If you can stand one more generator thread.
After the last round of power outages here in the North East I re-evaluated my power generation needs.
I have a 7550 watt Troy-bilt that powers the whole house nicely but I wouldn’t want to run it 8 hours over night just to power the furnace. That would use up about 6 gallons of gas. (6x$3.70= $21.10!!)
But on the other hand I don’t want the house to go cold in between times if this happens in the dead of winter. The last couple of times we were lucky, it wasn't that cold.
I picked up a Champion 2000 watt Inverter Generator from a fellow that bought it just before his power came back on. Only ran one tank of gas though it, and had all of the paperwork, receipts and warranty cards for it. He paid $700 plus tax and I got it for $400.
Anyway I played with it a little then changed out the oil with a synthetic blend and put it to the test.
I wanted to see how it would perform running my TARM Excel 2000 and associated pumps. I can isolate the TARM from everything else so I plugged it in, built a fire and let it run.
So I added a gallon of gas and I fired it up at 8:00 this morning and set it to “economy†mode. After a while the house stopped calling for heat so I added a 250 watt heat lamp to simulate the load from the circulating pumps (they draw about 70 watts each).
Kept it running for the next 6-7 hours charging the tank. After 10 hours it finally ran out of gas!! I have to say I’m impressed.
According to my Kill-o-watt meter it’s putting out 123 volts at 400 watts and dropped to 118 volts when I added another 1000 watts of lighting to it. Frequency is steady at 59.9 Hz. I didn't have any weird buzzing from the furnace like I did with the little 2 cycle unit that I have.
It appears to be well made and is very quite. I have to open a window to see if its still running, and I can barely hear it from the street.
I haven’t maxed it out yet, mostly I wanted it for the furnace and a few lights. In the summer it would be the fridge, still no problem. According to the website its a True Sine Wave.
After the last round of power outages here in the North East I re-evaluated my power generation needs.
I have a 7550 watt Troy-bilt that powers the whole house nicely but I wouldn’t want to run it 8 hours over night just to power the furnace. That would use up about 6 gallons of gas. (6x$3.70= $21.10!!)
But on the other hand I don’t want the house to go cold in between times if this happens in the dead of winter. The last couple of times we were lucky, it wasn't that cold.
I picked up a Champion 2000 watt Inverter Generator from a fellow that bought it just before his power came back on. Only ran one tank of gas though it, and had all of the paperwork, receipts and warranty cards for it. He paid $700 plus tax and I got it for $400.
Anyway I played with it a little then changed out the oil with a synthetic blend and put it to the test.
I wanted to see how it would perform running my TARM Excel 2000 and associated pumps. I can isolate the TARM from everything else so I plugged it in, built a fire and let it run.
So I added a gallon of gas and I fired it up at 8:00 this morning and set it to “economy†mode. After a while the house stopped calling for heat so I added a 250 watt heat lamp to simulate the load from the circulating pumps (they draw about 70 watts each).
Kept it running for the next 6-7 hours charging the tank. After 10 hours it finally ran out of gas!! I have to say I’m impressed.
According to my Kill-o-watt meter it’s putting out 123 volts at 400 watts and dropped to 118 volts when I added another 1000 watts of lighting to it. Frequency is steady at 59.9 Hz. I didn't have any weird buzzing from the furnace like I did with the little 2 cycle unit that I have.
It appears to be well made and is very quite. I have to open a window to see if its still running, and I can barely hear it from the street.
I haven’t maxed it out yet, mostly I wanted it for the furnace and a few lights. In the summer it would be the fridge, still no problem. According to the website its a True Sine Wave.