Just Bought an 800 Watt Harbor Freight Generator

[BrotherBart]

talk about jinx--less than a day after saying I planned to never need it, I had a 6 hour outage with the sump running in my finished basement. Genny worked as required, and no probs turning over the 1/3 hp Zoeller every now and then.

Sounds like good timing to me.

 

[maverick06]

awesome! the purschase justified its self!

I will reiterate my previous comment that for me: as soon as power goes out, if it is raining, I am starting up the generator.

My sump has been dry for the last 3 years, since I moved a downspout. But durring hte hurricane power went out, and the sump was dry, I didnt fire up the generator as it was almost bed time, within 30 min the sump went from bone dry to old faithful, by the time water alarm went off and i got the generator was running I had an inch of water in the basement.

rain - power = generator running

Its cheap protection

 

[woodgeek]

agreed. My pit is often wet, seldom needs to be pumped. I think I pumped the pit maybe a dozen times in 6 hours, burning all my gas on idle--but I wanted it idling in case things got more intense.

I have a battery back up sump system, but I haven't installed it yet. Now I am more motivated--what if I wasn't home? the battery system would've handled this no sweat.

 

[EJL923]

Well i bought one, and it came in already. Ran it for the first time last night and it surged for a while, but smoothed out after 5 minutes or so. I had a 150w halogen hooked up and the light was dimming up and down during that, but was ok after it smoothed out. Hooked it up to the insert blowers, and they ran decent, but not perfect. The speed wasn't as fast as on grid power when turned all the way up, but not bad enough where i thought i was hurting the blowers. They ran better than when i was running them off a modified sine inverter during the 6 day outage. All in all, for $100 bucks it does what i want, gives me heat during an outage. I changed the plug before starting a to a n11YC champion, so i cant tell you how it would have run with the stock bonon f5tc. My next test is the mini fridge.

 

[velvetfoot]

My motors ran smoother the other day. Maybe it's a break-in thing.

 

[BrotherBart]

I left the stock plug in mine and it runs great.

 

[maverick06]

Supposedly they really smooth out by the 20 hour break in.... check the voltage if the blowers dont sound right. If it is low you *can* crank it up.... what you *can* do isnt always what you *should* do.

 

[velvetfoot]

You change the rpm with that adjustment, along with voltage as well as frequency.