Generator Installation
What a whole-home generator install involves in Manatee County: sizing, siting, fuel, permits, install day.
A whole-home generator is one of the largest single purchases a Florida homeowner makes that nobody can see working. It sits in the side yard doing nothing for years, and then one September night it has to carry your house for four days.
This page is about what that install actually involves — where the unit goes, what fuel it runs on, which permits get pulled, what the day looks like on your street, and what happens the first time the power drops. If you want the questions to ask any dealer, including us, they're on our generator buyer's guide.
Call Air & Energy at (941) 778-0773, or schedule online.
Sizing — and why we won't give you a number over the phone
The number you want is a kW size. We're not going to guess at it, and you should be careful with anyone who does.
Sizing isn't square footage. It's a list of what you want still running when the power's out, and what each of those things costs to start. Air conditioning is usually the largest item, and starting a compressor draws far more than running one. An electric water heater, a well pump, a pool pump, a garage-door opener you'd rather not hand-crank in the rain — each one either lands on the list or it doesn't. Two houses of the same size can land two sizes apart because one of them has a well and the other doesn't.
So the honest version is: we come out, we look at your panel, we go through the list with you, and then there's a number. What that conversation actually decides is not how big the generator is. It's how much of your normal life keeps happening.
Where it goes
The generator has manufacturer-specified minimum clearances from the house, from windows, and from openings. Those clearances are not negotiable and they are the first thing that rules a spot in or out — which is why one of the first things we do on site is put a tape measure on it.
Then there's the ground itself. Some units sit on a poured concrete pad. Others go up on a welded aluminum stand, off the ground entirely. Which one your address needs is a question worth asking early, because it changes the pad, the gas run, the electrical run and the crane picture all at once — and it is much cheaper to answer before anything is poured than after.
On the islands and along the canals we also choose the spot with salt exposure in mind, and we spec coastal-duty equipment for those properties. That's not a line we can put a number on for you, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. It's what we do because we work out there every day.
Fuel
Most Manatee County homes run one of two ways.
Natural gas, through a utility meter. Before this is settled, the meter size and the line pressure have to be verified — a meter sized for a range and a water heater is not necessarily a meter sized for a generator as well. That's a check, not a formality, and it happens before you're quoted.
Propane, from a tank you own or lease. The tank has to be sized for the run-time you actually want, and where it can sit is its own siting question. A tank that's fine for a cooktop is not a tank that carries a house through a multi-day outage.
Either way, this is one of the two permits — see below.
Permits — both of them
A generator install is inspected on the electrical side and on the gas side. Two permits, two inspections, and both have to be closed.
We pull both and we close both. That's part of the Simply Better Promise, where it's written as “every permit Florida requires — pulled, inspected, and closed by us.”
The reason to care is unglamorous: an install where a permit was never pulled or an inspection was never closed doesn't announce itself. It surfaces later — at a sale, at a claim, or when somebody else opens the panel. Ask any dealer you're talking to whether they'll pull both and close both, and get the answer before you sign.
What install day actually looks like
For most of these, the generator does not come in through your side gate. It comes in over the house.
A truck crane sets up in the street. The unit is rigged with straps, lifted over the roofline, and lowered onto its pad or its stand while the crew guides it in from below. Depending on the property and the size of the unit, we've done this over two-story tile roofs, across canals, and onto stands built for the spot. On tight sites we lay plywood over turf and pavers first, because a crane and a laden trailer are heavier than anything that's ever driven across your lawn.
Most installations are completed in one to two days on site. Inspections are scheduled separately and are not inside that window — the county sets that pace, not us, and anyone promising you otherwise is promising you something they don't control.
There are no subcontractors on the install. Every person on your property is a W-2 Air & Energy employee, and we hold all three licenses in-house — HVAC, plumbing and gas, and electrical.
Licenses: CAC1817161 · CFC1429106 · EC13011350.
15 questions every homeowner should ask a generator dealer
Sizing, licensing, warranty, storm response — the things that separate a real install from a botched $20K mistake.
What happens when the power goes out
The transfer switch is the part that does the deciding. When utility power drops, it disconnects your house from the grid and connects it to the generator, and when utility power comes back it hands the house back and shuts the generator down. You don't do anything. That's the whole point.
Between outages, the unit runs a short exercise cycle on a schedule. That's the generator testing itself, and it is also the single most common way a fault gets found in March instead of in September.
When something does go wrong, it usually goes wrong at the worst hour. Night, weekend and holiday generator service is available. Outside office hours your call goes into Air & Energy's automated on-call system and our own on-call technicians respond through it — not a call center, and not a stranger's phone.
What being a Kohler Titanium and Titan Certified dealer means for you
Air & Energy is a Kohler Titanium & Titan Certified Dealer — as of August 2026, the only Kohler dealer in the Tampa Bay area holding both Titanium Dealer and Titan Certified status. Kohler renamed the second program in 2026; it was previously called Bold Certified.
Titanium is Kohler's top sales and installation tier. Titan Certified is the top service tier — factory-level training delivered directly by Kohler engineers, the same training Kohler's own technical support team uses.
Here's why the second one is the one that matters. A generator that has never had an outage is not a generator anyone has tested. The moment that counts is the one where the power has been out for fourteen hours, the unit throws a fault code, and somebody has to read it correctly at your house. Sales credentials don't help you at that hour. Service credentials do.
We install Kohler. We service everything.
We install Kohler exclusively — one manufacturer, one parts inventory, one set of diagnostics our technicians know cold.
But we service all makes and models of standby generators, whether we installed them or not. If you inherited a unit with the house, or you bought from a dealer who has since sold to somebody else, you do not have to replace a working generator to have somebody competent look after it.
Those two facts are deliberately not the same policy, and it's worth saying why. A company that only services what it sells has a reason to want your working unit gone. We'd rather keep yours running and be the people you call when it doesn't.
What we won't do
We won't size it over the phone. See above. A kW number offered without a look at your panel and your list is a guess with a decimal point on it.
We won't quote before we've been to the site. The pad, the stand, the gas run and the crane access are the difference between two prices, and none of the four can be read off a screen.
We won't tell you a generator is the answer if it isn't. Some houses are better served by a smaller scope. If that's yours, we'll say so.
Money
Financing is available through Wells Fargo.
We publish what our own completed jobs have cost for air conditioning replacements on how we price. We do not yet publish a generator equivalent, because we haven't done the same work on that cohort, and we'd rather say that than post a “starting at” number that describes a best-case job at somebody else's house.
We started on Anna Maria Island in 1983 and we've been putting equipment into houses around here ever since — some of it lifted over the roof to get there.
If a generator is somewhere on your list, the next step is somebody standing in your side yard with a tape measure. We'll come out, look at the panel, the fuel and the spot, and put the price in writing before anything is scheduled.
Call Air & Energy at (941) 778-0773, or schedule online.
