5th Wheel and traveling-7 weeks-BOON-DOCKING?

[JimIrish7]

ok- thanks
Could I go with one and would it give me enough power to run at least one air conditioner and fridge?

[JimIrish7]

ok and do you use a soft start capacitor?

[RickyRobert]

If you decide on going the route of outboard generator(s), be sure to take all performance and reliability characteristics into account: price (of course), fuel consumption (long term costs of differences in burn, plus carrying the extra fuel one unit needs over the other to have it last for the length of your stay), running amps (not a lot of difference between 25 and 23.6, so add your numbers up), cleanliness of output power (both good, but onboard electronics like best over second-best), reliability (many, many real-world reviews out there on the internet), weight (if the difference between manufacturers is significant), noise factor, etc. In other words, do your homework with respect to your needs - many of the commentators above have chosen the right unit for their budget/use; how does yours match up? (And you do need to decide if you're going with one larger or two smaller generators.)

[mlh]

Originally Posted by JimIrish7

ok and do you use a soft start capacitor?

No I don’t use one but I would like to have one. They are a definite benefit. Some members here have an Onan portable generator 4500 watts that seams to be an excellent value. The Honda is a great generator but they aren’t the only one. For the money I’ll buy something else. Don’t forget generators have a start up wattage like the 3500 Harbor Freight and a running wattage. The 3500 Harbor freight running watts is 3000. As far as I know all generators are that way. When you decide what size generator you need to buy the running watts.
Lynwood

[JimIrish7]

Great information- thank you

[traviswayne]

1st, hope you enjoy your new 5er. I see on a previous post (from feb) its new, and appears to have the residential fridge.

We have a 2018 high country 365bh and have camped a bit boondocking, including a couple of two week stints in colorado at altititude as well as traveling with the odd stop in truck stops, wal-marts etc getting to destinations.

A thing to consider is your fridge. Even with 2 lead acid batteries, w/o shore power you'll need to recharge the batteries every 5 hours or so if you use nothing else. If you run the heater, then it will be shorter.

In our experience, traveling in hot climate and pulling off to sleep, you'll need to run at lease one AC to cool down the rig enough to sleep in. We use the champion dual fuel (3500 watt?) and it will run one AC fine (no soft start), charging the batteries and such for about 5 hours on one tank. Pulling off around 10 p.m. and firing up the genny, this gets us to about 3 a.m. which is fine most of the time, it runs out of gas and we are cool until we wake up, then fire it up again for an hour or two to fix coffee/eat and recharge the batteries and hit the road again.

camping above 8000' feet in colorado last in july, we never have to run the AC. Had to run the heater at night most every night.

I've since added 400 amp hours of additional battery for a total of 600 amp hours, this runs the rig almost all day (no AC) with about 3 hours of generator per day to recharge. I've added a 2nd 3000 watt inverter which i simply plug the rig into, simulating "shore power" to run tv's, coffee makers, dishTv, microwave etc. (have to manage what we turn on, and turn off the on-board charger at the breaker box)

When camping in heat above about 90 degrees, one AC is going to have a hard time cooling the rig. We boondoced last year in June on the beach in South texas, temps about 90 and one AC running full time barely brought the inside temps down about 10 degrees below outside temps. By 10 p.m. it was cool enough to sleep.


hth
Travis

[GreG L.]

We went with an onboard generator (had a 3500 portable before) for several reasons. This is just about me, your needs will be different.

Don't have to carry gas in the bed of the truck (it fills up quickly without gas cans), changed to taller propane tanks fore more capacity.
Don't have to go to two places to get diesel and gas.
Don't have to carry 1 or 2 generators in the bed (space issue). No lifting
Don't have to lock up the generators (in the bed and when in use while away). No lifting
Can run both air's and other things without issue.
Feel much better leaving the pets alone with an onboard generator. Thieves don't care if you have pets onboard or not.
Maintenance on one generator, no lifting.
Did I mention no lifting?

[suny07]

Originally Posted by JimIrish7

ok- thanks
Could I go with one and would it give me enough power to run at least one air conditioner and fridge?

Hi,

with a plus 3000watt Generator you can run 1 AC and the rest of your camper.
When you install the soft start devices you can run 2 AC's of it.

I personally like the Champion 3500 with remote start so I do not have to crawl out all the time and crank it https://www.championpowerequipment.c...tart-inverter/

Mike

[JandC]

I'll just throw one other thing out there when it comes to making the decision on having an on-board gen set installed or hauling one around in your truck bed.

When we started we had two Montana fivers in a row. We didn't have gen sets in either one, but when we purchased the second one we decided to start carrying a large generator in the truck (we were full timing).

I think we used it once. It ended up being a pain and was just easier to go ahead and book where we could get full hookups. The next three RVs all had OEM generators and we never fail to run them when we want/need to run them. It is nice to be self contained with little or no effort, especially when it is raining.

[Hit The Road]

We went with that option. Push the button and you are in business. We are going to upgrade the propane tanks in the future!