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nandnjudge

Has any had any experience on generators, they seem to vary in price from as low as £250 to way over £1,000. Are they woth the money and what are their uses. Finally what are the do's and dont's. I suspect they could be very useful when it comes to wild camping

EOR

The next question is why you feel you need a generator?

Things to consider-
Always having flat batteries
Wanting to run power hungry equipment
Wild camping - no hook-ups

I had looked at getting a generator as they start at the £100 mark for a 650w model, but weigh quite a bit. I do have an additional leisure battery on my vehicle, but after a few days it tended to run flat far too quickly. But checking the charging etc. found the standard vehicle charging wasn't sufficient to cope with sustained discharges of the leisure battery which requires a slightly higher voltage charge than the normal vehicle starter batteries. I'm now in the process of revamping the charge system to be more efficient at charging. Then I don't have to carry additional weight or fit extra batteries etc.

Having said the above, every bodies requirements are different, so a bit of additional information will help us provide more specific answers to your questions

nandnjudge

Hi Steve thanks for imformative reply. My wife and I are real beginners. We are very interested to go down the wild camping route but there is one big problem, we are both very anti gas. This causes one problem, where do we get the extra power from to cook, run the TV, etc etc. There are many cooking appliances around these days that can cook a full meal that consume lower power. Have you heard any reports about the Honda silentgenerators and any of the appliances. Thanks Norman

PS I am not technical minded, so playing around with the wiring would be well beyond me

dodger148

Depends what type of van you have but the other thing to consider is the space they take up. You could consider a permanently mounted solar panel. A lot of people have them but dont expect instant charging but a decent sized one will help with the consumption the telly and lights take

andy

We've just bought a genny for our van.

Reaons :

We like to run a telly and DVD

yup... that's it...

We did want our genny to do more but after having a look into it we decided that it would not be very practical lugging round a large 2 kW unit to run say a decent sized microwave. I was quite surprised how much power those little blighters use... even the lower powered units need 3 times more than the rated value to get them started.

So we went for a cheaper (470 quid) 750W unit that's a little bit heavier and noisier (60 db @7 metres) than say a Honda suitcase job. It will also power a small hair drier at a push. I suppose that if all we ever use it for is TV and DVD then we could have gone for say the Fuji Robin 650W but it's too late for that now.

Things considered though, I do think that generators are a good idea even if you don't use them all the time. Great for those times when you can't make it to a site or are at a CL with no hook-up