TomG2 wrote:
Recently had a guy pull in beside me who cranked up his 2000 watt Honda ten feet from my wide open front door. It was not "quiet". My Champion locked in the bed of my pickup and waiting for an emergency was silent. One hundred watts of solar and a couple of deep cycle batteries supplied all the energy I needed. One does not have to use a microwave to fry bacon or a 1,500 watt coffee pot to make a cup of coffee. Sometimes "less is more". In this case, less noise (from any generator) is more friendly.
As one who has owned 2 Honda EU2000i gensets and experimented
a lot with each of them to establish just what I could and couldn't do with either I'd have to agree - less is more. :) Conventional wisdom says a 2K will run just about anything in a camper except for A/C ... sounded logical to me but with some changes I found I
was able to run a number of different 13,500 BTU A/C units. Changes included adding an SPP6 hard start cap to the A/C, a new premium grade spark plug and Mobil 1 synth oil in the genset crankcase, premium
non-ethanol gas in the tank, Sea Foam liquid in the gas and Sea Foam spray shot directly into the carb throat. In one case I also rewired my trailer thermostat so I could start the A/C compressor only, then once it had ramped up to speed manually switch on the A/C fan. This bag of tricks worked pretty well UNTIL ambient temps started to rise beyond the mid-80s F and into the 90s, then the genset more often would fall on it's face ... arrghh, just when I'd most likely want to be using A/C! This was also mostly near sea level elevation ... go up and the chances of successfully starting the A/C became even more dubious. During this process I also realized that the only way the camper was going to stay cool on a hot summer day was if the A/C, and therefore the genset, ran continuously. My thought that I could run it for just awhile, cool down the trailer, then turn the A/C & genset off, and the camper would remain cool just didn't pan out at all. :( Well, no way do I want to be running a genset all day, which in turn meant that that justification for owning a genset became pointless. As time went on I also discovered it was such a PITA to drag a 50+ lb genset along on every trip when I rarely used it ... and the one time I
could have used it when we lost campground power for 36 hrs my genset was sitting back in my workshop. :S
I've since sold both gensets and just load support the trailer with my truck in the few cases each year I may find it necessary. Would I ever buy another genset? - maybe, if I found a used EU1000i with low hours, as I'd be a lot more inclined to toss a 30 lb genset into the back of the truck than a 50+ lb one, especially if I expect to only use it in case of emergency. Yep, a 1K wouldn't be as quick to recharge a depleted battery as a 2K but
some charge is better than nothing ... that's about the only reason I can think of for owning one of these noise makers. :W
For those who just gotta have A/C and are willing to put up with running a genset all day in order to do so I'd echo the recommendation to not go with a larger genset or dual 2Ks but to instead invest in one 2K of your choice and add a soft starter kit to the A/C that
will allow that 2K to successfully start the A/C's compressor. :)
