Cleaning Interior; No Electric; Inverter ??

[Sue&Von]

Trailer is parked at storage yard.
No electricity available there.

Need to run vacumn cleaner, electric drill motor, 4 inch side grinder, sabre saw, possibly circ saw (Skil), box fan (for circulation after cleaning walls), 100 watt trouble light at times.
Should only need one device running at one time.
I have 100 ft extension cord 10 gauge.
Also have some 14 or 16 gauge 100 ft cords.
And a 25 ft 14 or 16 gauge extention cord.

Lowes has a 400 Watt Power Invertor (Vector brand) for 30 dollars.

What can I expect if I hook that up to my truck and try to use the above devices in the trailer?
Will need at least 50 ft of cord to reach the farthest point from truck.

What harm might come to my truck and its battery life? and Alternator?
Will I have to leave the truck running?

[wahoonc]

Guys,
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but a 400 watt inverter is not going to be able to run much more than your trouble light The 400 watts is probably the peak rating for that unit so it will run continous at around 350 watts FWIW a average skill saw needs around 1000 watts at no load. We use 5000 watt inverters on our maintenance trucks. You could probably get by with a 1200 watt unit, barely. You would want to make sure you run the truck once an hour or so to keep from totaly draining the battery. A small generator would be a better choice if you can beg, borrow or buy one. As far as running cords, the larger the gauge (smaller the number) the better to limit line loss. Personally I don't bother with cords under 12 gauge.

Aaron

[87MH]

Individually, both the vaccuum and the circular saw will draw in excess of 80 amps from the 12 volt system.

If you do wire a converter system to your truck, I would recommend having someone do a quick calculation on what guage wires may be necessary for the interconnect.

Here in the mid-south portable generators are available at rental houses on a weekly or daily basis for a nominal sum.