Re: [A/S] Generators location

[Wyomike <mikeylikesit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy Folks,

I've been reading all these posts with interest.  My wife and I are
currently waiting for "our" Silver Trailer to find it's way into our
lives.  We lived for 7 years (2 years longer than 98% of all attemptees
last, and about 4 years longer than 95% of the same group) on sailboats
in the caribbean.  Now that we are landlubbers again, we can't stand the
thought of staying in any one place for too long, so we want our "last"
house to be a silver one.  We are looking at all brand names, including
some square older trailers with the thought of remodeling one.  After
living on boats for so long, just about any trailer seems roomy.  We
started out our married life 41 years ago in a 27 1/2' Ironwood.  Added
a couple of rooms (one for each kid) and spent about 6 good years in it. 
Finding our trailer will be like all of our important purchases.  We
figure out pretty much what we want, and then when the right one comes
along, the bells and whistles start going off and it turns out that just
the right one is there before us.  Actually, it's not that simple, but
in retrospect, that's how the story comes out.  I, of course, was
hearing those bells and whistles at nearly every boat we looked at, but
Sally has the keener sense of us and always nixed the ones we didn't
need.  ("Who needs a V8 in a sailboat?")
Anyway, what I wrote to tell you about was the fact that we lived with a
little Yamaha EF100 for 4 years.  That's how long it lasted, running
about  an average of 12 hours a day.  It was quite to begin with, but as
time went by, it got louder, but it provided such needed pleasures, that
we learned to live with it, right outside of our companion way. 
Sometimes we would pack our cushions between the hatch and it, to block
the noise a little, if we were watching a movie or something.  The
reason we had to run it so long was because we were running a 12v
refrigerator and our solar panels only provided about a quarter of the
power we needed.  We had to run it under-way at night to keep the lights
lit and the autopilot running, so the humm of that little engine became
a part of life.  It ran the charger as well as the computer and the tv
and vcr, and sometimes we'd turn off everything else (except the
charger) and run the microwave.  That would really load it down, but
never killed it and so what if potatoes took 15 minutes to cook.  
The long and short of it is, that after the first one finally ran out of
compression, we bought another and still carry that with us when we
travel.  We have a shell on the back of the truck and we park off the
beaten trail, where there's nobody to bother with it, and I carry it off
a ways and hide it in a wash or behind a bush, and run an extension cord
back to the truck and Sally can use her coffee maker and the hot plate,
(if she wants, another real labour for the generator) but best of all, I
can get up on a cold morning and dance out to the generator and start it
up (on the first pull!) and hop back in the sack till our little
electric heater takes the chill out of our tiny living quarters.  
So I just wanted you to know that there are other brands of small
generators.  My first one was a really small Honda (650, I think) that
was fine, but not as quiet as the EF 1000.  It never got a good testing
since it went down with our lightning struck boat in Key West, and never
ran right again.  I ended up giving it away, rather than to have to mess
with it every time I wanted to run it.  No refrigeration on that boat,
so we didn't use much electricity.
I also wanted to mention that in our area, Lake Havasu City, AZ, several
people have died this summer, from breathing house boat exhaust while
swimming around between the tubes.  I can remember when gasoline smelled
good!  And if you had to syphon it, you could take a mouthful without
half dying from burning and screaming.  It's what they're putting in the
gas nowadays!  
Sorry, I do go on.  Well anyway, I'm enjoying all you guy's postings and
am picking up on a lot of things that will help me to make a good choice
on our last house.

Everybody just calls me Wyoming

Wyoming