husband on the loose at home depot!!

[tesa]

so i'm standin' in line at the lumber yard, talkin' to a man about wood (haha)

when my phone rings

i'm in the middle of a conversation, so i don't answer it

three seconds later, it rings again

i'm still talking here!!!

how rude!

LOL

then it rings again

i say "i'm sorry, excuse me, this must be important"

sure enough, its daniel looking at a 15000 watt guardian generator for 1300 bucks

he said he was so shocked he actually forgot why he was really in home depot (he goes
there alot for his work, and actually knows more than some of their payed employees)

so i'm standing there, trying to talk my husband out of spending 1300 dollars on a generator
that would power three RV's

i can all but smell the "man" across the phone

he's almost begging for gods sake

LOL

i spent the next 1/2 hour prayin' "god, please don't let him by a power company today"

LOL

he didn't, but came damn close

phew, i thought i was gonna be the proud owner of "silva (thats our last name) light and power, inc."

LOL

tesa

[peternap]

Can't have too many generators or too much power!

[John_C]

I asked an expert.

says, "Shoulda bought it."

[MountainDon]

15K is a big generator. It would run the whole house. Is that what you need or want to do?

[tesa]

15k is too much

its just the price was so good, he said "heck, why not"

whici i understand, but its really too much

i think he's thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 6k-8k watts will meet our needs

our budget couldn't really take 1300 bucks right now, i know its an expense we have to get, and soon, but not
this very day

i'd really like to wait for our irs refund to do that

i just thought the whole thing was funny, the sound of his voice, it was too sweet

and i felt badly about tellin' him "babe, i don't think we need that right now, but if you want it, than
you go get it my love"

but inside, i was sweating bullets, and thinking, ok, what checks are still out, how much is in savings

LOL

tesa

[MountainDon]

I don't think it pays to buy that much oversize as the bigger engine will use more fuel even if not working at full capacity. On the other a Kw or two bigger than expected use can make the genset work a little less hard and last longer.

[diyfrank]

My wife says buy it. 

[Redoverfarm]

If I had been there I would have went in debt.  Since I am on grid at the house and power outages are frequent I could have put it to good use.  As a standby that size for a house and the limited amount of use would not be that expensive.  Particulary with the weather we have had in the past and present.

[tesa]

very interesting update

i'm sleeping like a baby after he leaves this morning, and the phone rings

DANG IT

its daniel

he says, "guess what"

tell me

the guys at home depot say they have another guardian 8K watts 800 bucks

now thats more like it!

we are the proud owner of our very own generator

funny thing, i had a dream last night we couldn't find one in the whole town, and he was fussing as me
"i told you we should have bought that big one" 

so i wake him up at like 3am, tellin' him, i'm so sorry, what if we can't find another generator??

he says "silly woman, go back to sleep"

tesa

[Mike 870]

Is it a variable speed?  If so then it's ok that its 15K.

[Redoverfarm]

Good buy.  It must be a individual store incentive as in my area they are on-line at $1989 for a 8,000 guardian.

[brian_nj]

If you are going to run a generator a lot may I suggest you seriously consider one of the inverter based units. We own a total of 9 generators running between 1000 watts and 30kw and the one we find we use the most is our honda EU3000, while it is more money the quiet is well worth it. It runs at 58 Db versus a normal construction generators 72 to 80 db. This does not seem like much but when you take into acount that every 3db increase is a doubling of the noise level perceived by humans that is a lot of noise difference.

If your plan is to live in the camper for a month or just on weekends it might not be worth it, but if you are going to live there full time I beleive it will make a lot of differance to you over the long haul. Also since it adjusts to the load it is also more efficient to run as a lot of the time the only thing you are powering in a house is a couple of lights so it reduces its speed/output, where as a construction generator only has one speed and that is wide open.

A side benefit is it is electric start which allows you to use the charge controller from a solar electric system to kick on the generator if the batteries drop below a preset voltage level helping increase the life of the batteries by not discharging them below the 80% level. At 1/2 load it will run aprox 7 hrs on 3.4 gallons of fuel compared to my honda 3800 standard construction generator that gets about 10 hrs on 6.5 gallons. Just some things to consider.

Brian

[MountainDon]

I too am a big fan of the inverter technology based units. I wish they were made in larger capacities as that would add to their versatility. Honda does sell accessory cable sets that allow the paralleling of two units though. You can not do this with most units as they will not be sync'd and would destroy each other.

For those who are not aware of the difference between a standard generator and an inverter type it comes down to this. Regular generators run at 3600 RPM's all the time. The governor opens the throttle more as the load increases. With no load an inverter generator idles or runs at a slow speed. As load is imposed it throttles up. The engine is driving a DC power producing alternator (similar to your car). There is an inverter built in that changes the DC to AC. The engine only runs as fast as is needed. As Brian pointed out there can be significant fuel savings. When I run mine to charge batteries via the Iota charger I can tell when the batteries are getting full by noting how hard/fast the generator is running.

[tesa]

i'm learning new things every day

daniel says "yes" its an inverter based type unit

and on another note, several weeks ago, i had mentioned to him it might be a good idea
to get a home dept card.

we haven't had any credit cards since we were married, and i'm proud we don't have that
type of dept

well, today, on a whim, he applied, and was approved, which gave us the 10% off bonus, so
we actually payed something like $739, 6 months interest free

now since i was prepared to pay cash for the thing today, i'll be sure to pay that off
in less than 6 months, so that 10% off doesn't get eaten up by the ugly interest rate
they gave us

i still think its a good idea to have that card, as ya never know what we might need
and we'll be glad we have that

i think

tesa

[MountainDon]

If the current deal on their card is the same as when we used it for a couple of big purchases, there is no interest charged during the six months. Pay off the entire balance a few days before the six months and you're home free.`` Miss it and the entire 6 months worth of interest gets applied to the account. We paid it off the week before and filed the receipt. It would be a better deal if the bank paid better interest than they do.