Genmax Inverter, 240v 5,500w for 1k on amazon

[BlakeB]

Nice thread.

Just a reminder, for those who have electric water-heaters, if you understand electricity enough to know the way 120 and 240 are wired, you can rig something to run a 240 resistive heating water-heater on 120. The current draw will be 1/2 of what it was on 240. The heat put into the water will be 1/4 of what it was on 240, because then it's 1/2 current X 1/2 Voltage = 1/4 Watts. This drastic reduction of Watts can usually allow a much smaller 120 generator to run a resistive heating 240 water-heater. Of course it will take 4 times longer to heat the water.

Even if your generator can handle it at 240, you might want to rig it for 120 so the water-heater does not dominate the usable capacity of your generator.


If you do not truly understand the differance in 120 and 240 wiring, do not attempt this. But if you still want to do this, in that case get someone who does understand it to rig it up for you in a way that is easy to use.

http://waterheatertimer.org/How-to-wire-water-heater-for-120-Volt.html

 

[BlakeB]

I’m a fan of the “less is more” crowd due to fuel storage. We made it a week on an EU2000, running almost nonstop to power fridges in 2 homes.

I 100% agree and I can get by on a smaller generator for the most part, but sometimes I just need a little more power. My house is 100% electric, no propane or natural gas for a backup. On the 9 day outage we had, my house was down to almost freezing temps by the 4th day or so, we hooked the big generator to the tractor and ran the heat pump to warm the house back up and prevent the pipes from freezing. I wouldn’t wanna run the tractor for an entire outage, but a few hours to get the house warmed back up was invaluable and well worth the fuel burned to accomplish that.

 

[Cujet]

Nice thread.

Just a reminder, for those who have electric water-heaters, if you understand electricity enough to know the way 120 and 240 are wired, you can rig something to run a 240 resistive heating water-heater on 120. The current draw will be 1/2 of what it was on 240. The heat put into the water will be 1/4 of what it was on 240, because then it's 1/2 current X 1/2 Voltage = 1/4 Watts. This drastic reduction of Watts can usually allow a much smaller 120 generator to run a resistive heating 240 water-heater. Of course it will take 4 times longer to heat the water.

Even if your generator can handle it at 240, you might want to rig it for 120 so the water-heater does not dominate the usable capacity of your generator.


If you do not truly understand the difference in 120 and 240 wiring, do not attempt this. But if you still want to do this, in that case get someone who does understand it to rig it up for you in a way that is easy to use.

Interesting suggestion.

With old school electric water heaters, one can also simply purchase a 2000W lower heating element and disable the upper one for 'off grid' days. This has obvious advantages when on modest generator power.

Also, hybrid water heaters can be set to only use the heat pump. Which have a running draw of about 500-600W.

 

[thastinger]

That’s the first enclosed small generator with a 240V outlet that I’ve seen . This would work great for home backup.

My FIL has one of these for his backup gen (he only has a 30A feed) and it fires right up for every optest I do on it. It is battery start and has an L14-30 twist lok connecter.

 

[BlakeB]

Very good points. Using a larger generator to power a whole house swallows up gas QUICK, making it impractical for longer duration outages. At least with that unit (or two) you should be able to power up the essentials. Let us know how you like it.

The Genmax finally showed up on Thursday. Initial impressions are good. I added oil, connected the battery and filled it up with gas, I pushed the start button and it fired up almost instantly. I was surprised at how quiet it is, especially with low idle on. So far I’ve only put 1.4 hours on it, but I’m liking it at this point. I did an oil change today and there was plenty of glitter in it, nothing abnormal for a new engine though. I’m going to do several more fairly short oil changes until I’m satisfied that it’s broken in. The manual says to do an initial oil change at 20 hours and then every 50 hours thereafter, but it also says in the notes below the maintenance chart to change the oil every 25 hours if you use it in high temperatures or often under high loads. I haven’t ran it under any big loads yet, but it handles 1,500-2,000 watts easily and barely comes off idle. I may hook it to the house and run it a while powering just the lights, refrigerator and both deep freezers just to put some hours on it and let it break in under a light but varying load.