Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Having moved from being downtown in a big city to being on a lake in a very rural area without many full-time residents, power outages were something that took me a while to get used to. The electric company out here only has a few linemen, and I work from home, so extended outages really became an annoyance. Because of this, I bought this generator with the intention of powering my entire house during an outage. 240v was a must for powering things like my well pump and AC (2 ton Trane), and a pure sine wave inverter generator was necessary due to TVs and laptops not being particularly fond of the dirty power that comes out of most traditional generators. Lastly, I have one of those Tesla Cybertrucks on order, and I’d like to be able to juice it up while camping. Unboxing wasn’t too difficult. The instructions dictate that you cut the box apart, so keep this in mind if you want to return it. Assembly took about an hour and a half and wasn’t particularly difficult, but note that the manual’s pictures show you screwing on several nuts which are actually already welded to the frame – this was confusing. There’s also a small R-pin for attaching the handle that the manual doesn’t mention. Additionally, attaching the negative battery terminal (the positive was already connected) was not that easy because it was hard to access, and I had to undo the battery strap to do it (which was a pain to re-attach the strap). Oiling wasn’t difficult thanks to the included funnel, but putting in the 37.2oz specified in the manual led to dribbling out the filler hole, so you may want to consider adding slightly less so you’re not removing oil like I did. I used 5W-30 Conventional as specified in the manual for cold weather (it’s winter here), but I’ll be switching to full synthetic as allowed in the manual after break-in. I may eventually choose to run 0W-30 as the winters often stay -20°F to 0°F for weeks on end and can drop as cold as -40°F. Powering it up was easy using the electric start but difficult for me (an athletic 30-year-old woman) using the recoil. It sounds much closer to traditional generator than a nice closed-frame inverter gen, but the only option for something like that in this wattage range is the Honda for around $5k, so I can live with the noise. Speaking of noise, I happened to have a decibel meter on hand, so I thought I’d check to see if it really lived up to the claimed spec of 72dBa @ 23 feet. Sadly, IT DIDN’T (except for one instance). Measured at 23 feet (note the tape measure), rounded to nearest whole number: Front Side (side with the outlets): 70dBa – No load, Eco on 77dBa – No load, Eco off 78dBa – 3200w load, Eco on 79dBa – 3200w load, Eco off Muffler Side: 73dBa – No load, Eco on 78dBa – No load, Eco off 77dBa – 3200w load, Eco on 81dBa – 3200w load, Eco off Recoil Side: 73dBa – No load, Eco on 78dBa – No load, Eco off 78dBa – 3200w load, Eco on 79dBa – 3200w load, Eco off Rear Side: 75dBa – No load, Eco on 78dBa – No load, Eco off 80dBa – 3200w load, Eco on 81dBa – 3200w load, Eco off While it never met the advertised 72dBa @ 23ft (except once), I wouldn’t say it was overly loud, either. Inside my house, I could hear that it was running, but it wasn’t bothersome – sounded like a neighbor lawnmowing. Depending on how you look at it, that might be a feature as you’d know if someone was stealing it – a real possibility during an extended outage. Right up next to the generator, it’s obviously much louder – 91dBa on the muffler side standing a couple feet away, 83dBa in front, etc. Overall, I’ll be keeping the generator. I do wish it was fuel injected, but that’s not realistic in this price range. It started well with the electric start, and it wasn’t terribly hard to move with the handle. It’d be nice if the Intelligauge thing showed RPMs, but a girl can dream I guess... I’LL UPDATE THIS REVIEW COME SPRINGTIME when I’ll have a chance to plug it into my house’s power inlet. I’ll be interested in seeing if it can successfully start either my well pump (140ft) or AC (2-ton Trane), and I’ll be able to test both the full starting wattage (8750w) and running wattage (7000w). Additionally, I’ll be able to test fuel consumption. And, several years down the road, I’ll test charging the Tesla, too. UPDATE - 8/21/2020: Time for a bit of an update. Haven't had any extended power outages so far this year, but I have run the house off off it now and again for hours on end to try it out and see how it responds to load. A few observations: -This IS able to start both my 2-ton central AC (without any hard start kit) and my 240v deep well pump, and both ran well. I didn't have to turn off other things to get them to start - it had the power to spare. HOWEVER, I will note that it was NOT able to start my well pump when in ECO Mode. After seeing that it wouldn't start my well pump in Eco Mode, I only tried the AC with Eco Mode off for fear of potentially damaging the compressor motor. Both started easily without any issue when Eco Mode was turned off. The generator does have power to spare, and I was able to run all of my other usual appliances (laptop, dishwasher, toaster, TV, etc) when the AC was running. -It seems a bit louder inside the house than during my initial testing. Perhaps it was the snow that dampened the noise indoors, but now that warmer weather is upon us, I can definitely hear the generator inside my house. It isn't so loud as to be overly annoying, but I do notice it. My house is way over-insulated compared to most houses, so this may be something to consider if you are very sensitive to noise. -I use an Iron Box 8/4 SOOW 100ft extension cord with great results. Many of the 30-amp generator cords out there are 10-gauge, but for 100ft runs, an 8-gauge cable cut down on voltage loss. I get 117v indoors on my outlets when running under load. The 100ft cord allows me to run the generator in my backyard while having it connected to my power inlet in the front yard. If you're looking to use a 100ft cord for the 30a outlet under high load, strongly consider using an 8-gauge cord instead of a typical 10-gauge. -The first oil change was very easy! The drain hose makes it very easy to drain out the old oil, so oil changes are a breeze! -Lastly, I noticed that some of my lights flicker when running off of generator power. All of the lights in my house are the filament-style LED bulbs, and while most run without any flickering, my bathroom lights do have a slight but noticeable flicker when the house is on generator power. I didn't expect this with a pure sine wave inverter generator, so this was...unusual. Other lights, however, didn't have this issue, and I wouldn't expect this to happen with most bulbs. None of my electronics are complaining about dirty power, so this is just a minor annoyance.