Projects

Tips

Campgrounds

Articles

Our Equipment

Lookable Links

Other Interests

Buying A Generator

We have been wanting to visit the Great Smoky Mountains and stay in one of the campground parks. Our dilemna was that none of the campgrounds in the park had electrical hook-ups (no water hook-up either). We had a contractor's-type generator that was more than adequate to provide power for our RV, but it is too loud. If you own one of these types then you know what mean. You literally can't have a conversation without yelling if you're within ten feet of the thing. Of course this is unacceptable at the parks.

After a bit of research and it seemed that a generator from Honda was my best bet to get power without a lot of noise. I bought the EU2000i model. This is a quiet inverter type that provides up to 2000 watts. That's just enough power to run our air conditioner if needed in a pinch (can't run much else while A/C is on). Along with it, I bought the Honda DC charging cables so that we can quickly recharge our RV batteries.

Once I received the generator I had to start it. I first filled it with the recommended oil. It took a few cranks to get it started the first time. I guess it had to get gas in the lines. After that, one pull to start was all that it takes. I'm sure when it has sat for awhile it will require a few pulls to start it again. No matter though, it's so easy and smooth, a small child could do it. Once running it was so quiet. There was no need to yell in order to have a conversation. My wife and could speak in normal tone.

We took it to the Smokies and used it each morning and afternoon to charge the batteries or use the microwave. I couldn't believe how quiet it was. Everybody else had the noisy contractor generators. I could run ours well past generator hours without anyone even knowing, but I didn't. Running the generator for about 5 hours each day seemed to top-off the batteries. I only refilled it once. So for a gallon and a half of gas we got 4 nights of electricity.