Westinghouse Parallel Capable Digital Inverter Gener Price: $519.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days. (Wednesday, Jan 13 to Monday, Jan 18) + transit Condition: New
We bought a Woot Westinghouse 42" TV 3 years ago and it’s terrific. We love it! Does that mean that this would be a great generator? This is $500 bucks less than a Honda. Honda’s aren’t perfect either.
[QUOTE=iguana71, post:6, topic:525819]
If the electronics in this thing are anything like those in their TV’s with regard to reliability, all I can say is stay away.
[/quote]
When I read USB ports I could only think of my neighbor.
They’d buy this just to run it and keep their phones charged during a power outage… such phone addicts.
BTW, I have a Hondo EU3000is hooked up via cutover to power my entire house. I just don’t run big items like ovens, table saw, vacuum on it (duh). Natural gas forced air, water, stove.
Everything else isn’t a prob. Have had multiple power outtages…no issues, no electronics gone out.
Get a Honda and you won’t be sorry.
MY $.02
But…with that said, this might be a nice gen also!
I have a troybilt 8kw for the house. It’s portable (aka, it’s on wheels) and I have a switchover hookup in @ the garage door with a 10ft cable to get the genset away from the house. Fuse box is on the other side of the house so the electricians had to run a few feet of cable LOL. It powers 10 circuits. The main things it DOES NOT POWER is the dual oven in the kitchen, oven in the basement and I also didn’t have it hooked up to the AC unit (got a 5ton unit so needed a 11 or 12kw for that. Everything else that’s important, like the sump pump, 3 fridges, furnace, hotwater heater blower, all the basement is powered, office and garage. And outlets through out the house (which I’ve tagged so we know whats hot and whats not during genset use. I picked up a Harbor Freight unit a while back for 400.00 bucks. It’s my backup for the fridges and sump if something happens to the primary generator. It’s not light but does a great job. Starting takes some pulling but it fires up after 3 or 4 pulls.
Home Depot offers the Lifan Energy Storm 2,000-watt 4-Stroke 125cc Gas-Powered Inverter Generator, model no. ESI2000i-CA, for $499 with free shipping. (Amazon offers it for the same price.) That’s the lowest total price we could find by $170. It features 2,000-watt running power (2,200-watt peak power), a 1.85-gallon fuel tank, and 120-volt and 12-volt receptacles.
Has anyone bought and used a generator sound enclosure that you can recommend? These generators, even the “quiet” ones, are just horribly loud running in a neighborhood when the power is out.
I have seen DIY jobs, but I would prefer a ready-made product.
I don’t know why generator manufacturers don’t come up with a super-quiet residential generator; seems like the world would beat a path to your door. My father had a massive propane-powered whole house system for medical equipment reasons, and even it was loud! Why? The Prius in the driveway is virtually silent.
Westinghouse’s “WH” generator line is absolutely fantastic.
Read the 5-star reviews they are legion. And no, they aren’t Honda’s, but their larger units are 1/4th the price with stellar warranties to boot. Most never need them though.
I’m a Honda, Yamaha and Toyota guy (family), but some of the alternatives deserve a look for the price.
I bought one of these and it worked fine to power my refrig/freezer, TV, DVR, internet router and laptop during an 8-hour planned outage to replace the power panel at my home for a solar installation. It’s not quite as quiet as a Honda (by only a few Db), but otherwise very equivalent. DO NOT fill the oil tank with the full 400ml of oil it calls for in the manual, however. Leave the last few tablespoons of oil in the bottle provided, as the low oil level switch will not allow it to run, since it also shuts it down from an overfill. I spent a frustrating few hours trying to get it to start for the first time after following the manual instructions to the letter. Finally, I called their support number (which was very responsive) and they told me to dump a couple tablespoons of oil out of the tank and it started right up and performed flawlessly. Why the manual says to put in 400ml when what it really wants is about 375ml is beyond me…
