colliehauler
Mc Pherson KS USA
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Joined: 01/27/2004
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I ended up buying one for the house in case of an ice storm. Tractor supply has a 4 day sale for 299. with a 50. dollar rebate. I have built in Onan in the RV but its at a storage lot an would be a bear to get home in a ice storm. I thought it was a cheap price for a 3500 watt generator.
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weathershak
Delaware
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Joined: 12/11/2006
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$$ well spent for piece of mind. Its a great genny.
Don't like the view?? Then change it and Go Camping    Our pics
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old guy
Oregon (pronounced Or e gun)
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Joined: 03/15/2006
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well, this might rain on your parade, but I read the other day about someone who was talking to a repair man who spent a lot of time doing house calls after a black out replacing refrigerator parts of people who used gen sets to run there frig's during the power outages. something to do with a non clean sine waves of the gen set. On saying this, I used a small Honda for years to run my frig during black outs here. I did not have any problems with mine, this Honda is an old one built before the Honda 2000ui's.
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bill h
coastal reconquista
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Joined: 08/02/2001
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old guy wrote:well, this might rain on your parade, but I read the other day about someone who was talking to a repair man who spent a lot of time doing house calls after a black out replacing refrigerator parts of people who used gen sets to run there frig's during the power outages. something to do with a non clean sine waves of the gen set.
It would be interesting to track this down and get more information. Such as what type of generator did the damage, for example. And which fridges (if any) were most susceptible to damage.
Like you, we use an older (noisier) Honda at home for outages. We share its output with a neighbor, so they don't think the noise is too bad.
84 Barth 30 tag powered by ht502/Thorley, Gear Vendors OD
Siamese Calvin and Airedale Hobbes
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btd35
Spokane, WA
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Joined: 03/24/2005
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I to am tempted to do the same. I worry about ice storms here. The last one was in 1996, and caused the power out for over a week. That is not good! With a gen set, I could wake up the fifthwheel and move in there for the duration. I just worry about pipes freezing in the house. We have no fireplace, and electric heat pump heat. Very reasonable, power bill only $165.00 a month for 2100 square feet when it's -10 outside in January, but, if no power,...
What to do, what to do.
Tom & Beth
05,Grand Junction 35TMS
99, Dodge 3500 Dually.
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Matthew_B
The boonies near Dallas, Oregon
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Joined: 08/18/2005
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old guy wrote:well, this might rain on your parade, but I read the other day about someone who was talking to a repair man who spent a lot of time doing house calls after a black out replacing refrigerator parts of people who used gen sets to run there frig's during the power outages. something to do with a non clean sine waves of the gen set.
The generators that can cause problems are the cheap ones with brushless exciters. They have a wound coil on the rotor with a diode. On the stator at 90° to the power winding they have a winding with a cap across from it. The cap forms a resonant circuit with the rotor and builds up current in the coil. These generators have considerable 3rd harmonic distortion due to the current decaying and building back up every rotation. They have even more distortion because they use magnetic saturation to regulate the voltage. These units are a bit obvious to notice because the generator gets pretty hot even with no load.
Brushed generators or generators that use a separate exciter on the shaft don't have this problem.
Champion units use a brushed exciter. Ironic that a Chinese company making a "cheap" unit isn't as cheap as some units made by American companies.
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McIrish
WC IL
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Joined: 09/19/2007
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We have the 3500 watt Champion generator and used it several times last winter. It ran our furnace, fridge, deep freeze, microwave, tv and a few lights with no problems at all. We didn't run all of these appliances at the same time, however.
2008 Silverado Z71 crew cab
2009 Sunset Creek 267RL
Equal-i-zer
Champion
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