kyle86 wrote:
Generally I just want to run it for 3-4 hours per day to recharge the battery bank. I would be curtious with the neighbors but surely they will have to realize not everybody can have a big dollar solar setup. I'm not talking about runing the genn all day long in a quiet campground, that would just kill the gasoline. If I needed AC all day I would just plug into a shore at a campground.
3 pages of discussion and now you seem have changed your tune considerably from what you said in your original post -
"The gen will be used mostly for recharging the batterys and running the microwave so the small one would work better for that and I could fit it in my truck tool box which is a deep low pro. The disadvantage would be we couldn't run the A/C if dry camping in a hot parking lot while traveling or in the desert."And therein lies the rub -
powering A/C. Forget that and a 1600 / 2000 watt genset will suffice nicely. If the cost of a relatively quiet Yamaha or Honda inverter genset is just too much a less costly
2K Champion Inverter Genset would do the trick
provided you forget about A/C. Consider this - most 120 vac power requirements are only periodic whereas A/C is constant so you have to ask yourself - even if you did have a genset suitable in size to run A/C would you
really want to run it hour after hour, even days on end, feeding it fuel constantly, just so you can cool off a bit? Having been through this routine myself with two different gensets my conclusion, after considering all the downsides, is a resounding NO ... amazing that generations before us somehow managed to survive without A/C of any kind, now suddenly we can't even camp without it? :R
