DaveInVA wrote:
Has anyone replaced their Onan with a Honda or other brand? Can they operate within the compartment? Or do they require to be operated in an open space?
Any running generator obviously generates not only power but also heat and that heat has to have a way of being vented away from the genset, the most obvious being open air. Any time any genset is
not situated in open air those hot exhaust gases and hot engine cooling air
must be vented away from the genset. The various models of inverter gensets such as those from Honda and Yamaha utilize a clever design concept in which a plastic case not only helps dampen noise but also routes incoming cooling air past the engine while also keeping hot exhaust gases & hot engine cooling air entirely separate from that incoming cooling air. If one's intent is to enclose the genset in some sort of compartment then it's mandatory that placement not interfere with this ability of the genset case to route air / gases as designed. I built my own DIY EU2000i quiet box built on this exact concept and it does work, as illustrated in
this series of pics & videos. Whether the intended enclosure is a separate container or part of an RV the same principles apply ... ignore them and it's a certainly your genset will suffer a premature death. If I were intending to enclose a genset with this type of design in an RV compartment I'd not only install a fan to draw in cooling intake air (as I did with my own DIY quiet box) but I'd also seriously consider modifying the genset's exhaust manifold with one from
Generator-Line which will assure that hot exhaust gases & hot cooling air will remain totally separate from incoming cooling air and can be efficiently exhausted away from the genset enclosure.
