During yesterday's outage I used my $64.00 harbor freight 800w gen to power the sump pump. Which, surprisingly, worked perfect for what I needed at the moment even though it was pretty close to max watts for the gen.
But, after 5 hours the temps in the fridges started to climb where they hit 50* before power came back on.
So, I decided I needed a bigger generator.
For the fridges, sump, septic pump, and well, etc...
Off to SamsClub to pick up a Generac xg7000e unit. Lists for $1500, can be found online for ~$1200-$1300, Sams has it for $999.
Got it home (power was back on), powered up and ran it for just over an hour with shop lights and a small heater for the load. Everything ran just fine.
But, it is loud and I realized I need to find/make some type of enclosure for when it's raining/snowing and we are without power.
Any suggestions on helping with the noise? maybe an additional muffler? but I don't want to mess up the engine or anything...
And, has anyone here built an enclosure? what should I be aware of for that project?
J
BTW, when the lights went out and I was scrambling around to get the HF gen up and running all I could think about was "Lights Out". Really makes you think...