Has anyone bought a TroyBilt Portable Generator from Lowes ?

[Dave in Lake Villa]

If so, have you had good luck with it ? Do u have it hooked up to your house ? Do u think it is of good quality ?

Thanks.

[James Nipper]

Several months ago Consumer Reports gave it high ratings in its price category. You may want to look that up.

--James--

[mowermanbp]

Just because consumer reports rates at as a good buy, does not mean that it is the one you should buy, first of all you get what you pay for. just because consumer reports rates as a good buy means that for the price of the generator and what size it is makes for a good buy, they do usually try out theses products but thats when they are new, wait till they get older and sometime on them. usually what i have seen is when its time to service a good buy generator it cost you more than you paid for the generator. plus the more you spend, the more reliable you get, when you loose power and you generator is broken what good is it, just because you saved a few hundred buck when you bought it does not make it a relaible generator, so as a thought you might what to stay away from the department store units cause they usually are cheap price and quality generator. try to get a honda, kawasaki, yamaha, good luck with your purchase!

[m Ransley]

Does it have safe regulated power, Is the motor lawnmower grade , rated for 300 or so hours or commercial , steel sleeve, pressure oiled for

2000 hours. What do you want it to power, a saw or computer. It sounds cheap and probably is in price and quality. In generators you do get what you pay for. Cheap generators can ruin electronic equipment.

[JerryMouse]

Build your own. You need:

1. Old, but working, lawnmower.
2. GM alternator.
3. Car battery.
4. Voltage converter (12VDC -> 120VAC)
5. Various pullies, belt, bolts.

Plans on the web. Use Google. Here's one:

Here's another:

[Percival P. Cassidy]

I do know a place nearby to get Honda-powered generators, but who sells Yamaha- or Kawasaki-powered ones? And what about Subaru? Are they any good? Earlier in the year I saw Subaru-powered generators at Sears, but now all I see there are B&S-powereed ones.

Perce

On 12/16/04 08:54 am [e-mail] tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

[Percival P. Cassidy]

But 300 hours may represent many years of occasional use. If, OTOH, these cheap motors are not good enough to run for 5 or 6 hours at a time without crapping out, that's a different story.

Perce

On 12/16/04 09:24 am m Ransley tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

[GTO69RA4]

The biggest problem with residential generators is the quality of the output signal. Some electronics, including stuff you'd want to run in a power outage (range, furnace thermostat) can be fried by dirty AC. Those same generators are fine for running portable tools and other simple devices.

I so far haven't seen companies advertising any of specs as far as how good the output is.

GTO(John)

[Percival P. Cassidy]

AFAIK, the only way to get good clean power for use with delicate electronic equipment -- and I wasn't including a thermostat in that category -- is by using a generator that incorporates an inverter, such as the Honda EUx000i series; Yamaha makes similar models. Our amateur radio club used a couple of EU1000i generators for Field Day (operation in a temporary location with emergency power -- practice for emergency situations) last June without frying any of our expensive transceivers.

If we do get a generator for emergency use at home, I might settle for one of the cheaper ones for the furnace, refrigerator, freezer and lights, and get a small one with "clean" power for the computers, radio, TV, etc.

We've been in this location for only a year, during which time we lost power for a few hours when the wind blew down some power lines. One of the locals told me they lost power only once in 14 years -- but that outage lasted 3 days.

Perce

On 12/17/04 01:11 pm GTO69RA4 tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

[Bo Williams]

Man, I really like that little guy. My Honda EU1000i is one of the things I look at and think "man, they sure can do amazing things these days." That something with so much juice can be so fuel-efficient and quiet is really amazing.

Another option if you need to run delicate electronics is to plug a good uninterruptible power supply into the generator, then plug your electronics into the UPS. Most of the higher-end consumer model UPSs have power conditioning standard. I have one of the console-type APC models that I'm pleased with.

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