Dry Camping Generators

[CampinHunter]

My wife and I bought a 2014 Springdale 282BHSSR for many reasons. Affordability, ability to trail it with a half ton RAM, place to stay while hunting, and trips with our 2 children in the summertime.

We both hunt during the fall/winter. Obviously the place we trail our unit is going to be a place which we have zero hookups. It's quite warm in the mountains of Virginia during October, so we are looking into buying one or two inverter generators to parallel together to provide us AC in the fall and electricity to our unit throughout the hunting season, which will get just below freezing (20 degrees) by January.

We have looked at Honda inverter generators for the low noise factor and solid constant power. Our idea was to buy two Honda 2000 watt generators and parallel them to give us 4000 surge / 3200 constant watts and spend around $2100 to get more than a Honda 3000 would give us for the same price.

Ultimately, I want to get us up and running with everything working except maybe the microwave which I know draws a lot of power. AC, TV, and Lights mainly because everything else can run off the propane. Just want to know if my thinking is correct. Could I run everything we intend to run off of the Honda 3000 or should I go for the extra wattage of 2 2000 units?

[Festus2]

For summer use and being able to use one A/C, TV, lights plus a couple of other smaller draw items, you should be fine with the Honda 3000. In the winter, you should be able to run a small, 1500W space heater, plus those other items you mentioned also using the Honda3000.

Using the microwave at the same time as the A/C or heater with the 3000 should be ok too. You'll just have to experiment for a bit to see what you can have going at the same time before popping a breaker.

When plugged in to a generator, don't forget that the converter will draw a few amps as well as the HW heater if you want to operate that on electricity. As you pointed out, you can run your furnace off the battery, the HW and fridge off propane.

One advantage of having a single generator is it will take up less room and no piggy-back electrical connections/kits to add on.

Pairing the Honda would certainly give you more flexibility in that you could always leave one behind if you can get by with the single 2000w.

Something else to consider (or not) is IF, when hunting, you are pretty much away from others and IF you are concerned about noise, there are other generators available that may not be quite as quiet as the Honda (but still very reasonable dB), that are considerably less money.

[LZScout]

One thing to consider is the weight of the 3000. I'd rather lift two 2000 units (one at a time) than the 3000, especially if I'm hauling it out of the 5ver compartment. Plus I would think that if you need only minimal power, one 2000 would be quieter and use less gas than the 3000.


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[CampinHunter]

Thanks to both of you for responding to my issue. I think we're more leaning towards the 3000. I'm aware that it will take more than one person to get the 3000 out of the truck, however, we never hunt alone, so I'd always have the help. Plus I wouldn't have to deal with buying or hooking up the parallel cables. We should be able to do all we need with one unit, plus it could provide us with power outages at our residence.

[CampinHunter]

Update to my last post. We ultimately went with the 2 Honda EU2000i's. We now have the extra power we needed and we are extremely pleased with the decision to parallel them. LZScout was definitely correct about the weight differences. I'm not a small man at 6'1" 190, but it makes them much easier to handle being that I don't want my wife having to help me lift the 3000is off the truck. Plus we do have the extra 400 running watts of the paired inverter generators. Extremely pleased and impressed with the minimal noise produced by the pair as well. Eco throttle is awesome, pairing the two with the parallel cables was very easy, and I swear by Honda. Thank you guys for the helpful guidance. (tx)

[Bluewater]

Get the Honda EU3000 with the optional remote wireless start. Think of all the possibilities.

[Clanton24v]

Would this be too much? 325KW
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/09/17/rugy4u2e.jpg

[thewhitehat]

Not if you feel compelled to power the whole park! :D

[ktmracer]

My wife and I bought a 2014 Springdale 282BHSSR for many reasons. Affordability, ability to trail it with a half ton RAM, place to stay while hunting, and trips with our 2 children in the summertime.

We both hunt during the fall/winter. Obviously the place we trail our unit is going to be a place which we have zero hookups. It's quite warm in the mountains of Virginia during October, so we are looking into buying one or two inverter generators to parallel together to provide us AC in the fall and electricity to our unit throughout the hunting season, which will get just below freezing (20 degrees) by January.

We have looked at Honda inverter generators for the low noise factor and solid constant power. Our idea was to buy two Honda 2000 watt generators and parallel them to give us 4000 surge / 3200 constant watts and spend around $2100 to get more than a Honda 3000 would give us for the same price.

Ultimately, I want to get us up and running with everything working except maybe the microwave which I know draws a lot of power. AC, TV, and Lights mainly because everything else can run off the propane. Just want to know if my thinking is correct. Could I run everything we intend to run off of the Honda 3000 or should I go for the extra wattage of 2 2000 units?

Go for the two 2000's. That's what we did.
Why?
1) the honda 3000 is HEAVY, a real beast to move around. Yes it is a little quiter, but the weight is a deal breaker for us. (The honda 3000 handy is MUCH noiser than the 2000's or the "real" 3000 BTW)
2) most of the time we need 2000W or less and grabbing a 2000 is easy and works great.
3) It's easy to make or buy an extended run fuel tank for the 2000's. I have a 6 gallon, will run both 2000's all weekend long when we need the AC
4) the capacity is a little more than the 3000, not much,
5) The cost is virtually the same
6) with the 2000's paralleled we can start/run the AC easily and once AC is running the microwave (1200W) or hair dryer etc. Basically with the paralleled 2000's you can pretty much run what you can run from a 30A service. The only caviet is that to start the AC in most cases can't have a microwave or something else with a heavy draw running.

Unless it is real hot and we are at high altitude, I can leave the hondas on eco throttle and it will start the AC easily. Above about 4,000ft on hot days it needs to be "off" eco throttle to start the AC.

IMHO the reason to buy the 3000 is if you want electric start and a few db quiter generator and are willing to move the thing around.

[spicercars]

EU2000 Honda's all the way. Have had two for some time and they work great. Would never buy anything else.

[SAD]

Would this be too much? 325KW
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/13/09/17/rugy4u2e.jpg

Not big enough!

[Jim Dow]

With the two 2000s, you also have the best of both worlds and they are redundant - if necessary.