generator

DPH

Guest
Hi everyone,

Myself, wife and daughter are heading off for our first French two-week adventure in new MH. Planning mixture of aires France Passion.

I have been told that a generator might be a good thing to have for emergencies.
Is this true?
If so would a bottom of the line 650w (£70ish) one do the job if we find ourselves stranded with flat batteries?

All help gratefully received!

Thanks,
Damien
 
hi ,yes it will charge a battery ,but you wont makemany friends .keep liesure seperate to engine battery when parked .have a look at some of the post recently. in parallel positive to positive .neg to neg .with a switch or relay i like switch in positive joiner lead. thick cable .
 
Generator or Not

Damien

Last December whilst touring France I carried a small 1Kva (1Kw @ Power Factor of 1) Petrol Generator which I did use when wild camping well away from homes etc. The unit I bought (Planet 1) was a "quiet" one at about 58dB(a) but unless it is positioned behind some kind of screen such as an earth bank or in trees the noise when it responds to a sudden power demand and the throttle opens fully still seems a lot. So, I would only use it really in rural areas well away from homes. The most popular model is a Honda 1Kva which is rated at 0.9Kw at 52dB(a) Model EU10i but costs a lot more at £780 than the Planet 1 model which costs £429. I previously bought one of those cheap (£60) 2 stroke Petrol 1Kva Generators from Aldi - but they are very noisy and difficult to start. A word of warning - only use pure Sine-Wave units with sensitive electronic equipment like Laptops etc. to avoid damage. My unit had a pure Sine-Wave Inverter inbuilt for best waveform.

Depending on your motor-homing lifestyle I would suggest you consider an extra bank of Leisure Batteries with a means of charging them from the vehicle engine alternator. However, this is not as simple as it might appear at first as most vehicle alternators are designed and regulated to just keep the vehicle's Starter Battery topped-up and once it detects that it has done that job the in-built Regulator cuts back the output to a trickle. Hence something like a Battery-to-Battery Charger installed (with hefty cables) would rapidly charge up your Leisure Battery bank (need to use matched and same age batteries in the bank) after the vehicle Starter Battery has been topped-up. Sterling produce a 30Amp and a 50Amp version for 12V use (google batterymegastore) but these do cost £240. The Leisure Batteries aren't too expensive at £80 for 115Ah Units delivered (batterymegastore). So, if you can install them yourself - safely - with battery boxes, 5Amp cables, clamps, protectors, Fuses, Outlets etc. you could have a 230Ah capacity system for about £500.
 
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Fairly common practice on the continent is to judge the correct distance from your neighbour by trying to get out of the cab. If you don't have to edge out sideways, you need to get a bit closer. Generators don't fit in very well in this situation especially when "emergency" generally translates to "I watched TV all night and now the battery is flat"

In several months of using aires and similar in Europe, I never came across anyone using a generator, so my experience with them is thankfully very limited.
 
Hi, I do have a genny but only as a back up and to be honest it is hardly ever used...

I have the following fitted to my Hymer and have found that even watching telly, running the heating etc etc have never run short of power since..

I started off and changed the twin 80amp gel batteries for 2 x 110 Elecsol gel batteries and added an 80amp solar panel and digital read-out.
I then bought off a mate his 12 month old Sterling Battery to Battery charger and had that fitted. Brilliant bit of kit.
Just recently, I found that my vehicle battery was running down so changed that and added a Van Bitz Battery Master. The battery master looks at ALL the vehicles batteries as leisures and monitors them. If the vehicles battery is low it will stop charge to the leisures and top up the vehicle battery if on hook up or through the solar panel.

The only time I really used the genny was when we all had a social and had outside lights on.

You can become really unpopular, really quickly with a genny and don't forget you have to carry a can of petrol that if allowed to become warm due to sunny climes can gas off and not only stink the place out but is a real hazard.

As well, if you do go down the genny route remember the following. Never plug into the genny and start it up. ALWAYS, start the genny, leave for a minute or so and then plug in. The reason why? As the genny starts up the surge you get, even from a sine wave one will spike and "could" do damage to your vehicle leisure charging system.

If I was to do it again I would start off with new bigger batteries and a solar panel and work from there....

Oh, and have a great time away and safe and happy travels.

Johnny F
 
Hi, we have three genny's a 1KW clarke so called silent, a 500Watt Honda, and a 950Watt 2 stroke, this is a bit noisy but very economical, the Clarke is very powerful but a bit thirsty, and the old Honda is quiet and economical. Its abit like horses for courses, where you are, how long your static for, we have a caravan also and use the clarke or 2 stroke with this when on hols'. but always carry the little Honda in the M/H, you can't be too sure, have known a leisure battery to die and drain the others!. even the C&CC allow the use of genny's. So yes the 2 stroke will get you out of trouble no prob's, happy camping....jack
 
i think its fair to say at the price of small gennies today its wise to have one.keep it in a locker its there if you need it. nobody worries in an emergency. its when people rely on it day after day. some get up in a morning and leave them on till late evening .even the so called quiet honda gets on your nerves after a while. i have a big diesel genny very load ,but only used for drills grinders welding.if some one persists i put mine on they usually get the message. cheers alan.
 
vwalan said:
i think its fair to say at the price of small gennies today its wise to have one.keep it in a locker its there if you need it. nobody worries in an emergency. its when people rely on it day after day. some get up in a morning and leave them on till late evening .even the so called quiet honda gets on your nerves after a while. i have a big diesel genny very load ,but only used for drills grinders welding.if some one persists i put mine on they usually get the message. cheers alan.
Click to expand...

We have an onboard geny. This charges the leisure batteries at 20A if they drop below 11.5v and cuts off at 13.5v

Used it on a few aires this year with no problems. It is very quiet and runs on LPG so no extra fuel to carry. Mounted under the van behind the back axel. usually takes a couple of hours to fully charge our 3 leisure batteries.

We had one complaint after we had a short run between Aires and decided to top up the batteries that was at 11:30am We asked the Irish couple parked next to us if it bothered them. They said it didn't and they were sitting out at the side of the van talking, at 12:30 a frienchman came complaining about the noise. By this time the batteries had reached over 13v so we turned it off.

We have now decided that if we are just Aire hopping (not enough to let the vehicle charge them up) we will pull up in a layby and let the geny run to charge before we go to the next Aire.

We are now looking into adding solar as it will save gas as well.
 
How are you finding the genny and is it worth all the cash you spent on it?
I would imagine it to be one of the most important purchases you ever made for full timing.
 
many of the yank conversions use the onan gas gennies .they conme as standard in many. they arent cheap. gennies do have a place with fulltimers and longterm users as we cant just charge up before we go away for a weekend or get the fridge cool at home. its possible with the right solar set up to live almost with out gennies or hook ups. we do 6 mnths away .use a small twintub washing machine of a friend or use our spanish single tub wsh mac. both work through the inverter. normally unless we have a breakdown and need lots grinding drilling etc thegenny sits in the locker un touched. .we can power cavum cleaners or food mixers during the day with ease most days. but its nice to know we can have power if we need it. its abit like insurance be on the safe side. i,v travelled with some with really big gennies but most of the time they are not used .
 
coolasluck said:
How are you finding the genny and is it worth all the cash you spent on it?
I would imagine it to be one of the most important purchases you ever made for full timing.
Click to expand...

Hi Coolasluck

We have now clocked up over 400 hours on the Gasparini Energy 20 and it is time for a service which includes changing the exhaust as it is a two stroke and the exhaust can get blocked by the unburnt oil residue.

We would not be without it for full-timing. Always starts first time and will bring the batteries up even in snow when we didn't want to drive and the roof was covered so a solar panel wouldn't have worked even if the sun did come out. It has a slight vibration in the van which we notice more than the noise when outside the van. That said we both have gone to sleep with it on, it's located under the bed, so it cannot be that bad.

It usually runs for a couple of hours to charge the batteries but if the inverter is on it can keep on running, but then stops as soon as the inverter is turned off.
 
is it wired in for srartamatic or do you have to start it. one of my dutch mates as a really big genny on startamatic it comes on as it wants to but you can override it. sometimes the big ones are quieter than the small genny.best not stay in the snow .well its nic for one night then come down a mountain back to the sun.
 
Might pay to take a look at the comments I posted on the "Hair Dryer" thread.

May be of some use? :)
 
one thing is for certain. ehu and wild camping dont go together. neither does using lots of leccy. think and think again. do you really need to use that much. many go away for 6 mnths and never have ehu or fire a genny. if you aint got it you cant have it.
 
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