If so, have you had good luck with it ? Do u have it hooked up to your
house ? Do u think it is of good quality ?

Thanks.

Several months ago Consumer Reports gave it high ratings in its price
category. You may want to look that up.


--James--

Dave in Lake Villa wrote:
If so, have you had good luck with it ? Do u have it hooked up to
your
house ? Do u think it is of good quality ?

Thanks.

Just because consumer reports rates at as a good buy, does not mean
that it is the one you should buy, first of all you get what you pay
for. just because consumer reports rates as a good buy means that for
the price of the generator and what size it is makes for a good buy,
they do usually try out theses products but thats when they are new,
wait till they get older and sometime on them. usually what i have seen
is when its time to service a good buy generator it cost you more than
you paid for the generator. plus the more you spend, the more reliable
you get, when you loose power and you generator is broken what good is
it, just because you saved a few hundred buck when you bought it does
not make it a relaible generator, so as a thought you might what to
stay away from the department store units cause they usually are cheap
price and quality generator. try to get a honda, kawasaki, yamaha,
good luck with your purchase!

Does it have safe regulated power, Is the motor lawnmower grade , rated
for 300 or so hours or commercial , steel sleeve, pressure oiled for
2000 hours. What do you want it to power, a saw or computer. It sounds
cheap and probably is in price and quality. In generators you do get
what you pay for. Cheap generators can ruin electronic equipment.

Dave in Lake Villa wrote:
If so, have you had good luck with it ? Do u have it hooked up to
your house ? Do u think it is of good quality ?

Thanks.

Build your own. You need:
1. Old, but working, lawnmower.
2. GM alternator.
3. Car battery.
4. Voltage converter (12VDC - 120VAC)
5. Various pullies, belt, bolts.

Plans on the web. Use Google. Here's one:
http://theepicenter.com/tow082099.html

Here's another:
http://www.webpal.org/webpal/b_recov.../generator.htm

I do know a place nearby to get Honda-powered generators, but who sells
Yamaha- or Kawasaki-powered ones? And what about Subaru? Are they any
good? Earlier in the year I saw Subaru-powered generators at Sears, but
now all I see there are B&S-powereed ones.

Perce


On 12/16/04 08:54 am tossed the following
ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

Just because consumer reports rates at as a good buy, does not mean
that it is the one you should buy, first of all you get what you pay
for. just because consumer reports rates as a good buy means that for
the price of the generator and what size it is makes for a good buy,
they do usually try out theses products but thats when they are new,
wait till they get older and sometime on them. usually what i have seen
is when its time to service a good buy generator it cost you more than
you paid for the generator. plus the more you spend, the more reliable
you get, when you loose power and you generator is broken what good is
it, just because you saved a few hundred buck when you bought it does
not make it a relaible generator, so as a thought you might what to
stay away from the department store units cause they usually are cheap
price and quality generator. try to get a honda, kawasaki, yamaha,
good luck with your purchase!

But 300 hours may represent many years of occasional use. If, OTOH,
these cheap motors are not good enough to run for 5 or 6 hours at a time
without crapping out, that's a different story.

Perce


On 12/16/04 09:24 am m Ransley tossed the following ingredients into the
ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

Does it have safe regulated power, Is the motor lawnmower grade , rated
for 300 or so hours or commercial , steel sleeve, pressure oiled for
2000 hours. What do you want it to power, a saw or computer. It sounds
cheap and probably is in price and quality. In generators you do get
what you pay for. Cheap generators can ruin electronic equipment.

But 300 hours may represent many years of occasional use. If, OTOH,
these cheap motors are not good enough to run for 5 or 6 hours at a time
without crapping out, that's a different story.

Perce

The biggest problem with residential generators is the quality of the output
signal. Some electronics, including stuff you'd want to run in a power outage
(range, furnace thermostat) can be fried by dirty AC. Those same generators are
fine for running portable tools and other simple devices.

I so far haven't seen companies advertising any of specs as far as how good the
output is.

GTO(John)

AFAIK, the only way to get good clean power for use with delicate
electronic equipment -- and I wasn't including a thermostat in that
category -- is by using a generator that incorporates an inverter, such
as the Honda EUx000i series; Yamaha makes similar models. Our amateur
radio club used a couple of EU1000i generators for Field Day (operation
in a temporary location with emergency power -- practice for emergency
situations) last June without frying any of our expensive transceivers.

If we do get a generator for emergency use at home, I might settle for
one of the cheaper ones for the furnace, refrigerator, freezer and
lights, and get a small one with "clean" power for the computers, radio,
TV, etc.

We've been in this location for only a year, during which time we lost
power for a few hours when the wind blew down some power lines. One of
the locals told me they lost power only once in 14 years -- but that
outage lasted 3 days.

Perce


On 12/17/04 01:11 pm GTO69RA4 tossed the following ingredients into the
ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

But 300 hours may represent many years of occasional use. If, OTOH,
these cheap motors are not good enough to run for 5 or 6 hours at a time
without crapping out, that's a different story.

The biggest problem with residential generators is the quality of the output
signal. Some electronics, including stuff you'd want to run in a power outage
(range, furnace thermostat) can be fried by dirty AC. Those same generators are
fine for running portable tools and other simple devices.

I so far haven't seen companies advertising any of specs as far as how good the
output is.

Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
AFAIK, the only way to get good clean power for use with delicate
electronic equipment -- and I wasn't including a thermostat in that
category -- is by using a generator that incorporates an inverter, such
as the Honda EUx000i series; Yamaha makes similar models. Our amateur
radio club used a couple of EU1000i generators for Field Day (operation
in a temporary location with emergency power -- practice for emergency
situations) last June without frying any of our expensive transceivers.

Man, I really like that little guy. My Honda EU1000i is one of the
things I look at and think "man, they sure can do amazing things these
days." That something with so much juice can be so fuel-efficient and
quiet is really amazing.

Another option if you need to run delicate electronics is to plug a good
uninterruptible power supply into the generator, then plug your
electronics into the UPS. Most of the higher-end consumer model UPSs
have power conditioning standard. I have one of the console-type APC
models that I'm pleased with.

[...]
--
Bo Williams -
http://hiwaay.net/~williams/