📌 Is 5,000 watts ALL you really need during a blackout? What are the must-run appliances in YOUR house? 👇

Great info especially someone new to generators!

Once again a very informative video. You explain it in plain and simple English. Thanks again!

I have a Aceup Energy 4000 Watt Dual Fuel Inverter Portable Generator. The trick to easy starts on propane, is to slightly open the tank valve and bleed the line before connecting to the generator. Then choke once, pull, turn knob between  choke  and run, pull. It will consistently start on the second or third pull. By the way you can't beat this generator which is often on sale at Walmart for $420. You should get one to test.

No one ever mentions the furnace ..

What a lot of people might not realize, especially if they're worried about keeping a couple refrigerators and a freezer at temperature during an outage (especially if they were installed on dedicated breakers), is that you don't have to keep the breakers on all the time. You can go for 3-4 hours without even turning them on because they'll still be down to temperature. Even then, you can cycle them on independently for about a half hour or so, shut it off and then move on to the next saving wattage.

When the grid goes dark and the modern world dies,
A five-thousand-watt generator begins to rise.
It brings constant power to keep life afloat,
A mid-sized protector, an energy boat.
With a six-to-seven-thousand starting surge peak,
It handles the spikes of the heavy and weak.

It keeps the refrigerator running its race,
Preserving your food in a cold, quiet space.
A well pump or sump pump can cycle right through,
To keep the basement dry and the water fresh too.
A microwave hums to make dinner warm,
While LED light bulbs defy the dark storm.

Your laptop, your phone, and a large television,
Can all run together with proper decision.
A small window AC or a space heater blade,
Can take up a portion of power that’s made.
But you must stagger loads and manage the flow,
To prevent the engine from sinking too low.

Yet do not ask it to carry the whole weight,
Of massive appliances locked at the gate.
A central AC unit demands far too much,
And an electric water heater it never should touch.
The clothes dryer and oven will overload the line,
So leave them unplugged till the weather is fine.

thanks for sharing!!

Another great video, sir... Thank you!  Absolute must-have for me: SUMP PUMP!!

So much great information !!! Thx

I have an old school 5500 watt generator that runs my entire house: well pump, sump pump, furnace and fridge at the same time

That float bowl screw after it runs out of gas is important to Crack that as you mentioned and some remaining fuel does come out.

(JC) oops! I mean Outdoor Prepper. Your videos are getting better & better.  You were right on the mark in this one! Great review!
Just in the future just go by the lower number. The higher number confuses people.
You can run a lot of things with that 4000 watt generator. You explained it perfectly!
Like you. I don't need a hair dryer anymore. The other is our oil fired furnace is the most important piece of equipment in our house. Like yours it uses 120 volts. It provides both heat & hot water. We drink cold coffee in our house. I brew it hot & refrigerate it after it gets close to room temperature. We drink it that way year round.
Summer is almost over. No review on our generator? Maybe next year?
Just so you know? Our generator is a 5500 watt 240 volt inverter generator. It has electronic fuel injection like in your vehicles. We can run our entire house because the headroom on our generator is super high.
Our generator on non economy mode is 58 db. On economy mode it's 52 db. Unfortunately we just don't get to use it that often? We live on 3 phase backbone with a loop scheme. That's lineman jargon to say we only go out if the rest of the state loses power. But we are ready none the less!

Great review.  Most manufacturers do their DB check at 23 feet. Just so you get a better comparison.

Cleaning spark arrestors with a Torch is super quick, if you have one. You can get a cheap propane torch and bottle...great for many things. Nice test! I love my little Wen 2000, but definitely want another to parallel

Loud for a populated Campground could be an issue, but it looks like a great unit for a great price.

I ran 2 window units for 12hrs on my wen4800. And a box fan for me. I was shocked kids slept nice and cool I slept in the basement. During the morning fridge was running and wifi starlink and the box fan. The kids didn't even think the power was out. I need to setup my place to run with out extension cords but. My wen4800 is pretty fuel efficient

Going over this, while there are some good things in here, here are some other things that crossed my mind:
1. You are again using your toaster oven with no ground-neutral bond on the generator.  My understanding is this is not a bonded generator.  Maybe as a demonstration, you could unhook the hot wire inside the toaster oven and have it contact the case.  Then show with a digital multimeter with one prong in a neutral prong going to the generator, show that the case of the toaster oven is live and that no breakers popped.  Then try to plug in the toaster oven with a ground-neutral bond in the generator and then show with the multimeter that the breaker popped.  In other words, show what the safety system is about and how to setup the generator for safe usage.

2. You are bringing generator power into your house with no ground.  A fun thing to do on a low humidity day is show how much the voltage floats on the generator when it is not properly grounded.  This can get to be a little hazardous, so be careful.  Granted, when you go through your transfer switch, the main panel in your house both has a ground-neutral bond and a ground bond by default, so you are doing this right part of the time.  Just when it comes time to do the video, you are not showing people who do not have a transfer switch to go through their main panel how to do this safely.

3. You didn't show that you need to turn off ECO mode and let the generator run for 5 minutes with no load before shutting it off.  You are heat soaking your generator if you don't do this.  A good way to make your generator die young, especially heat sensitive components like the inverter.

4. For infrequent use, nothing beats propane.  I am not sure of your issues with "hard starting" on propane and I have a similar small generator.  I bleed the air out of the hose going to the generator.  I put the generator into choke.  I pull once.  I put the generator into the 'run' setting and pull a second time.  It starts every time.  The only reason why it wouldn't start right away like this is if I didn't purge the line or didn't use choke to help pull the propane into the generator through the demand regulator.  And for cleaning the spark arrestor, it takes a lot longer to clog up when running on propane as burning propane doesn't produce soot like gasoline does.  The only thing producing soot is the little bit of oil that ends up in the combustion chamber and gets combusted.  So on propane, you can actually go a long time between cleanings because of its clean burning nature.

5. If you want to show problems with starting things on the generator, here are some things you can do.
   a. Have the camera on the generator and see what indicator lights come on.
   b. Have a desktop computer or even UPS hooked up to the generator while say starting your air compressor.  It may be your newish air compressor has a soft starter in it.  My newish air compressor has a soft starter.  The UPS / surge protector will also complain when your wiring isn't right.  Really, with improper wiring you are just asking for your sensitive electronics to get damaged.
   c. To really show the starting surge problem, you need to dig up appliances you know have hard starting motors.  An old fridge.  An old window air conditioner.  For your big generator, the whole home AC, especially if you know it doesn't have a soft starter and it is a traditional "single stage" air conditioner.

You know a lot of people will hook up electronics like a computer or TV to the generator and say their old window AC with hard starting motors and see their electronic devices reset from the disruption in power from the generator.

6. Look for noisy power from the generator when there is no ground and no ground-neutral bond.  Just put a digital multimeter between the hot or neutral and ground prong on the generator and you will immediately see some 'odd' things happening.  But definitely if you can get your hands on a O-scope to see the waveform, you will see the noise if you connect between either hot or neutral and the ground prong when there is no ground-neutral bond.  I have found an analogue security camera will also show this electrical noise if you can get it to initialize with the noisy power.  Then do again with proper wiring as in a ground-neutral bond and proper grounding.  Worlds of difference.  Your 'testing' just didn't show what the real problems are.  I have done the testing myself.  It is definitely there.

7. You could also show people that they can bring in power from a generator like this with a TT-30 cable and a TT-30 to triple NEMA 5-20 adapter.  The NEMA 5-20 plugs are generally designed to also handle NEMA 5-15, your 'Edison' outlet.  I say this because a lot of people will use a NEMA 5-15 extension cord and way overload it, creating a fire hazard.  Apparently people need to be shown the correct way to do this so they don't burn down their house in an extended power outage.

I'm so lost on why we're looking at 1800 appliances on a 4000 w running generator like if they're going to work

Draining the fuel tank and carb is absolutely vital to keeping these gensets running.  My standard practice is to drain the fuel tank through the carb drain.  Then I pour a cup of diesel fuel or tranny oil or even 2-stoke oil into fuel tank and let it drain to the carb bowl and store with this in the carb bowl.  To reuse drain the carb and fill with gasoline.  The diesel fuel in carb prevents gunk buildup and cleans the carb.   I have never had a starting problem coming out of storage.  And I always use 15w40 oil in the crank case. These little engines work hard.