the intake, "sparking" it with the injection of the diesel which burns the gas.  It works well, providing the efficiency of a diesel engine (much higher compression ratio) with the clean burn of a natural gas engine.  But the complexity is a problem as the engine can be damaged by too much gas and speed regulation (important for frequency of produced power) is difficult at low loads.

Third is the need.  Do you want to be "off grid" or do you want a reliable back-up?  If you want to be off the grid, you need a combination of sources, not relying on any one source.  But if you want a reliable power situation, sizing a generator a bit over your maximum  single load is the best return on the dollar.

I'm sure this is just for backup, as going "off the grid" should entail a more diverse source of energy such as solar and wind power.  Hmmm..  48 volt battery bank, Inverter, solar panels, wind turbine, diesel generator as a backup/supplement.  Maybe make enough power to sell back to the grid to help pay for the system.  I would say if you could make the system pay for itself in 20 or so years it might be a good investment.