Generators: Sportsman 1,000/800-Watt Gas Powered Digital Inverter Generator Expired

I spent many years of my youth in a country where (back then) there were only 2-3 hours of electricity per day. Generators were everywhere, and I got to learn the pros/cons of different sizes and fuels. Currently I am in Florida where many homes have generators in case a hurricane wipes out the grid. IMHO regular people (not rich enough to have underground fuel tanks, etc) have a mistaken view when it comes to generators for emergencies. When we have lightning storms that take out a transformer and have to go without power for 8-24 hours... that's not a big deal to me (my youth prepped me for this)... now, going without power for weeks on end is a _true_ emergency. In that scenario I am not really concerned about running every electric device under my roof, the only thing I absolutely need to run is my fridge, one light bulb and a fan (well, tiny phone charger too).

Most refrigerators made in the last 10+ years run their compressors off of an inverter, meaning they are not the high-surge-on to abruptly-off compressors of yesteryear. They start off slow and ramp up the compressor speed to match the need. My current full size double-door refrigerator only needs 600 watts at absolute full blast even with the icemaker heatstrip running. Regular operation is at around 70-100 watts on my Kill-A-Watt. An oscillating fan will use 50-100 watts. An LED light bulb, around 10w. All three of these in conjunction are well within the capacity of this little guy.

So, "why not get one just a bit bigger?" Because of fuel.
The sweet spot for generators is to use them at about 40-60% rated steady output. Any lower and you are wasting fuel in moving the metal of the larger-than-needed engine. Compare the fuel consumption ratings of similar branded generators where only the wattage varies and you will see that the differences really begin to matter when you calculate things for days at a time.

Using my example wattage above, I could run this Sportsman (rated at 6.3 hours per 0.55 gallon tank at 50% load) for 12+ hours with a gallon of gas. The 2200w model of this very same brand runs for only 7 hours on a full gallon at 50% (it won't give you more run-time if you use any less wattage since 50% is its sweet spot, hence what is used to market its duration).

Sooo, in summary, what makes these little guys great is the reduced amount of fuel I have to store for extended power outages to keep my bare basics running for weeks on end. (Ideally you'd have two generators to not overwork one single one for so long, but for a one time event they usually survive just fine) Four or five 5-gallon jugs of gas and I'm set for a couple weeks. I'd need close to double the gas with the larger model.

For short "inconvenient" outages of a few hours to a day (we get a lot of these due to lightning storms in the summer), I'd prefer a huge deep-cycle battery whole-house inverter with auto-transfer. Zero noise, no reprogramming clocks, no refueling in the middle of the night, etc.

BTW, I'm not implying that larger generators don't have their uses, of course. I have this exact model for the reasons above, and (since I don't have my dream whole house inverter yet) a larger one for shorter power outages where I can splurge to run the TV and other things. To each their own as to what they need to run and how much fuel they feel comfortable finding/storing during emergencies. Just presenting an often overlooked use-case which leads many to write these little guys off as inadequate. I actually think they are superstars.

HTH

Only if you haven't caught it.

I think you could use cheaper non inverter generator with your sump. But it is nice to have the inverter if you also want to charge/run some electronics. Google says 1/2hp sump is 1050 running and 2150-4100 starting watts, so no this wouldn't work. You probably want to check yours since that's a fairly large starting wattage gap.

The non inverter 4000watt sportman generator is $399 not on sale. I have that and it's worked fine for me. It's only a year old but it does go on sale fairly often for $220-250. I've found when Home Depot or lowes has them on sale Walmart and target usually list them on sale too and sometimes are cheaper by $10-20.