I see there is an 850w (peak), 650w continuous generator in Aldi. There was a web site listed on the side of the box and I scribbled it down but I've lost the piece of paper. Does anyone know who makes the Powercraft tools for Aldi?
Has anyone used this generator? What are your opinions? Is it worth having or is it better to buy a bigger, more expensive, four stroke model? How clean is the output: is it pure sine wave? Will all electronics be happy running from it? Is it noisy?
Didn't choose it, didn't buy it, avoid using the thing, but yes, I've got one.
It's better than not having one. OTOH, I can pick up far better Honda
4 strokes S/H from farm auctions for a pittance, and they're bigger, quieter, dead easy to service (buy a whole new GX120 at the next farm auction!) and I suspect use less fuel too.
Same as nearly all motor gensets, it's pretty clean. Depends a bit on the exciter (I believe there's some modern funniness), but they're all "clean" in comparison to battery inverter output. For one thing, all that ironmongery is a decent enough HF noise filter.
It's a bog-standard cheap Chinese two-stroke. They are available in multiple colours with various stickers on them, but always the same hardware. I've got one, it's useful, I can run a computer and printer on it.
It's best used at between 10 and 50% of the power quoted (ie 65W to
325W, the 850W is a joke). Even so the 230V sockets are of poor quality and I ended up replacing the 13A socket fitted to the generator with a decent quality socket.
not got an aldi one, but bought one in germany a few years back when my motorhome batteries died, cost me 80 euro's, but you can get em from B&Q for £50, or makro for 30 quid when they have em on sale (plus vat of course)
they are all the same internaly, 50cc 2 stroke engine, small genny head, it's all one casting, so when the engine dies, you chuck it away, the output is 'regulated' by a simple capacitor and of course the governer that keeps it at the right speed, but that's all thats really needed,
as it's a alternator being spun at 3600 rpm or thereabouts, it's a pure sine wave output, the only danger is when you first start it up and it's on choke, and it runs out of fuel, then the engine speed will be varying, so the output frequency will be varying too,
the 650 watt output is for a resistive load (tugsten/halogen light bulb, simple heater etc) for motors the output is pretty low, think 350 watts has been mentioned,
they are surprisingly quiet, think mine says 96DBA, but no way is it that loud, it's not quite honda eu quiet, but it's not open frame contractors generator loud either,
it sips fuel, mine runs for 6 to 8 hours on a tank of petroil... 4.5 litres, and 80ml of 2 stroke oil, when i use mine it's running a 20 amp battery charger mainly, and the laptop charger and my vinyl cutter, i have inadvertantly had it powering the 1kw imersion heater element in the calorifier, it bogged the engine down a little, but kept on running it along with the battery charger which is what i put it on to run, voltage would have been sagging quite a lot, but the charger will run on 90 to 280 volts, and a frequancy from 30 to 400hz, and the imersion heater element couldent care less what it gets fed,
Apparantly the 4 stroke versions of this genny are noisier, and use the same ammount of fuel as they have an engine twice the size, but about the same output,
the only thing the little 2 stroke gennies dont like is being lightly loaded, they 4 stroke... i.e. missing every other firing stroke... that does make them sound louder, when they have a load on them they purr along... well sort of, but that's due to the cheapo carb that has to be set so it dosent lean out at full load, and hence is a bit rich at low load,
If those small 2-stroke gennies really are "all the same", it will probably run a 2kg-class SDS drill, a 500W conventional electric drill or a 4.5in angle grinder quite comfortably. At least, ours does and I've no reason to suppose it's anything special.
It also runs the OFCH (fan, pump and controller), a small fridge or a separate freezer - only one at a time because of the startup loads, but none of them needs to run continuously. More recently we replaced the separates with a larger fridge-freezer which really makes the genny grunt on startup; in our case the generator still wins out, but YMMV.
All in all, the "800W" genny has proved a very cost-effective way to get through the occasional power cut, and the good performance with power tools was an unexpected bonus.
It has now joined that annoying class of cheap and cheerful tools that stubbornly refuse to stop working, so I can't justify buying something better.
I'm sure only inverters have square wave outputs but I don't know whether some generators have more noise than others or less stable frequencies than others?
So when the other poster mentioned 350W it's all to do with power factor? So it might not be as useful as the figures first suggest?
Why do the bigger engines have the same output? Are they less efficient?
That's interesting, the other post suggested they liked being run lightly, but perhaps that was to do with the power factor as you have already mentioned?
Why should running with little load cause them to misfire?
Some other internet post suggested these were unreliable. They also seem to be disposable because few spares are available. I expect that is because labour charges to service the generator would cost more than a new generator.
Another post suggested that if they blew, they had to be thrown away.
How long have you had yours?
I only expect to use it, like you, for central heating in a power cut. Though I don't know whether it would be too noisy and upset the neighbours at night?
Hopefully we won't have many power cuts to find out though.
I bought one for odd jobs on the farm and it has become indispensable. It supplies all the lights in the barn during harvest for example and runs all night on one tank of fuel. I have a four stroke open frame generator but use it only when I really, really need to power 2KW plus.
The four strokes are a bit of pain because they actually require servicing. Two strokes just run and run.
Visit your local hire shop, where plant is used & abused on a daily basis by hirers who neither know nor care about looking after it. Its rare to find a petrol genny or indeed anything else that doesn't have a Honda engine.
Err no, you misunderstood it. My post suggested that you need to run them at at least 10% load and that you can't count on them to deliver more than half the rated output at maximum load. IIRC the manual that came with the generator suggested a minimum 100W load, but I find that they are happy at 60W, powering a single lightbulb.
yup, only differance seems to be if you get one with a 12 volt charging outlet or not, that's rated at about 8 amps, and is only for charging, as without a battery on it the voltage will be anything upto 18 volts, some people hoped to run a 12 volt light directly off the charging output, and found it blew the bulb.
at the end of the day it's a cheaply made disposable generator, you will be hard pushed to get spares for them, and if you can it's just not worth it, when you can get a whole new un for 50 quid,
yup that's it, the box and adverts rave about the outputs, but like most things it's marketing stretching the truth, only when you read the chinglish destructions inside the box does it mention the different acceptable outputs for different kinds of loads,
Depends what you hoped to run off it really, i have used my sds drill on mine, not sure of the wattage, prolly around 500 or so, i just plugged it in and ran with it, worst thatll happen is i'd stall the engine or trip the overload breaker.
2 stroke and 4 stroke differances, a 2 stroke firing every revolution can output more power than a 4 stroke that fires every 2nd rev of the same size, very common with model airplanes, they'll say 'this model can be used with a .40 2 stroke or a .60 4 stroke engine.
it's due to the simple carb that dosent have enough different speed circuits in it, so it's set up to be the right mixture at high load, as running lean then will destroy the engine pretty fast, hence at low loads it's running rich, and a 2 stroke running rich will miss every 2nd rev.. hence the term 4 stroking, as theres too much fuel to ignite,
if you are sure you'll not run a high load, you can turn the mixture screw on the carb right in, and it'll run sweetly at low loads, but you must remember to wind the mixture screw back out 2 turns when you use a high load,
my genny lives in a locker in my motorhome now, it only runs the charger, a load of about 200 watts, so i have adjusted the mixture to make the engine run sweet at that load, it will just handle the laptoprs psu and the vinyl cutter, but anything else and it'll complain, but as everything else runs off 12 volts, or needs more than 1000 watts mains, the genny never powers them.
About four years, though it has only been used very intermittently. If I'd been looking for a long life while actually running, I'd buy a real one.
It only needs to be run intermittently to 'top up' the CH, fridge and freezer, so at most you might only be running it for short intervals through the day and in the evening. If you're wanting it to do significantly more than that, this probably isn't the generator you need.
Mostly the neighbours would be jealous. There's no generator quiet enough to prevent that :-)
It isn't in the specification, but ours seems to have been quite good at keeping power cuts away... so far.
The waveform can become distorted by the nature and size of the load. Think resistance of the windings, the current flowing through them and any reactance in the load.
I had one for charging batteries (it has a 12volt output) and running a hoover,
It conked out cos I left it running in the rain without a cover, Aldi gave me my money back without a quibble, I bought another which was nicked, dont think it had a serial number on it.
It was a bit noisy, I guess the quiet hondas they use on market stalls are more expensive.
As with most Aldi tools it's cheap, chinese engineering and german quality control, (as someone on this group once put it)
They're good for occasional use but not as good as more expensive ones.
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