Sportsman inverter generator sale at HD

[TWIH]

This is on sale today (and for awhile) at Home Depot, just noticed:

Sportsman 2,200/1,700-Watt Gasoline Powered Recoil Start Portable Digital Inverter Generator with Parallel Capability
Model#  802870 
[/url][url=https://ib.adnxs.com/getuid?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.homedepot.com%2Fp%2FSportsman-2-200-1-700-Watt-Gasoline-Powered-Recoil-Start-Portable-Digital-Inverter-Generator-with-Parallel-Capability-802870%2F302730618%23customer_reviews](266)
Was $599.00
$34900 
Save $250.00 (42%)

[Wabbit]

8 month short and sweet review - light usage(approx 50 hours)

Price point: $171 store pick up @Walmart.

Short and sweet part. At this price($150ish), buy it and baby it like a newborn if your @3000ft elevation or less(manual states 3000ft or less).

My experiences.
-Opened box, read instructions(kinda), filled with oil. Ran it for about a half hour and swapped out oil. Oil was darkish. Ran it for another hour and swapped oil again(might be Overkill but I knew I had to baby it from other reviews), oil looked good. Filled it with a synthetic oil(I plan on using synthetic here on out for this).

-Max altitude used was 9300ft. Used it with a 25amp charger. Ran fine at first, but after 15-30 minutes bogged out and started blowing smoke(oil). Tried this a few times, this was the result every time(about 4 tries). Was able to run charger for hours if I went with 10amps.

-About 5000ft is where I could use batttery charger at full(25amps) for hours(2-3 never needed it more than that) without it blowing smoke. Generator was "working hard" though.

-@1000ft works great, feeds charger good and generator doesn't work as hard as it did @5000ft.

I think my charger(25amp) is close to Max for this generator(1000w surge\800w continuous). I am happy with it but keep in mind, other generic generators in this wattage range are $400+ so that's why I baby it.

Not a great review, but in my defense, I'm pretty lazy.

[justjim]

I do not baby mine. It pushes 36 amp from my Meanwell. It spent everyday for two weeks charging batteries in Ehrenberg last year. I've used it at high altitude in Colorado. It's splended as far as I am concerned.

It seems that I have seen someone pleased with either the 2200 or the dual fuel version. I would love it if mine was dual fuel.

Clicking on the link I also noticed that Champion abandoned the square look. Those little 2000 w generators just purred.

[Texjbird]

I  bought a 1,000watt Champion in May 2017 at Home Depot.  I never opened it.

Since I probably can't lift 100watt or larger solar panels even if I did have a flat surface and sense enough to mount and hook them up plus a battery bank.  I'm wondering  how I would hook up batteries to a generator so that I would be able to  have some kind of basic lighting and use my tablet and cell phone.  On the generator I can plug in 12v or whatever regular 110 or is it 120 ? items into the plugs on it.  Would it be genny + plug in battery charger to genny then put charger onto battery and how would I wire the two batterys together for 12v?

I'm working all night so I just check back in on the forum for "Break Time". 

Queenie is having a lay down strike. Lazy ol' thing

TJB

Maybe this should be in a solar forum/thread/?

[Wabbit]

Texjbird, sounds like you got it. Generator - plug in charger - battery.

It would be tough to "fully" charge the battery, but just get a cheapo marine\deep cycle battery and replace it when it doesn't hold the charge you need.

[justjim]

one of the reasons we say that it is not possible to really charge a battery with a generator is the amount of time and the expense. So it is possible but not practical. Then again I have seen the Sportsman 800/1000 charge batteries from 10 am till 7 pm and still have enough in its half gallon tank to run another hour charging my lawn tractor battery. It excels at the ultra low load of finishing a battery while sipping gas and purring along almost unheard.