standby generators

[IanF]

a
and use an earth leakage tester they are not expensive...in fact i am considerering buying all my customers an earth leakage tester

Murdock
Can you give us name and specs of the tester it sounds like a good buy, also what is the price range this is for me who just knows electricity is dangerous.

[murdock]

i know of 2 makes top tronic model number tel1tlp list price is R220.00 my personal choice...then you get a major tech mt 310 i dont know the price...personal i dont buy anything from major tech there service sucks their products are unreliable and as for their sales department you would think they were doing you a favour selling you their product.

[Upstairs]

Hi Murdock,
I know the senior boys at Major Tech, and I am sure that they would not appreciate the treatment that you have received from their staff. Keep in mind that they do not sell directly to the public, but it gives them no right to treat a customer the way I suspect they have treated you. I worked for Kraus and Naimer switchgear (SA Solenoid Co) for ten years, and learned there that the small customer is as important as the man with the bigger wallet. There is always the possibility that the small guy may grow to become the big guy. I shall direct them to this forum and would like some feedback as to how they handled your gripe. On the other hand do not expect a top quality multimeter for around R200. Rather spend more and have peace of mind. Regards. Rudi

[Alan]

This thread has taken an interesting turn and in all honesty i don't want to climb onto the proverbial band wagon. At the end of the day my experience's with Major Tech has been nothing less than disgusting.
Here is the story:
A few years ago new models of the Major Tech range of meters were brought out with life time guarantee or warranty i forget which, anyway after investigating these meters fairly throughly, as they did come at a premium we decide to invest in about 4 or 5 different units. After being assured by sales staff that no matter what went wrong, all we had to do was bring the meter in and it would be repaired or replaced. During our investigation of these meters we were assured that amount other features they were fully fuse protected and this is important as electricians, staff, myself included have tested a live circuit with the ohm scale. This is a mistake that is fairly easy to make when under pressure on a fault find. Now when this happens and the meter is fuse protected all that should happen is you pop the fuse before you burn out the meter, no problem........wrong.
Again i digress, i have an old Fluke 77 meter from the 80's [my personal meter] that really has been through the mill and have had this meter since my apprenticeships, when making a mistake like this it has a built in resistor that allows for this mishap and no harm comes to meter or operator.
Anyway it was inevitable that this would happen on one of our meters and it did a few months after purchase when testing between neutral and earth and the neutral was carrying a 100 odd volts.....bang the fuse went, no problem get a new fuse......big problem no stock of these fuses in KZN.
To cut a long story short this happened on 2 separate occasions to 2 different meters and both times the meter itself was damaged. When i phoned the distributors in KZN i was told that the fuse was purely to protect the operator and not the meter, when i questioned this as i don't have to replace my car when a fuse blows. Now as a sparky i have always been under the impression that a fuse is there to protect a circuit from overload but according to Major Tech in KZN i didn't know what i was talking about and the life time warranty/guarantee didn't apply and there was nothing i was going to be able to do about it they did however offer to sell me new meters. On both occasions we blew our Insulation Testers
IMO at the end of the day that guarantee/warranty was not worth the paper it was written on and was a pure sales gimmick. Only problem is, you will only catch me once, thereafter my school fees have been paid.

As far as safety in generator installation goes the small number of folk that read these forums are lucky as they can consider themselves fairly informed, but there are literally thousands of folk out there playing Russian Roulette and don't even know it.