# i had a message from laswamp this am! he is ok plenty of stories he will post later in here!



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

i had a message from laswamp this am! he is ok plenty of stories he will post later in here!
glad he is ok!


----------



## Dutchy491 (Sep 18, 2019)

iowagold said:


> i had a message from laswamp this am! he is ok plenty of stories he will post later in here!
> glad he is ok!


Good news for sure 👍


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

yup! sure is!
his gen held up ok as well! they just got grid power back late friday 09/03/2021.


----------



## drmerdp (Apr 10, 2018)

Oh good, glad to hear it.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

Hi guys. It's good to see y'all again. I got a message from Paul during the outage but I couldn't respond until yesterday. It's been a heck of a week. I saw Rene posted and he's okay. I believe he's from the greater New Orleans area. They got whacked really hard. I was happy to see he made it okay. 

We've mostly got everything back up and running as of this morning. The power went out last Sunday afternoon at my house as the weather started picking up. The power wasn't restored until Friday night. Since then, it's been a huge clean up job and sorting/putting up equipment. I've gotten the inside of the house mostly cleaned out and organized. The outside has debris everywhere and that's going to be a longer cleanup. I plan to try to start tackling that job today. Luckily, I didn't seem to get any house damage. I have a huge tree line at the edge of my back yard and it appears to act as a wind break during high wind events. Needless to say, my preps and plan got put to the test. The outcome was mostly good, although it was still a learning experience. 

I spent the first part of the outage at my girlfriend's house. She has my Champion inverter. I brought my Wen inverter and set up shop. I modified a Champion parallel kit to work with the Wen. Here is the power station set up and ready to go:










Here is the Champion parallel kit:










All of my cords and surge suppressors ready to roll:










The power went off a bit later Sunday at my girlfriend's house. We decided to wait until morning to start the generators. We had quite a bit to power but I was confident we'd have enough wattage. The house got really hot and about 5:00 am, I'd had enough of the heat and humidity. Both inverters started up without issue. I had to modify the parallel kit to work with the Wen, but the generators synced right up. I could tell it was working because when I started the Champion (before the Wen), the LEDs on the Wen's external outlets lighted up. We got the window a/c units started and plugged in the fridge. I tested the signal from the two inverters with the scope and it looked better than wall power. 

Overall, I was able to power three window a/c units, a fridge, a deep freeze, LED lights, TV, fans, and a cable modem and router. I set up a charging station for all of the cell phones/tablets and that worked out well. Some observations... the Champion's rating of 22 hours on a 4-gallon tank of fuel was pretty close to accurate. It did extremely well with gas. The Wen was a bit of a puzzle. It has a 1.8 gallon tank and is rated for 7 hours at 50% load. I was having to refuel it about every 4 hours. Granted, it's got a pretty small tank and we were running it hard. But I was still a bit disappointed that at 4 hours, I was having to prep to shut it down to refuel. Overall though, the two inverters didn't miss a beat. They seemed to provide plenty of reliable power. 

On Tuesday, my girlfriend's power came back on. Since she was good to go, I packed up the Wen and cords and headed back to base. There were rumors in the neighborhood that we might have power by Tuesday morning. Yeah, that didn't pan out. I set up the Wen in the front driveway at first. I was able to run 2 fridges and a 6k BTU window a/c, along with some lighting. Before setting up the Wen, I changed the oil. It was definitely through break in at that point so it was time. The oil was pretty dark but didn't look too bad. I changed the oil with Chevron Delo 5w40 full synthetic. It was hot as blazes and I knew I was going to run it hard. The first two days, I ran the Wen in the front driveway (around 20 hours). I moved it to the back porch after that so I could run it at night to power the window a/c. Sleeping in 82 degree heat with 98% humidity is one nasty experience, let me assure you. I really wanted coffee on day 2 after coming back to my house. I have a small electric percolator but I didn't want to use it with the Wen since it was already running a good load on it. I decided to start the Firman since all the percolator is, is just a big heating coil and would not care about the dirty power. I set up the coffee pot on the tailgate of my truck in the driveway and plugged it in. The Firman didn't flinch. Even though it was hotter than blazes, it was very nice to have some good coffee. 

After the oil change, I was getting about 6 hours on a tank before needing to refuel. That was certainly much better than before. I don't know if the better oil had anything to do with that or I if I was simply running a lighter load. The first night with the Wen on the back porch was nice in that I could sleep in a/c comfort. However, the bad part was that no matter how I timed it, I was having to get up in the middle of the night to refuel. My pattern was to wait until around 9:00 pm to refuel for the night. However, I'd have to set my alarm because that would only get me to 3:00 am. Both refueling times were during the night and the insects in my back yard were swarming. Every species of insect on the planet seemed to be waiting to ambush me. I started brainstorming about a way to extend the run time of the Wen through the night so I didn't have to endure the worst aspects of the insect kingdom. My Coleman Powermate has a 6 gallon tank. I had plenty of 1/4 inch rubber fuel line on hand. I began to wonder if I could run a fuel line from the Coleman's fuel tank to the Wen's carb. If it worked, I could get about 20 hours of run time on a tank instead of only 6. That would allow me to fuel up at around 5:00 pm when it was still light and the bugs had not yet come out for the night. The fuel would then last until well after sun up the next day, allowing me to sleep through the night. It took a bit of work but I got the rig set up. 



















Since it would be gravity-fed, it looked like it should work with no problems. I filled up the Coleman tank at around 5:00 pm and started the Wen. It worked. The Wen was able to run all night using the fuel from the Coleman's tank. No more 3:00 am fueling and fighting the insect wars. 

All told, the Wen ran about 60-70 hours mostly non-stop. I was impressed with how well it did. Once I did the fuel mod, I was really happy with how it performed. I wish the Wen had a larger fuel tank. If it had a tank about 3 to 3.5 gallons, it would be near perfect. That would extend run time to about 10 hours which would be a lot more practical. We had begun hearing rumors that we might get power restored on Friday. However, it was getting late and still nothing. I decided to go to bed since I was exhausted. By the time it came back on I was so tired I let the Wen run overnight since it was powering the window a/c and no way was I in the mood to face Bug Central. I got up the next morning and shut it down. I moved all of the equipment back to the garage and changed the oil in the Wen once more. It looked like honey when I put it in on Tuesday. It looked like coffee coming out yesterday morning. I'm glad I decided to change it. Overall, I am very pleased with how well the Wen did with the extended outage. I just got it a few months ago, so the timing could not have been better. 

As you all have probably heard and something Rene has also seen in his area, no doubt, is the massive gasoline panic that has ensued after the storm passed. It's been really bad. Few gas stations had gasoline and the ones that did had long lines. Imagine a line of cars wrapped around the station, extending out of the parking lot and down the highway for a quarter mile. Apparently, a lot of people now have portable gas generators but, for some reason, didn't have much gas on hand when the lights went out. So they all, at once, began swarming the gas stations and draining them dry. I read that the typical three day supply most stations keep was going in 5 hours. I saw something similar happen after Katrina in 2005 and Gustav in 2008, although I don't recall it being nearly as bad as it was this time. I didn't have generators then, so I may have simply not noticed it. Although I think the answer is that far more people have generators now than they did back then. I know after the 2016 flood when I lost power for 5 days, I decided it was time to get a generator and some means to cool at least one room of the house. Houses in this neck of the woods become a hot, nasty mess after a day or two with no power. One big lesson reaffirmed after this saga is that gas is king. As much as I had on hand, I was on my last 5 gallon can when the lights came back on. That said, I burned off a lot of older gas I had stored. I am hopeful that in the future more people will be better prepared gas-wise when the next big storm takes out the grid for a week. 

As many extension cords as I had, I used every one of them. I had just enough to make it all work. I thought I'd have cords to spare. Nope, all of them got pressed into service. I'm going to order a couple more good cords to toss in the power chest. The flat appliance cords are awesome. You can pass them under exterior doors far more easily than the thick round ones. Next time, however, I want to run the cords outside if I can. Having numerous cords running up and down halls was very messy and cluttered, and made for some tripping hazards. I also want to pick up a shop fan. I used a borrowed one to keep the exhaust fumes from the Wen away from the house. It worked extremely well. 

That's all I can think of for the moment. Ask me anything!


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

cool!
any pix of your area outside?
do you have natural gas and if you do did the gas stay up and working?

cool on the extended run tanks!
we have modified the cars and trucks for external fuel ports off the manifold area for ball valves rated for gasoline and marine quick connects...
then we can use the in tank fuel pump to fill gas cans out of the larger gas tanks.

my little honda eu2200i gens i use the berg system with 6 gallon marine fuel tanks.
and i have fuel block splitters etc for the fuel lines so i can hot swap the fuel tanks out or refill them while they system is in use as you are not close to the gen set.
pretty cool idea.

so far the tri fuel plan has worked well for me.
natural gas as my primary fuel...
gasoline as my secondary
and LP as the third.

LA maybe it is time to look in to a generator system interlock and inlet for both properties..
at least get it in the plan....
mother nature is throwing a hissy fit every few years now....
so a larger tank fuel plan, better inlets...
and maybe a few battery inverter options...

food and water plans need to be a priority as well.
and depending on your location a plan for bathroom and shower...
think flood and no drains and bad city water supply....


----------



## Browse Deweb (Jan 16, 2021)

Good to hear everything worked ok with the generators...what a story! The only thing I would recommend going forward is to do away with all of the extension cords and setup an interlock and power inlet for your house. No way I would want to fuss around with running individual cords. Having a 240V inverter generator makes it so much easier. Converting the Honda EU7000is to run on natural gas also alleviated the gasoline availability and storage issue.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

iowagold said:


> cool!
> any pix of your area outside?
> do you have natural gas and if you do did the gas stay up and working?
> 
> ...


There's not much to see outside. There's a few large limbs but it's mostly small stuff. Tons of pine needles, pine cones and smaller stick and twigs. I have to clear it all so I don't hit any of it with the mower. I was going to try to clear through some of it today but it rained for about an hour and a half. I will try to get out there early tomorrow. I'm still exhausted from the past week. 

I have a natural gas water heater, furnace, fire place, and outdoor lamp. I never lost gas so I was able to take hot showers. That was a very nice perk. But, as far as cooking, I was limited to making coffee. I need to pick up a camping stove or a portable electric hot place. Cold Spam was not the breakfast of champions. As far as gasoline, I had quite a bit in the 55 gallon drum. It has a hand pump on it so I could fill gas cans as needed to fuel up the inverters. It worked well. 

After this past week, I can now truly understand and appreciate why people get whole house units. Even an interlock connection is next-generation compared to dealing with extension cords to every appliance. My inverters are 120 VAC only. Don't you need 240 for an interlock? My neighbor across from me had an interlock connected to his meter. I found myself eyeing it lustfully. 

We had plenty of food and water, although next time we need to factor in the possibility of a longer outage. We'd have had issues if the outage had gone on for longer than a week. It's hard to plan for these types of events, especially when so many storms that are coming right for us end up slicing to the east or hooking to the west.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

Browse Deweb said:


> Good to hear everything worked ok with the generators...what a story! The only thing I would recommend going forward is to do away with all of the extension cords and setup an interlock and power inlet for your house. No way I would want to fuss around with running individual cords. Having a 240V inverter generator makes it so much easier. Converting the Honda EU7000is to run on natural gas also alleviated the gasoline availability and storage issue.


Yeah, the cords were a real hassle to deal with. Far more so than I had anticipated. It created a lot of clutter. Wen makes a more powerful inverter for about $700 that has 240 VAC. Oddly, it does not have parallel capability. Using extension cords is not the most elegant solution, but I have to admit, it did work quite well even if it was not terribly aesthetic. That's something I've been working on. That, and trying to figure out a more practical way to deal with the tiny gas tank on my Wen. The external fuel tank idea worked. Now I need to refine the design into something a bit easier than using the Coleman tank.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

yea if you can get over the trip hazzard as well as the possibility of a bad cord in the wet.
good drop cords work if they are short...

we like the interlock with FAT inlet cords then you have the same safety you would have on grid power.
it works well for us here.


----------



## drmerdp (Apr 10, 2018)

LaSwamp said:


> Yeah, the cords were a real hassle to deal with. Far more so than I had anticipated. It created a lot of clutter. Wen makes a more powerful inverter for about $700 that has 240 VAC. Oddly, it does not have parallel capability. Using extension cords is not the most elegant solution, but I have to admit, it did work quite well even if it was not terribly aesthetic. That's something I've been working on. That, and trying to figure out a more practical way to deal with the tiny gas tank on my Wen. The external fuel tank idea worked. Now I need to refine the design into something a bit easier than using the Coleman tank.


In 2012 Hurricane sandy knocked power out for me for 4 days. By the skin of my teeth bought my first generator off of Amazon as they were all selling it rapidly. I used a slew of extension cords and was happy to have power but immediately wanted a better setup. 

Definitely go with an interlock, cost effective and highly functional. You can feed 120v to a 240v interlocked setup but you’d benefit most from an inverter 240v generator for simplicity and fuel consumption. 

Many of us use a use bridged l14-30 connector to supply 120v to both hot legs. It’s not ideal and requires that all 240v breakers to be turned off.


----------



## Bluwolf (Nov 8, 2020)

Glad to hear you're alright and made it through okay. Everybody was wondering how you were. I have a really stupid question because I probably missed something. But why didn't you take the Champion home when you're girlfriend got power back? And yes, you really need an interlock setup. 

drmerdp is right about the bridged adapter cord. After finding out it could be done I made one up for my 2000 inverter. The plan being to use the bigger gen during the day for the big stuff because my house is all electric. Then using the small inverter for a window A/C unit at night.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

Bluwolf said:


> Glad to hear you're alright and made it through okay. Everybody was wondering how you were. I have a really stupid question because I probably missed something. But why didn't you take the Champion home when you're girlfriend got power back? And yes, you really need an interlock setup.
> 
> drmerdp is right about the bridged adapter cord. After finding out it could be done I made one up for my 2000 inverter. The plan being to use the bigger gen during the day for the big stuff because my house is all electric. Then using the small inverter for a window A/C unit at night.


Hi Blu. I keep the Champion at my girlfriend's house because she has a bad back and the Champion has an electric start. I left it at her house after the storm had passed and she got her power back having concluded that I didn't need the full wattage of both generators when I returned to my house. It was much easier to move just the Wen and I was only going to power a few items. Plus, I have two other generators on site that I could use if something happened and I needed additional power beyond what the Wen provides. I wanted to run only one generator, though, in order to conserve fuel. It was almost impossible to find in the days after the storm and I needed to stretch my supply as long as I could. 

At night, when I was at my girlfriend's house, we did switch to one generator to power the window a/c units. It was only during the day that we needed both generators up. The system seemed to work well. We were comfortable for the most part and didn't have any big issues with the setup. With enough fuel, we'd have been fine for quite a while. 

After seeing the interlock in action, I can see why people get them. It really makes the wiring situation much easier.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

it is a few bucks up front for an interlock...
but for the long term plan it is a good plan!
and the best part you do not have electronics to fail from lightning like an ats.
it is just low cost breakers with a special slide plate setup.
super easy to swap out the $100.00 main breaker or the $8-20 buck gen breaker at retail prices.
some main breakers are way lower cost than that...
i use a 60 amp and a short 6/4 from the inlet box to the main panel on my custom inlet box here for the safe honda eu2200i 4 gen in parallel system.
pm if you need links and pix for the project.


----------



## Rpgenct (Aug 5, 2021)

Question @drmerdp re your comment below. What’s the purpose for a bridged connector? As I’m an electrical newbie I wasn’t sure what you meant by supplying 120 to both legs? for some reason I thought the l14-30 supplied 2 legs of 120V each? My generator supplies 240 via the L14 into my panel with an interlock. Doesn’t that enable me to run either a 120 or 240 load, within the Amp/Watt constraints…? Thx!


“You can feed 120v to a 240v interlocked setup but you’d benefit most from an inverter 240v generator for simplicity and fuel consumption.

Many of us use a bridged use bridged l14-30 connector to supply 120v to both hot legs. It’s not ideal and requires that all 240v breakers to be turned off.”
[


----------



## tabora (Sep 6, 2018)

Rpgenct said:


> What’s the purpose for a bridged connector? As I’m an electrical newbie I wasn’t sure what you meant by supplying 120 to both legs? for some reason I thought the l14-30 supplied 2 legs of 120V each?


In the U.S. we use 240V split phase, where the two 120V legs are 180 degrees out of phase with each other. Therefore using the two hot legs together gives you 240V. The bridged connector for a 120V generator puts the same phase 120V on both legs and will allow all the 120V items to operate up to the capacity of the genset, but the 240V breakers should be turned off.


----------



## drmerdp (Apr 10, 2018)

The idea is to install a jumper wire from the occupied L1 position to the empty L2 position inside of a l14-30 connector. It supplies the same 120v feed to both legs of the Electrical service. The caveat is its 120v in phase with each other as opposed to 2 separate 120v legs 180 degrees opposed producing a combined 240v of amplitude.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

drmerdp said:


> The idea is to install a jumper wire from the occupied L1 position to the empty L2 position inside of a l14-30 connector. It supplies the same 120v feed to both legs of the Electrical service. The caveat is its 120v in phase with each other as opposed to 2 separate 120v legs 180 degrees opposed producing a combined 240v of amplitude.


you forgot to add "with a proper generator inlet and interlock it works well"
lol!
pm if you need the ends for the eu series of gen sets to make safe proper cords for parallel of gens and inlet cords.


----------



## drmerdp (Apr 10, 2018)

iowagold said:


> you forgot to add "with a proper generator inlet and interlock it works well"
> lol!
> pm if you need the ends for the eu series of gen sets to make safe proper cords for parallel of gens and inlet cords.


Indeed.


----------



## Rene (Feb 5, 2021)

LaSwamp said:


> Hi guys. It's good to see y'all again. I got a message from Paul during the outage but I couldn't respond until yesterday. It's been a heck of a week. I saw Rene posted and he's okay. I believe he's from the greater New Orleans area. They got whacked really hard. I was happy to see he made it okay.
> 
> We've mostly got everything back up and running as of this morning. The power went out last Sunday afternoon at my house as the weather started picking up. The power wasn't restored until Friday night. Since then, it's been a huge clean up job and sorting/putting up equipment. I've gotten the inside of the house mostly cleaned out and organized. The outside has debris everywhere and that's going to be a longer cleanup. I plan to try to start tackling that job today. Luckily, I didn't seem to get any house damage. I have a huge tree line at the edge of my back yard and it appears to act as a wind break during high wind events. Needless to say, my preps and plan got put to the test. The outcome was mostly good, although it was still a learning experience.
> 
> ...


Hey LaSwamp, Glad to hear you made it through alright. Man I know what you mean with the heat and trying to sleep through it. My family of 4 spent the first night (Sunday night) in the dark as I was not going to try and setup the gen while there was still storms and rain going sideways. I'll post a separate thread with my story shortly.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

Rene said:


> Hey LaSwamp, Glad to hear you made it through alright. Man I know what you mean with the heat and trying to sleep through it. My family of 4 spent the first night (Sunday night) in the dark as I was not going to try and setup the gen while there was still storms and rain going sideways. I'll post a separate thread with my story shortly.


I had initially tried to make it through the night with the generators shut down. After a couple of hours, though, the heat and the humidity became unpleasant enough that sleep became difficult. There's simply no way to get comfortable when it's 82 degrees with 94% humidity. Running an inverter overnight wasn't too bad, especially once I got the fuel situation figured out.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

the room dehumidifiers / ac units sure help!
and they are gen friendly.
looks like we are in for another over 90 deg blast this weekend here in Iowa...
rough year!


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

The window a/c units act as dehumidifiers, although you have to place them in a window that opens. In my home, only the bedrooms have windows that open. I had been looking at stand-alone dehumidifiers but all of the ones I saw had extremely mixed reviews. All of the consumer grade stuff sounded like junk from the reviews. No matter the brand, they are all made in China and probably in the same factory. None seemed to last more than a couple of years before either corroding away or being plagued with electrical problems. The commercial grade units are huge money for what you get. And a lot of them seemed to garner mixed reviews despite their much larger price tag and heavy duty design. I'm not sure why it's suddenly become so difficult for a company to design a reliable unit that doesn't cost a king's ransom. But, here we are.


----------



## mehmetkl (Sep 6, 2021)

Iowa gold said:


> i had a message from laswamp this am! he is ok plenty of stories he will post later in here!
> glad he is ok!


I'm so glad I got this news. May your success always be.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

LaSwamp said:


> The window a/c units act as dehumidifiers, although you have to place them in a window that opens. In my home, only the bedrooms have windows that open. I had been looking at stand-alone dehumidifiers but all of the ones I saw had extremely mixed reviews. All of the consumer grade stuff sounded like junk from the reviews. No matter the brand, they are all made in China and probably in the same factory. None seemed to last more than a couple of years before either corroding away or being plagued with electrical problems. The commercial grade units are huge money for what you get. And a lot of them seemed to garner mixed reviews despite their much larger price tag and heavy duty design. I'm not sure why it's suddenly become so difficult for a company to design a reliable unit that doesn't cost a king's ransom. But, here we are.


we like the commercial dehumidifiers.
pm if you need links for them.
the good units have a lift pump built in so you can drain in to a sink or other drain.

we have some of the BIG ones in the fleet we use for when the crews are dry walling
or summer when the humidity is so bad it is like rain inside a job site building...
knock it down to 60% or less and you can stand a bit of warm...

yea the home versions have had issues with catching fire etc...
most of that is from not cleaning the hidden air filter inside.
over works the unit for heat runaway.
last home version from menards re call they did not want the unit back!
you just had to mail in the power cord!!


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

The commercial units tend to be more reliable. But they are a lot more expensive. I'm not sure what's out there that's good, but also not an arm and a leg. I remember there was a massive recall of a lot of units a few years ago. It involved many different brands. My home a/c also acts as a dehumidifier, although in the summer it needs all the help it can get. I haven't found anything I like that's also affordable and reliable. I'm hoping HD has some good sales once the hot season subsides. I'd also like to pick up another window unit if the sale is truly clutch.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

most of the commercial dehumidifier units are 1000 to 2000 usd...

i run both units to help dry it out better...
i like 50% or less humidity so i can breath...


----------



## Browse Deweb (Jan 16, 2021)

I still have an old White-Westinghouse MDH30WW1 dehumidifier which is like 30 years old that still works great. It's a shame we off shored most of our manufacturing and replaced quality with greed as a primary driver.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

i let the old frididare unit mom and dad had from the 1960's go at the auction when dad came down with cancer..
it was a real work horse!
we left it on 7/24 it was 43 years old and still worked!
it came from the local REC back in the day.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

The older designs seem to work really well. I've heard numerous stories of decades-old equipment that still works perfectly. Now everything is form over function and none of it works well, if at all.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

the older ones were super simple refrigeration.

now it is all digital, different coolant....
and cheap plastic housing....

that old one had all steel chassis and sheet tin case.
build like a tank!

wards as well as sears had similar units back then.
and western auto as well....

they were not as well used as these days....
we had a high water table back then in central Iowa where we lived...
so a dehumidifier in the basement was a must.


----------



## Tboney (Sep 9, 2020)

LaSwamp said:


> Hi Blu. I keep the Champion at my girlfriend's house because she has a bad back and the Champion has an electric start. I left it at her house after the storm had passed and she got her power back having concluded that I didn't need the full wattage of both generators when I returned to my house. It was much easier to move just the Wen and I was only going to power a few items. Plus, I have two other generators on site that I could use if something happened and I needed additional power beyond what the Wen provides. I wanted to run only one generator, though, in order to conserve fuel. It was almost impossible to find in the days after the storm and I needed to stretch my supply as long as I could.
> 
> At night, when I was at my girlfriend's house, we did switch to one generator to power the window a/c units. It was only during the day that we needed both generators up. The system seemed to work well. We were comfortable for the most part and didn't have any big issues with the setup. With enough fuel, we'd have been fine for quite a while.
> 
> After seeing the interlock in action, I can see why people get them. It really makes the wiring situation much easier.





LaSwamp said:


> Yeah, the cords were a real hassle to deal with. Far more so than I had anticipated. It created a lot of clutter. Wen makes a more powerful inverter for about $700 that has 240 VAC. Oddly, it does not have parallel capability. Using extension cords is not the most elegant solution, but I have to admit, it did work quite well even if it was not terribly aesthetic. That's something I've been working on. That, and trying to figure out a more practical way to deal with the tiny gas tank on my Wen. The external fuel tank idea worked. Now I need to refine the design into something a bit easier than using the Coleman tank.


LaSwamp, glad to hear you weathered the storm ok. There are a lot of people down that way still suffering big time. What size is your little Wen generator?


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

Tboney said:


> LaSwamp, glad to hear you weathered the storm ok. There are a lot of people down that way still suffering big time. What size is your little Wen generator?


Thanks, Tboney. There are still pockets of outages in my area but things are slowly returning to normal. As bad as it was here, it could have been a lot worse. 

My Wen is the GN400i. It's rated at 4kw surge, 3.5kw running. I think it's Wen's most powerful inverter that is parallel capable.


----------



## tvl (Nov 14, 2018)

LaSwamp said:


> My Wen is the GN400i. It's rated at 4kw surge, 3.5kw running. I think it's Wen's most powerful inverter that is parallel capable.


Wow! I've had a Honda EU3000is for a little over 2 years now and paid $2000 for it. I've yet to need it, but I do run it occasionally. However, based on the reviews of the Wen GN400i unit and the fact I could have purchased 4 of them for the price of one Honda EU3000is, I feel like I've been taken to the cleaners. Also, based on your experience with Wen, it appears they're very good generators. If I need a backup unit, Wen just might fit the bill ...................... especially for $405 (Amazon) and it offers more power than my EU3000is.


----------



## LaSwamp (Mar 16, 2021)

tvl said:


> Wow! I've had a Honda EU3000is for a little over 2 years now and paid $2000 for it. I've yet to need it, but I do run it occasionally. However, based on the reviews of the Wen GN400i unit and the fact I could have purchased 4 of them for the price of one Honda EU3000is, I feel like I've been taken to the cleaners. Also, based on your experience with Wen, it appears they're very good generators. If I need a backup unit, Wen just might fit the bill ...................... especially for $405 (Amazon) and it offers more power than my EU3000is.


The Honda units are very nice and are well built. But based on my experiences with the Wen and Champion inverters I have, they were able to handle the job with no problems. Especially with the Wen, you get a lot of inverter for the money. It makes a really nice waveform and has plenty of power to run the necessities. The only downside is that it has a small-ish fuel tank. But there are ways around that. I was really pleased with how well mine handled a six day outage. 

If you're interested in the GN400i, I recommend buying it from Wen direct. The $394 is the price delivered. Amazon is a bit more but they are going to charge you tax on top of that. For me, that comes out to around $36. So even with Prime shipping, it's about $50 more expensive if you buy from Amazon. You save even more with the bigger inverters if you buy from Wen direct. Their big 7kw inverter is $810 whereas it's over a grand everywhere else. And that's $810 delivered. That's a fantastic price on an inverter that large. Of course, it's been out of stock for a while. They have a 5kw inverter for around $680 delivered. The larger inverters don't have parallel ports, which is the only downside I note about them. They do 240v as well, so you can use it with an interlock. With my two inverters in parallel, I really have all the power I need. Otherwise, I'd be seriously looking at the larger Wen inverters especially if I wanted to use an interlock. 

I've been trying to get my cousin who is looking for an inverter to consider a Wen. He wants a Honda, though. He is of one mind with Paul, lol.


----------



## iowagold (Jan 22, 2020)

LOL!


----------



## Tboney (Sep 9, 2020)

LaSwamp said:


> Thanks, Tboney. There are still pockets of outages in my area but things are slowly returning to normal. As bad as it was here, it could have been a lot worse.
> 
> My Wen is the GN400i. It's rated at 4kw surge, 3.5kw running. I think it's Wen's most powerful inverter that is parallel capable.


I thought that's what it was. It's a neat little generator.


----------

