Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It's October 1st, 2022. Hurricane Ian tore through Florida three days ago. Our whole town is without power. The streets are dark. The houses around us are dark. Except ours. It's lit up like a Christmas tree. Every light on. My son is playing on the PS4. My wife has the oven set to 450 degrees and is cooking a pizza for my daughter. I'm watching a movie. And the AC is holding steady at 72 degrees. It may be October, but it's Florida, so its still hot and humid outside. However inside the himidity is now at a comfortable 45%. To achieve this, we purchased a Duromax 12000eh generator. Does it work? Absolutely. You can use gas or propane, but use gas. The 20lb propane tank couldn't keep the AC on. Pay the $200 or so it costs to have an electrician add the transfer switch to your house. And then purchase the expensive cable that let's you run from the generator to your power box. Without it, you won't be powering your whole house, and you might as well have settled for a cheaper generator. The gas tank holds around 8.5 gallons. On a full tank, running the AC at 72 degrees F overnight in a 3000 sqft house we are at 12 hours and counting. Meaning you'll get a full night's rest and still have time to make a full breakfast before you need to get up and add more fuel. Oil should be checked when you refuel. It took 1.5 bottles of 10w30 at the start. Three days now and I've only added about a 1/4 cup and even that was likely unnecessary. Have a few extra bottles on hand and you'll be fine. Noise level is totally acceptable considering you're powering the whole house. I can hear it, but to be fair I can hear the other generators running on our street and they're just keeping people's fridges running. Things I didn't think of but wish I had: Get a generator tent. They sell them on Amazon. It will let you run the generator safely when it's somewhat rainy. I didn't buy one, so had to create a makeshift one using plastic tarps and folding chairs. It want pretty but it let us get power once the major wind had subsided and it was just drizzling for a few hours. Read the directions. Watch all the YouTube videos. Don't run this uncovered in the rain. Don't run it indoors or in your garage unless you want to win a Darwin award. A few notes. The orange shipping brackets are red. When you set the generator up for the first time, it says to remove these. I didn't see any orange brackets. Yeah. They're red. Remove any orange or red metal bars on the bottom of the unit. They're bolted on. If you want to run on propane you need to buy a separate cable. I did. But now knowing that propane can't handle the AC, I can say it was a waste. Stick to gas, even though the manual says it's cleaner to use liquid propane. There's a gas gauge on the generator so you know when you're running out. You don't get that with propane. And a spare 5 gallon container of gas is going to get you 8 to 10 hours of run time and costs about the same as liquid propane. But it's far easier to find and refill a gas can. We have 6 gas cans holding 5 gallons each (30 gallons total) and that's enough to run 3 days. Enough time for utility crews to come through, remove debris and secure downed power lines. We couldn't travel for at least a day due to fallen trees and power lines, so having the 30 gallons of gas meant we were in good shape. Be smart about what you run. Yes, I can power the whole house. I can turn all the lights on. I can have the hot water heater going, the well pump, pool pump running, etc. But everything you turn on makes your fuel burn faster, so if you don't need the hot water heater, turn it off. Pro tip. We turned ours off and still had warm/hot water in the shower 2 days later. So I plan to run the hot water heater every 3rd day. This is basically a whole home generator. Only thing it's missing is the ability to automatically switch on when the main power goes off. But this costs 1/10th the price and is portable, so you can use it camping, etc. To buy or not to buy? BUY. Absolutely. You pay about $600 more than you would for a generator that can only power your refrigerator. And you can go back to living a normal lifestyle. I'm off to make another espresso. Cheers!