Money wise unless you are using the RV almost weekly it is less expensive to stay in the motels.
It is not about money,but the enjoyment that some get from the RVs. They get to go to different places and meet people. Some of the RV people travel together or go to the same place often.
I have a small inverter that runs off of 12 volts. I mostly bought it to open the garage door when the power goes out. Sure I could pull the cord to the door and open it, but it is just more fun to use the inverter.
It is mostly a new unit vers the older units. The 5 kw I have uses a 3 prong plug and will provide 240 volts from it along with a 'regular' 120 volt outlet. It is about 20 years old.
I bought a new one a few years back and it is only about 3500 watts. It has the 4 prong plug.
Most likely due to the changes in the electrical codes over the years where you have seperate frame or chassis ground wires and neutrl wires. Years ago the 3 wire system the neutral wire did double duty in the 240 volt circuits. It was a ground to the frame and also the neutral for the 120 volt circuits. The newer codes are for 4 wires where the neural and the frame ground wire are 2 seperate wires.
Those old 1800- RPM Onans sure were NOT quiet - but less intrusive than the old 3600 RPM units. The 1800 RPM twins weren't TOO bad, but the old one-lungers -- - - - They really "popped" and the exhaust was only half of it because even muffled they made quite a racket (mechanical noise)
It all depends on how you are making the comparison.
The problems with motels is that they are where they want to be, not where I want to be.
An RV, camper, tent, tricked-out truck*, etc. is much more flexible. Then there's the campfire, the views, the fresh air, the ability to cook my own meals, etc.
Sure, there are downsides, but I'll take camping over a motel most times. One nighters? Stops along the way to a final destination? A trip for a wedding? Sure, a motel may make more sense, although I favor Airbnbs over motels whenever possible - especially "entire place" Airbnbs with kitchens, private entrances, etc.
*I've seen trucks like this, with not only a rooftop tent, but a rooftop shower tank, enclosed canopies, etc. They can camp basically wherever they want.
I played with it for a while in a hybrid setup using this and the batteries in my golf cart but I figured out I really needed well pumps and fridges and that is tough to do with inverters because of LRA.
I have an 1100w (true) in my golf cart but it will suck down the 6 cart batteries pretty fast if you are really using anything close to the rating. You are not getting a day out of it.
That is absolutel,y true and for a couple trips a year my neighbor and I compared bills. I was flying 2 of us first class, staying in real nice places and he took his RV. Total costs amortized year to year, I was spending less than him.
I was just having this discussion on another BB about using a little
1lb bottle for small tasks like that. I do have the aux regulator to run from a bottle. Once I get the genset outside, I plug it into the big buried tank. I can always run it from a 20# but that is a lot to lug around for 30 seconds of running. Usually I can just plug the GDO into the inverter on the golf cart. That was what I did for Irma.
We moved from motel suites to rented houses a number of years ago. The cost difference was worth it to us to have our own place but some got pretty silly for just 2 of us. The funny thing is, the price doesn't change that much from a "cabin"
I've seen "well pumps" and am guessing (ok, making way more than a guess) that are (to quote the salesreps) "generator friendly". Some do this with capacitors, some by inverter tech, others by pre-draining. Etc. etc.
In regards to refrigerators and air conditioners: the better units are inverter controlled, giving you a very soft start. [a]
One product that was _terrific_ was a line of Yamaha brand gneartors. They were electric start, and... the battery was inline with the unit so that if you needed extra amperage ("starting surge") they had it right there.
Alas, no more.
[a] We _finally_ have inverter window units available (well, modulo the Heat Wave...) as a consumer item.
I picked up the Lucky Goldstar 14,000 BTU one two years ago. It _gently_ ramps up, and unlike the traditional "all on/all off" compressors with their very noisy activiation, loudness, big shifts in output temperature, etc., they simply tweak up as needed.
So if the outside temperature is 80 degrees, it'll step down to 4,000 BTUs/hr. If the temperature is way up at 110F, it'll kick out all 14,000.
(numbers for illustration).
Oh, and it's a slide through chassis.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. [b]
In the past year _one_ other manuafcuter has put inverter units on the market, namely Midea. A pretty nunique form factor, too:
formatting link
(vendor url chosen at semi random).
[b] one very slight annoyance that takes a touch of getting used to. A traditional 14k unit activates in full when you turn it on, so... if you've been away all day with it off and turn it on when you come in, you'll get that high dose of cold air flush against your face 30 seconds later.
I have seen that before. Around here it would not pass as the standard for grounding is either 2 or 3 ground rods so far apart.
I think I have seen some code about grounding the portable generators.. It may be for ones more or less fixed in place to use at a house. I could do that to one I have here. It is in a small wooden 'dog house' a few feet away from the house and I plug it in when needed.
Length of stay matters too. One night, once you add in the cleaning and other fees, can be expensive. Spread that out over 3, maybe 4 nights, and I'll take an Airbnb anytime.
A family get-together in an Airbnb - even a smallish, cramped one - blows multiple motel rooms out of the water.
I don't know if the 1 pound bottle would fire off the generator for very long as it takes so much vapor pressure and at the rate of use it may cool off the 1 pound too much too fast. Friend told me a trick for the larger ones was to put the 20 pound tank near the exhaust pipe so it would stay warm.
I have one of the Harbor Freight generators that is around 700 watts that I often put on a wagon behind the lawn tractor to use my electric pole saw or hedge trimmers away from the house. I origionally bought it just to play with as it was only about $ 90 on sale. Those things are often very hard to start,but a shot of starting fluid sprayed in it gets it going on one or two pulls. It does smoke some duing the first little bit after starting. I may have too much oil in the mix as I use the same mix for the leaf blower and weed eater.
I am thinking of moving it to a garage I just had built to power some lights, but I would put it outside and run a drop cord to it. Would not fire it up in an enclosed area or even one that was open with big doors on one end.
A friend showed me one that is similar but runs on one of the 1 pound or so propane tanks. The cost was way more. I am not sure if it has an inverter or not.
My well pumps and fridges are old school. I hear way too many bad things about the new Samsungs and LGs. We do have a couple of mini split inverter AC units that run well on a generator. I am still hanging on to a 5.5kw briggs that is about 15 years old and has about 200 hours on it. This seems to run everything we needed to do OK after Irma for 8 1/2 days. Other than hot water we barely missed the power and the pool was blue. It did have me wondering how hard it would be to heat water with the pool collectors.
If you are connecting the generator to the house with a 4 wire cable and the neutral is not bonded in the generator, there is no need to ground the generator. You do get into that "Separately derived source" thing but the short answer is if you only switch the ungrounded conductors in your transfer equipment you do not bond the neutral in the gen set and it is not an SDS. If you switch the neutral it is an SDS and you treat the generator like the service entrance (ground rods and bonded neutral).
A friend has a cottage at the beach he rents out for most of the year. Before the pandemic he was making enough off the rent to pay for it and often have a few dollars left over. I think there is a limit as to how long he could stay at it before some other rules came into effect. He often got around that if it was not rented for a week in that he would "rent" it to his brother in law and both families would stay for that week. They would do some minor repairs during some of that time.
We usually do at least a week. In Montana we did move around but both houses we rented were for a week. We had that one in Badrock and the other was Paradise Valley. It was a project house on HGTV. The green one next to the red barn.
formatting link
I can say is if you didn't see it on TV, they didn't do it. It was a cool spot tho. The guy at the bottom of the hill had a 300 yard rifle range behind his house. It was an HOA neighborhood but there were only about 5 houses on around 1000 acres up next to the Yellowstone River. I doubt they had many rules. I think they just shared the WiFi.
I ran this on the 20 pound and it seemed fine. That was when I shot the hell out of the story that you can't get full output from propane. It just uses a lot more propane. Gasoline at full power is 0.5 GPH, Propane is 0.8GPH
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.