Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW Fireguy
With all due respect you don't buy a one ton dually and complain that you can't get the same milage that you get from you smart car. We have the 6.5KW commercial Onan and for what we wanted it's the ticket. I don't worry about what I can or cannot run. I can run everything I want when I want to run it. The noise or vibration is neglible for me. If you are going to go with an LP Onan it likes propane and you will have to deal with that issue in some respect. For us we have two 40lb tanks onboard and carry additional 30lb tanks. Our usage is about to change as the gen will predominantly be used to charge our lithium bank when mother nature prohibits sufficient solar input. Secondarily the gen will our AC units beyond the 2-4 hour range they can run on batteries.
For us the large internal gen was what met our needs at the time. We have invested in more renewable forms of energy and as such how we use the gen will change over the next months as I complete the installation of batteries and chargers. Lastly we won't need to carry as much propane. For us we never intended to run our large genset 24 hours a day. Ironically during our last major power outage in the PNW two winters ago we were very comfortable in our heated and powered 5er thanks to our Onan.
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No complaints here, knew exactly what I was getting into, just not practical for long time use, great for emergency. If someone wants to sit next to a propane source or want to go hunt down propane , then by all means haul a bunch of propane tanks, and have at it , because you will have to if you think you are going to run that Onan LP for hours on end, just a fact.
All some of us are pointing out is whats going to happen, plus you are going to spend thousands on the Onan setup, plus thousands more for solar, batteries, inverters etc, this doesn't come cheap, and the benefits are what, and what is your return on this investment. Now if someone needs to sit for days ,or weeks run all their air conditioners, microwave etc, yes you need to invest thousands to do that dry camping
Many ,and I am one, I dry camp for a few days, and usually we don't need air conditioning, I don't want to be anywhere its hot, the object is to get out of the heat. I take two 5 gallon cans of gas a Honda 2000, and I am covered. If that microwave needs to be run, we just make sure nothing else is on, for that short time. We can watch TV to our hearts content.
I have read many times about guys buying these Onan generators, and then wondering why. Just want to the OP to know it can be an expensive mistake for what you get out of it .