Home Depot has Sportsman generators on their daily specials including a dual fuel inverter generator for under five bills. Don't know anything about them other than it looks like most of the generic Chinese clones.
Home Depot has Sportsman generators on their daily specials including a dual fuel inverter generator for under five bills. Don't know anything about them other than it looks like most of the generic Chinese clones.
"You can't win a war with choirboys. " Mad Mike Hoare
Ice storm in the Metro Detroit area. Power out since Sunday. Got marching orders from the wife to get the HF 3500w generator, got the second to last one in stock.
Had a few interesting hours trying to figure out how to wire up the furnace to accept an extension cord. YouTube to the rescue. Ended up wiring it like this. Decent workaround so far. Hadn't thought it through to this point until I bought the generator, luckily it went pretty well.
The generator has run great so far. Can run fridge, furnace and sump pump no problemo. Have to unplug the fridge when the wife gets ready though, the hair dryer and flat iron draw quite a bit!
What I consider is the very best deal in small, portable generators right now; the Harbor Freight 3500w inverter is now $659 with this coupon. I recently used mine during a 36 hour windstorm and it was flawless and quiet, sipped fuel.
#RESIST
This would be a nice upgrade from mine. I just made a cord up and backfeed it from my garage to the house. Turn off the main breaker and I usually shut off the well pump. Then I have furnace and fridge at least. Really need to get the transfer switch wired in lol. HF has a 8750 that I have been drooling over. But that 3500 would go good on camping trips.
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8750 is on sale for $519.99 right now too. cheapest I've ever seen is it $499.99, so that's a pretty decent deal on it.
A couple of comments on that video, and wiring plugs to furnaces, in no particular order:
1)The cable clamps that are clamping the short plug/receptacle cords to the metal box are for clamping Romex, not flexible cords. They make special ones for flex cords. I dunno what the safety implications are, if any, but that wouldn't pass inspection.
2)I generally just terminate the furnace branch circuit in a normally wired receptacle, and then change the furnace to a corded connection like any other corded device. That means you don't have to wonder about how the connections are wired inside the box.
3)Speaking of inspections, someone pointed out to me a couple of years ago that they changed the NEC to prohibit corded attachments of furnaces at all. I haven't found anyone who has an explanation of why they made that change.
Of note, I have had inspectors approve my converting to cord attachment, even after that change. That makes it legal, i.e. the inspector can decide to authorize things the code doesn't allow. I didn't know about the code prohibition at the time, so I didn't ask the inspector if he was waiving the code deliberately, or just hadn't heard of the change.
Everything I learned about being an electrician, I learned from YouTube. So maybe I should have put INAE after it?
I'm 100% sure that I have zero knowledge about electrical codes. The workaround, however, worked.
It would take me maybe 10 minutes to wire it back up to the original switch, which is probably what I will do whenever I decide to move.