# Gas Powered Generator Advice



## k3c4forlife (Dec 10, 2009)

Hey all,

I am looking to purchase a gas powered electric generator for backup electricity for my house.  I own a smaller ranch-style house, 1300sf.  I would like the generator to be able to run 2-3 space heaters, my elec. hot water heater and maybe a tv/surround sound set up in my living room.  I am great with the wood stove but have very limited knowledge in this area... What size generator am I looking at to run this much equipment? What cost am I looking at?

Thanks,
Kevin


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## daveswoodhauler (Dec 10, 2009)

Hey Kevin - Can you post the specs (wattage/Amps) of the space heaters you are running?
Also, I was talking with my electrician the other day, and he recommended "not" to power up expensive electronic equipment, such as computers, tv's etc...to prevent any damage to the units...I'm guessing due to fluctuations in power coming from the generator.
On a side note, I have a 5500 (running) and 8350 start up generator, and when hooked into the panel it basically can run everything in the house except for the clothes dryer, and stove. (runs the furnace, well pump, all lights tv, etc)


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## k3c4forlife (Dec 10, 2009)

Ill have to go and look at what everything is pulling...


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## Highbeam (Dec 10, 2009)

The space heaters are going to be 1500 watts each, the water heater will be a 30 amp circuit so 6600 more watts. Both of these are simple resistance loads so you're already up to an 11,100 watt genset which is HUGE. Have you considered your refrigerator/freezer? You are way above normal hardware store gensets and the fuel consumption alone makes this a bad idea. Try to imagine shuttling more than a gallon per hour to this genset, I used a gallon per hour in my old 6850 watt genset so a 12KW genset might be closer to two GPH.

If you are clever and willing to alternate the use of these items, for instance run the water heater only when nothing else is on, then your wattage needs drop significantly. Do you really need hot water? Do you really need space heaters? You have your stove to run. 

For reference, I have an all electric house and run my home during an outage with a 3500 watt continuous rated gas genset that consumes less than 5 gallons of gas in 12 hours. I run all lights, the microwave, entertainment center, both refers, and a range burner easily with this genset. I do not run the water heater, hot tub, dryer, or space heaters since this is sort of an emergency thing and those items are not critical.


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## k3c4forlife (Dec 10, 2009)

Alright, so if I cut the electric heaters and the water heater but try to hit the fridge, + lights, tv, a 5000 would be enough?


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## daveswoodhauler (Dec 10, 2009)

5000 should be more than enough for your fridge, tv and lights.


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## Cowboy Billy (Dec 10, 2009)

I am not a fan of gas generators. They are fuel inefficient. And you have to have a lot of gas on hand if the power is out for a extended time. Even with stabil the gas does not last long. With a diesel the fuel is good for 2-3 years. We have a off grid place in michigan's UP. We have a diesel with low speed generator head. We can run two electric heaters on microwave, tv, furnace for about six gallons in 24 hrs. This summer we went with a big battery and power inverter. We can run off of that for a day or two then fire up the generator and charge the battery back up. Right now I am working on hooking up a 10 diesel engine with a big alternator and aircompersser. And I am going to use that to charge the battery. 

For home I am building a 14hp lister diesel generator setup. Its big but the engine is awesome. It will run on diesel vegetable oil or even used and filtered motor oil which I can get free. 

Lister diesel with low speed 12000 watt generator head







Billy


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## k3c4forlife (Dec 10, 2009)

I dont need anything near that elaborate.  The most we have power out for is 24 hours...  I will look into smaller diesel though if they exist.


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## Highbeam (Dec 10, 2009)

Gas will serve you fine then. Despite the rumors, gasoline lasts a long time. I treat with sta-bil and have never ever had a fuel system go bad from year old fuel. For the fridge, tv, and some lights you can get by with a small genset like I have. A 6HP honda clone engine is easy on fuel, relatively quiet, and very easy to start. They sell the champion brand generators at most autoparts chain stores for about 300$. The most common size is 3500 watts and is plenty for your needs. You can even run one of those space heaters along with your other needs. Plan on running extension cords to each device or figuring out a transfer switch system.

Note that your water heater will be full of hot water that will stay hot for more than 24 hours unless you drain it with a shower. 

Note also that the best way to maintain a dependable genset of any type is to use it. plan on running it once a month under 50% load for a half hour. This keeps everything lubed, dry, and functional.

I sure like those listers. It would make a great hobby. The sound is wonderful.


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## k3c4forlife (Dec 10, 2009)

Ha, ill probably end up buying something 5x more powerful than I need... 10000 here I come...  I have posted a bunch on here about just buying my first house.  Having heat when I lose power isnt enough.  I need to be that guy that has a wood stove cooking and is watching the football game when there's no power.

Good point on the water heater retaining its hot water...  One really quick shower for the wife and I in a 24 hour period would be fine.  There really isnt a reason that I would need to be actually heating new water during the length of our standard power outage.  

Just need to make sure I have enough gas on hand.


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## Cowboy Billy (Dec 10, 2009)

Highbeam said:
			
		

> Note also that the best way to maintain a dependable genset of any type is to use it. plan on running it once a month under 50% load for a half hour. This keeps everything lubed, dry, and functional.
> 
> I sure like those listers. It would make a great hobby. The sound is wonderful.




If you run it like Highbeam said they can be dependable. But 99% of the time they might get run once a year and no care taken of them. And the cheep home owner ones like the 5000 watt one I had have no auto idle and are loud vibrate and the bearings in the generator don't hold up.

They do make little diesel generators that look just like the gas ones. But because they have more torque handle load surges better than gas ones and that is what I was suggesting. The lister is a big project and takes up a lot of space. But I do not have to worry about anyone stealing it unless they have a tow truck as it weighs about 1800lbs the way it is setup now.

Thanks Highbeam. You got it right it is a hobby! And a big project. The plan is to use the lister in the winter. The engine is water cooled and we are going to water cool the exhust. Pipe the heat into the house to help heat the house and get all my electric power too. The project started when my brother and I were talking about how much it cost to heat a house with heating oil. We came up with the idea of burning the heating oil in the in a diesel engine getting the same amount of heat and all our electric. We also have a seed press to press the oil out of soybeans or sunflowers if we can ever get this growing thing down to where we can get a crop off. So far all we have done is feed the deer. Hard to belive how fast they can eat 15 acres of sunflowers!

Billy


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## EatenByLimestone (Dec 11, 2009)

If you use the sunflowers to feed the deer, which is used to fill the lister powered freezer....


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## Fi-Q (Dec 11, 2009)

Yep, the sercret of any combustion engine is to maintain them and make them run... Like if you'Re ever buying a use RV wich is 4 years old and the generator on it only have 2 hour. You will have problems with that generator.

    Eventually, I want to build myself a Lister generator.... but I'm not there yet...........


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## btuser (Mar 3, 2010)

Cowboy,

How's that Lister coming?  I was looking a small one, in the neighborhood of 1,000 lbs and only 5kw.  I don't know if I have the room or the time or the money, but if I'm going to spend 2k+ on a genset I like the idea of being able to use it forever.


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## Deere10 (Mar 3, 2010)

One thing I do is when I am done running the gen is to shut gas off and let carb run dry. This way the new ethanol gas does not sit in the carb bowl and mess with any rubber or plastic parts of the carb. This new fuel will cause damage to those parts.  I run a 55oo w 6500 peak.  Again try not to run computers,expensive tv s. Keep the draw low if possible.


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## fbelec (Mar 3, 2010)

for you guys that want to run a computer( got to check on the forum) or large tv find yourself a ups. doesn't have to be to big because you'll have your generator running anyway. ups is the best thing for smoothing out power from a generator. it smoothes out voltage highs and lows. i would suggest it for anything that has a electronic board in it. last year i was being stupid again and thought i could run my police scanner on the generator. WRONG blew that out quick.


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## billb3 (Mar 3, 2010)

Ships use gen sets for A/C power.
They use UPS with AVR  for  glitches on the A/C. Any glitches are usually related to big  hydraulic pumps turning on and off.
Usually just on computers and sometimes the satellite dishes.


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## fbelec (Mar 3, 2010)

cowboy nice setup. that is way more versatile, it burns anything but gasoline. love it. i'm a big fan of compression.


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## woodsman23 (Mar 3, 2010)

A very simply solution is to buy a propane generator. Fuel never goes bad, burns cleaner, never gums up the carb and man they start right up every time....


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## firefighterjake (Mar 3, 2010)

K3 . . . can't help you much with the size of the generator . . . but I can say I've been relatively happy with my own small generator that I purchased back in 1998 during our Ice Storm that left us without power for 14 days (and this was pre-woodstove). It is a relatively small, gasoline-powered generator . . . ran the oil boiler, a few lights and the TV (since I was right in middle of playing TombRaider back then and that was one of the first things I got going). I start it up each month and run it for a bit just to make sure it's good to go when I need it . . . I treat the gas with Star Tron for long term storage and occasionally have to use a squirt of ether for the initial start up.

If I had the time, inclination and money I would go with a larger generator and have one that is set up to automatically come on and run a few things in the house . . . a co-worker who lives downeast on a peninsula that is always losing power has a stand-by generator that does this . . . and it automatically kicks on every month to stay in working order.


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## Adios Pantalones (Mar 3, 2010)

Startup power for a well is usually the big draw!  I have a 5000W Honda and it got it's first couple days of real use this weekend- it ran the boiler, the fan on my insert, fridge, my 72 gal fish tank, coffee pot, 42" flatscreen with my PS3, couple lights... no problems and never really stressed.


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## Highbeam (Mar 3, 2010)

You ran the 42" and the PS3 on a 5000 genset? Is it a fancy inverter genset? 

I have some very good surge protectors now but am afraid of running fancy electronics on genset power. These UPS systems that you folks, fbelec, speak of. Are these the super expensive type or do you have any suggestions for good value versions of a UPS device that will simply shave the peaks and fill in the low voltage occurrences?

I would like to be able to run TVs and computers but I don't want to fry them and I would need several UPS systems around the house to do this.


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## Adios Pantalones (Mar 3, 2010)

The Honda generators are pretty good, and I have one of those crazy power strips with filtering of sorts.  Not worried- worked great.


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## Stevebass4 (Mar 3, 2010)

very clean power from Honda gensets - although i have never lost power since i bought my genset


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## thewoodlands (Mar 3, 2010)

k3c4forlife said:
			
		

> Hey all,
> 
> I am looking to purchase a gas powered electric generator for backup electricity for my house.  I own a smaller ranch-style house, 1300sf.  I would like the generator to be able to run 2-3 space heaters, my elec. hot water heater and maybe a tv/surround sound set up in my living room.  I am great with the wood stove but have very limited knowledge in this area... What size generator am I looking at to run this much equipment? What cost am I looking at?
> 
> ...



We bought a 4500 watt generator from Sears in 1998 before the ice storm and are running it when power goes out. On the generator panel we have the  furnace,pump for the well, lights in the garage,microwave,outlets on the island,lights in 1 bathroom, fan on the propane fireplace plus the fan on the wood stove. Also some electrical outlets in the living room.

We never had a problem yet.

Zap


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## kartracer (Mar 4, 2010)

I have 2 honda 2000 generators-can hook in parallel for more power.It's safe for electronics and will run 10-12 hrs on a gallon of gas,each.


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## fbelec (Mar 4, 2010)

Highbeam said:
			
		

> You ran the 42" and the PS3 on a 5000 genset? Is it a fancy inverter genset?
> 
> I have some very good surge protectors now but am afraid of running fancy electronics on genset power. These UPS systems that you folks, fbelec, speak of. Are these the super expensive type or do you have any suggestions for good value versions of a UPS device that will simply shave the peaks and fill in the low voltage occurrences?
> 
> I would like to be able to run TVs and computers but I don't want to fry them and I would need several UPS systems around the house to do this.



this link is to a cheap one. you have to change batterys every few years but this type of thing is what i'm talking about. belden and tripp lite are better names, and i'm sure there are people that are in the computer field that can give you better names, but this type of thing will smooth out any power. look at the specs and you'll see how much time at full load and half load times. the killer is they'll tell you 390 watts of load and 650 volt-amps. watts is volts x amps = volt/amps = watts you get the picture.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2448902&CatId=20
oh and like anything, you get what you pay for.


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## fbelec (Mar 4, 2010)

oh and by the way, i wouldn't run anything with electronics on a glorified power strip better know as a surge strip. those things have nothing to do with surges but they do take care of spikes. they should rename them spike strips. if a 1000 volt spike came in with your regular power you might not see it but the spike strip will groung out that spike. if you had a real surge and the voltage drops to 90 volts that spike strip or better know as a surge strip wouldn't do a thing. but your computer would know. same for that 55 inch plasma


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## Highbeam (Mar 4, 2010)

kartracer said:
			
		

> I have 2 honda 2000 generators-can hook in parallel for more power.It's safe for electronics and will run 10-12 hrs on a gallon of gas,each.



Those little Hondas are great, lighweight, and quiet but very expensive (just under 1000$) and don't do 220 volt. In contrast, my champion 3500 watt genset was 300$ and does 220 so I can run my range and can backfeed all circuits in my house safely. 

I would love a little honda like that for camping.


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## Highbeam (Mar 4, 2010)

fbelec said:
			
		

> oh and by the way, i wouldn't run anything with electronics on a glorified power strip better know as a surge strip. those things have nothing to do with surges but they do take care of spikes. they should rename them spike strips. if a 1000 volt spike came in with your regular power you might not see it but the spike strip will groung out that spike. if you had a real surge and the voltage drops to 90 volts that spike strip or better know as a surge strip wouldn't do a thing. but your computer would know. same for that 55 inch plasma



I don't know fbelec, the good power strip style surge protectors actually specify surge and spike protection after defining each. The UPS that you linked didn't seem like it would do much more than a surge protector. Maybe when the power goes off it will fire up a little inverter to make choppy AC from the on-board battery. There were no claims of power conditioning, frequency regulation, or voltage regulation. 

I would hope that the more expensive ones use the supplied dirty power to run a true sine inverter 100% of the time to all outlets. That inverter would always be 60HZ and 120 volts. I'm not even too worried about the battery backup as I am about clean and steady output power nomatter how dirty the input power is.


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## billb3 (Mar 4, 2010)

Unless your TV or computer has a  dirt cheap power supply with no transformer on the A/C input  side you will almost always get by with a modified sine wave.

Watch AVR specs  though, most have a frequency range they will work in . Go outside of it and the units often just quit.


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## fbelec (Mar 5, 2010)

Highbeam said:
			
		

> fbelec said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



those little surge suppressors won't do a thing if something kicked on and dropped the voltage down to 90 volts. they have no way to supply power to kick it up to 120 volts, the hard drive wouldn't like it, but do ok when the voltage kicks up to much. the ups does smooth it out if your power went off and you were running a ups the switch over to the battery happens so fast that you or the computer would not see the change. it happens in milliseconds. that link was just a example. ups  stands for Unintterruptable Power Supply.. if you were on the forum and walked away for a minute to load the stove and the power went out the computer would stay running and after a few minutes if the power did not come on and you were not near the computer the ups sends a signal to the computer to shut down the normal way so that there is no damage. anyway if power is a problem for anybody out there remember the next time your anywhere near a computer store and go in and take a look.


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## begreen (Mar 5, 2010)

We live in an area with fluctuating rural voltages and frequent 1-2 second dropouts. As a result, our entire entertainment system is on a UPS as are our computers. UPS kicks in about every other week, sometimes even more frequently. I just wish I had a mini-ups on every device that has a clock. It's a PITA resetting them all when the power drops out for just a couple seconds.


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## btuser (Mar 5, 2010)

Now, I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure most electronic equipment is built now with filtering for dirty power.   Stuff is shipped all over the world, and instead of building for different areas units are set up to handle bad grids.  For example my laptop power is filtered through the battery as well as coming through a transformer that has its own filtering.  The kid's WII is the same way, and even the 42" LCD has an exterior transformer, which can be swapped for 220v or 110v depending on the market place.    I'm sure clean power helps but I don't think it's the factor it was 20-30 years ago.  Most stuff is +/- 10%.

A word of advice when it comes to spike protection:  Power strips burn out after about a year.  The spikes are continuous and they're not built for it.   Real protection comes from a whole-house surge protector you wire into the main panel.


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## begreen (Mar 5, 2010)

More and more electronics are starting to contain fairly powerful computers. With most stuff coming from China or other third world countries, I want it to last for longer than it was designed for. They seem to have no problem putting cheap capacitors, diodes and power supplies in some expensive equipment these days. For example, I just had to replace the crappy cheap power supply for our Roku Soundbridge. Lots of electronics are in our cabinet. A UPS is cheap insurance and saves me from having to reprogram more devices.


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## Cluttermagnet (Mar 6, 2010)

This is a fairly dicey area, getting clean power for electronics when running from a genset. Take just one area, PC type computers. A lot depends on the quality of the power supply design in the PC. Some have good 'holdup time' and will withstand a brief voltage sag, others will let that computer reboot if you lose power for many milliseconds at all. 

The best UPS devices are the *online * type. These are expensive. Yep, you get what you pay for. They 'synthesize' their own 120VAC 60Hz waveform from the dirty mains power. There is no direct through power connection. Falcon Electric  is an example of an online UPS supplier.

Then there are the cheaper *offline * UPS that most of us are used to. You can get one of those in most any computer store for under a hundred bucks to power an average computer setup. But they are passing through a lot of dirty mains power most of the time they because they are not triggered on until line voltage drops out.

The cheapie UPS types would benefit from some filtering on their outputs if you want to power electronics. No, a 'surge strip' is not really adequate. It only clips very high transient voltage spikes, and not too well at that. And it doesn't mitigate voltage sags at all. There are much better, purpose built filters to correct this, such as the Islatrol Plus units made by Control Concepts. Here's an example of one from an Ebay auction.  These are great filters and trade for around 25-50 dollars used. Plenty of them on Ebay usually. Heres a more durable link,  scroll down to "Islatrol Plus" for a photo and brief description. One other measure, nearly as good, is to get hold of an old, surplus 'constant voltage transformer' like those made by Sola Electric. I have a couple of them here, rated 500VA and 100VA or so. They are nearly as good, especially the 'harmonic neutralized' types. Both of these basic filter types will 'eat' voltage spikes and dips. A 'surge strip' does a very lousy job, by comparison. You don't want 'spike clippers', you want 'line conditioning' filters. I almost think that the constant voltage transformers might be slightly better with a genset if that generator has poor output voltage regulation. The Islatrols can't correct for too high or low a supply voltage, they only clean up transients, but they are better at doing that.

I agree, run your sensitive electronics from a UPS after the genset output, but if you use a cheap UPS you really must have a quality line conditioning filter after that. This is even true under normal home conditions: Dirty mains voltage + voltage sags - no line conditioning = frequent reboots.


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## begreen (Mar 6, 2010)

Agreed. Our UPS won't work with the dirty voltage coming from a contractor type generator. It likes the cleaner sine-wave from a good inverter generator. I decided our refrig and appliances are too expensive to try on a cheapy genset. The quiet operation is just icing on the cake.


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## maverick06 (Mar 11, 2010)

I just bought a generator. The key for electronics is to buy an inverter generator! These generate DC voltage and then use an inverter to make it into AC. Honda makes these (but at expensive). i bought a honeywell 2000i (2000watts and $479 shipped from amazon). Not sure how well the honeywell will hold up, but for me, it will work for the ~20 hours a year i need it. 

My refrigerator is all digital, so i would not be comfortable running this with just a standarg contractor generator. Seems like the inverter generator is good for all of my needs (120VAC only)  hopefully the honeywell will work well, it does has a 2 year factory warranty. The first hour and a half of use has been good. I also attached a tach/hour meter to it to monitor useage and maintenance, very pleased with it ($19 shipped from ebay)

http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-HW2...ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1268318062&sr=8-1







YMMV


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## Cluttermagnet (Mar 11, 2010)

maverick06 said:
			
		

> I just bought a generator. The key for electronics is to buy an inverter generator! These generate DC voltage and then use an inverter to make it into AC. Honda makes these (but at expensive).



Yep- these are great for electronics. They do pretty much the same thing an 'online' type UPS is doing. No battery backup, of course.

I think the regular generator types are fine for running hand tools, well pump, most refrigerators, etc.

BTW the inverter types are probably vulnerable to burn up by overloading. I suspect it is pretty easy to fry the inverter electronics. I wonder how many of them have any effective anti- overload protection?

The buyer comments on Amazon were quite useful. Some had quality issues with the Honeywell units. I'm wondering if the Chinese company that manufactures these, and fans and other such electrical stuff, is even associated with the American Honeywell?


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## maverick06 (Mar 15, 2010)

I suspect that Honeywell made the design then just contracted out the manufacturing of the unit. 

As for overloading it. I am sure that it would not be good running the thing at light overloading levels for hours on end. On the other hand, if the load spikes, it does catch it. I was testing it and fired the hair dryer up. The generator shut down right away. So i guess thats a good sign. 

While I have had a good expirance so far, based on the reviews I read, I would have expected more from a company like Honeywell.


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## begreen (Mar 15, 2010)

Do you really want to trust the cheap generators coming out of China and sold by Honeywell, Champion, Generac, etc. when you really need a generator? These are imitations of good generators made by Honda, Yamaha, Subaru. I wouldn't rely on one of these units for emergency power any more than I would rely on a Scandia knockoff stove for heat.


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## maverick06 (Mar 15, 2010)

Well it all depends on your needs. If this is a matter of life and death, or if you make a living with it, then I agree, I would go out an buy a honda. However, I dont use the generator to make a living and it isnt the end of the world without it. it simpply helps provide comfort when the power goes out, probably only 20 hours a year... For me, I expect the generator to more than adaquatly provide for the infrequent light loading i have. It is more than enough to power my tv, tivo, fireplace, refrigerator, and a few lights. So to each their own, but this works find for me. I also buy my tools at harbor freight. My scuba gear, I make sure to get reliable stuff. Always trat your life support gear like your life depends on it. 

Rick


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