Do I need an RV specific generator?

westend wrote:
If I was planning on cooling a 10-16 ft. WELL insulated box van, I'd use an AC with the lowest power draw, a 5K or 6K unit. I have an 8K unit in a tent trailer and it will freeze you out in the summer in the Midwest. I ran it at night for comfortable sleeping and would turn it off during the wee hours. With a lower power draw, you'd be entering the realm of solar power use for that and the money not spent on a generator could be spent on solar, inverter, and batteries.

You think I could get away with solar on a 5K BTU and get away with a 5K BTU in a 16 ft box van? I'm definitely going to insulate (going to try and find something not too thick as I'm working with limited room as it is; if anyone has any ideas).

Solar sounds really nice, but when available, I'm going to be parking in heavily wooded areas.

The only other thing I'm really going to be running is possibly a propane fridge, but I'm not even 100% sure on that. I'll have a laptop, phone, etc... but I'm not concerned about those at all. I have to go into town 4 times a week or so to access high speed wifi for work anyway, so I'll charge up then.



What I'm not liking is...I was assuming that for every hour of AC I would only need to run the generator for about 30-45 minutes, but it is looking like it is common place to just leave the gen running the entire time.

I wonder how bad that would be, if I had a remote start, to turn the gen on and off a couple/few times an hour.



The Honda 2k says it uses about 1/4 gallon an hour under half load. So if the AC is off and gen is running, I wonder if that is still going to be about 1/4 gallon an hour?

Edit. OK, it says that it (Honda 2k) runs 4 - 9.6 hours in a single tank, so I assume that when the AC is running, 1/4 gallon per hour or so, and when AC kicks off, 1/8 per gallon or so. So if AC runs for 30 minutes an hour, that would be 1/5-1/6 a gallon an hour.