SPG7593

After reading the other reviews, I found a common theme, and that was how loud everyone said it was. To my surprise and delight, it was no more noisy than my Subaru 5500.

Very easy to operate.

This is a beast of a generator. Silly me just read the description and thought, "Perfect, a generator for our RV!!" See, we have a travel trailer and my husband refuses to go camping anywhere where there isn't full hookups because he wants to be able to use the AC. So I assumed that this generator would be the perfect solution (because I don't know all that much about generators obviously). Well, this generator will run our travel trailer and a whole lot more. It's much more powerful than we needed, but I think it's safe to say that too much power is way better than not enough! It has a variety of plug-ins, including a 30amp so we don't need an adapter for our travel trailer. It has an electric start, which needs a battery to operate, but we have just used the pull-start which very easy to do, even for myself. It came fully assembled with the exception of the wheels. On the downside, this generator is LOUD. I mean really loud. If we go out camping and use it, it's going to have to be in remote areas where we don't have any neighbors camping right next to us. Also, it is extremely heavy. It rolls around easily, but you aren't going to be wanting to move it in and out of the bed of your truck. We plan on bringing some ramps to wheel it in and out of the truck if/when we use it for camping. Although this generator was much bigger than I knew I was getting, my husband was still happy with it because it isn't uncommon in our area to lose power for a day or two at a time. This generator is big enough to keep our fridges and freezers going so we dont' lose our meat, along with running a few other things as well. Overall, this is a big and powerful generator that is probably big enough for just about anything you need. Yes, it's portable, but keep in mind that it's really heavy. And if you're going to use it recreationally, it is quite loud so be sure and be considerate to your neighbors. :)

For context: I'm not a mechanic, and I don't know anything about cars or motors. I've been running our lawn mower for 20 years, but that's about the extent of my mechanical knowledge. Still, with all the hurricanes hitting our area almost every year it seemed wise to buy a generator before it was our turn to have a week-long power outage like so many others in our extended neighborhood. This seems to be on the high-ish end for watts generated (they seem to range from 3,000ish to 10,000ish), which is great. I was a bit surprised to find that even though it says it will "run for 16 hours" that actually means if NOTHING IS PLUGGED IN. If you've got a bunch of things plugged in and are running at max capacity, the manual says it will run through 1.25 gallons of gasoline/hour, so the 6 gallon tank would last you just 4-5 hours, which means you'd definitely be needing a refill at some point during the middle of the night. My suggestion is to instead scale back to just the bare necessities--fridge and freezer, then maybe ramp it up for an hour here and there to recharge batteries, cook dinner, etc., and restrict heating/air conditioning to just a couple of rooms so you won't go through gasoline quite as quickly. Gas shortages seem to happen with most of our power outages, so you'll want to have some extra on hand (though I'm confess I'm also nervous about stashing 20 gallons of gasoline near my house, on the off chance that a teenager decides to smoke one day and sends the whole thing up in flames, creating an entirely different style of emergency). Soo I'm balancing those two needs against each other, and keeping the 6 gallons in tank + another 5-10 in the garage (with my fingers crossed). Remember that you should NOT run the generator in a garage or even under a patio, so I'm thinking that if I ever need to use this I might set up our 10x10 canopy (for sporting events) to keep it both away from the house and out of the rain, then run extension cords into the house. Getting this set up was ridiculously challenging for something this easy. It took us 3 minutes to figure out where the oil intake even IS (why on earth did they not label it and point to it in the owner's manual?), then another 3 minutes to figure out where the choke is (again--why in heaven's name did they not label that in the owner's manual instead of pointing to all the pieces I'll never need to know?), and I'm thinking I'll label the darn things in magic marker so I'll be able to find them when I need them. Seriously--the owner's manual covers all the obscure things, but not the basics that you need to know in order to run the darn thing. I guess it assumes you already know where to find them, but, well, I'm a 40-something homeowner and I don't. The machine was also missing 2 of the washers that you're supposed to have in order to attach the wheels, so I'm just crossing my fingers that they're not particularly important. So getting everything set up took us probably 90 minutes (though a mechanical expert could probably do it in 20), and then it seemed to start up fairly well and ran very smoothly. I can't speak to whether all the plugs actually work the way they're supposed to, but it seems like it should be great. One more quick note--this requires 10W-30 oil, and comes with a full quart included, but if you want to fill the oil to "high" (as suggested in the manual), you'll actually need about 1.5 quarts, so you may want to pick up an extra if you don't have one around the house. And another quick note--I see another review stating this requires a battery. Ours doesn't, but we *did* need to start it by hand, the way you do a lawn mower.

For anyone who needs an explanation of that review title, you really need to research what the vine program represents. So yeah, I got this generator because there is a probability at some point I'll need to use it. As it is, I'm not interested in RV travel, working in environments where a portable generator is necessary or even running a pitching or passing machine for a youth athletic team practice any longer. In the three months I've had it, the lights which used to brown out if a starling landed on a power line, haven't even flickered. So, I've taken it out of the box, put the wheels on, bought some more oil because it takes more than is provided in the initial shipment, thought about buying a 12V battery to faciliate the electric start feature, put some gasoline in it, lugged it outside the garage and fought with the manual start that doesn't crank in as easily as the promotional blurbs would leave you to believe and immediately wished I had thought to put on some ear protection. Then I immediately powered it down and lugged it back into a out of the way corner of the garage when my wife started shouting please stop all that racket...except she may not have said "please" or "racket." After the fact research leads me to believe as a emergency power source this 7500W generator could be a panacea if we encounter a loss of electrical service we haven't experienced in at least a decade. I kinda wish I had the option of using a propane tank as well, but you can't necessarily meet all objectives when you're looking in the mouths of relatively gift horses.