Yamaha deal at Costco

[r carl]

Originally Posted by Al and Missy

There is a video showing you can do the same with the Hondas. The guy hooked up a 1000, a 2000, and a 3000 all at the same time, always starting a generator after it was hooked up. I suspect you can do it with all of them. I wonder if the pairing cables on the Costco only synchronize the generators, based on the apparent size of the wire in the pictures which looks pretty small. The Honda pairing cables can also carry the full load current so that you can plug the RV into the RV receptacle on the Companion model.

Al

I have paired a Honda 2000 to a 3000 many times. They are bullet proof.

[Mollysdad]

Originally Posted by Al and Missy

Good that you hesitated.....the human ear has a non-linear sensitivity curve. Waninae39 is correct. A 10 dB increase is perceived by the human ear as being twice as loud.

Al

Um, I've never heard that (no pun intended) but as a measure of energy, 3 db. is a doubling of power.

I agree that hearing is non-linear, but it's very subjective as to "loudness". Is the kettle drum in the symphony 100 times louder than the piccolo? Now we're into dynamic range, and I don't want to veer into the weeds.
My friends all claim the TV commercials are louder than the program, and I explain that they're not, on a VU meter they're the same, but the commercials are compressed so the perceived loudness is greater.

[Mollysdad]

Do you Costco members feel you get your money's worth?
My nearest Costco is about 20 miles away and membership is $60 now.
I used to be a Sam's club member, but got aggravated with the total lack of customer service. Asking anything resulted in blank stares or, "This isn't my area, man."

[rmkrum]

Have memberships to both, use the heck out of them for many years...have worn out copies of their cards, we have had them so long, believe it or not.

Don't experience the customer service issues--folks in the stores I go to are on the spot helpful, or will get someone to help quickly.

[DKB_SATX]

Originally Posted by Mollysdad

Do you Costco members feel you get your money's worth?
My nearest Costco is about 20 miles away and membership is $60 now.
I used to be a Sam's club member, but got aggravated with the total lack of customer service. Asking anything resulted in blank stares or, "This isn't my area, man."

Coffee bean savings come close to making my Costco membership worth it on their own. I get my glasses there as well, with good service and savings. Their prices on car rentals are good, services and various odds and ends like toilet paper and paper towels and wine are generally good deals, etc. It depends on how you shop. They were doing realtor referral kickbacks and kickbacks on mortgage brokerage during the housing boom and we moved at that time, selling one house and buying another. I probably cleared enough off that to pay for about 20 years of the basic membership.

Not everything is the best deal you can find, but their house-branded stuff is often excellent and a good deal. Typical for the segment, they're not the best place to go to find US-made merchandise. For us it's more than worth it. Our nearest Costco is 12 miles away, we probably go around 2x/month.

Oh, and they're quite serious about their satisfaction guarantee. I think people abuse it a bit, and for that reason they tightened up their return policy in certain areas (electronics mostly.) I've returned one or two things that turned out to be junk, and we bought a stainless propane grill that, had we bought it elsewhere, would've had a 2-year guarantee on the burner and such but a) because it was Costco it was a 5-year guarantee, and b) a different Costco looked up the old purchase from 4 years earlier and printed out a copy of the receipt so we could get a free replacement burner assembly from the company. Excellent service from Costco, and I've no doubt that if the manufacturer hadn't made good Costco would've exchanged it for a new grill.

[Zeppelinium]

Originally Posted by Al and Missy

... I wonder if the pairing cables on the Costco only synchronize the generators, based on the apparent size of the wire in the pictures which looks pretty small. ...

I looked at the schematic for the Hondas. It turns out it's dead simple--the parallel cables basically hook the outlets together. I assume that the inverters sense the connection and automatically get in sync. The one thing to note is that the parallel connection bypasses the circuit breakers.

Before I looked at the schematic I would have bet that the parallel wires carried DC from the generator to assist the other inverter, but that's not the case--it's AC at 110V going between the units.

I agree the wires look too small to carry 15 amps, but I've run the AC off a pair of Hondas and the wires don't seem to be bothered.

Zep

[Zeppelinium]

Originally Posted by Chollabill

Hey Zep, My burning (pun intended) question is will they survive 7 days at Black Rock City with a few hour long white outs thrown in? I know the Hondas do well, so I'm leaning in that direction. Last year convinced me of the need for 24/7 A/C. Chollabill

I used two Hondas two years ago and they did fine in the dust. I've never had to use the AC more than 3 days, and then only for 2-3 hours. I guess last year was pretty bad.

Can't use the Hondas this year because Marty will be on a separate trip in her new Flying Cloud, so I needed to get my own gensets.

For others, yes, 3 db is double loud--check your natural log (log base 2) tables. I grabbed these units for two reasons (1) Costco guarantee and (2) light weight. But I am worried about the db level. I'm thinking of building a small "chimney" filled with fiberglass to eject the sound upwards.

Zep