Gas vs Diesel generators.. Help? (Little Hondas vs Fisher Panda Style)

[Adelie]

Do you have an outboard?
Do you have a propane stove?

[smj]

Originally Posted by cdcorl

This is simple. Never have gas on board if you can avoid it.

Yet 90% of boats and cars are gas powered.........

[GulfportBarb]

We bought the new FP 5K diesel generator and we are very happy with it. It has a Kubota engine and much simpler than the previous generation FP which were not so reliable. It is quiet and sips diesel. We use it to recharge our batteries (don't have enough solar), make water with our Rainman watermaker, and run kitchen appliances when needed. It is easy to start and run, and it is roughly the size of a liferaft in a hard shell. We replaced an old FP genset with the new one and couldn't be happier. Easy, quiet, and efficient. The Price was high, but now that we have it we are happy. Currently cruising the Bahamas Exumas in Georgetown for several months.

[garyfrankovich]

Honda GAS generators, great little generators when use for what they were designed for, BUT on or in a Boat: NO marine approved fuel system, NO marine approved exhaust system, NO GROUND!, and makes plenty of Carbon Monoxide!

[lifeofreilly57]

Originally Posted by CaptainShack

So I've been pricing out generators for our boat.

The mission here is to...

Provide extra power when we want to run the electric drives for extended periods of time, pushing how long the batteries last when sailing isn't an option. ICW-work, heading through Okeechobee again.. ect.

I've got an older prout 33. She sails fine and is super sea-kindly. The section that was my engine bay. A fairly large box set aft of the boat, before the deck will now be empty. Its got 2 large bay doors one facing forward of the box, and one facing aft, already setup for exhaust out the rear of the boat between the hulls. "from the old engine setup"

I'm trying to understand the benefits of Diesel vs Gas and the general differences between say honda's new 3200i - at 59 pounds. Costing only 2,600$ vs say a fisher panda 6500 last quote 13k$ at 350lbs

The engine bay is clean and dry. Sealed, vented as 2 of its walls are literal doors with a 2 foot span. I must be missing something as you could have twin honda's running with there parallel connect options and popping the doors open, to start producing 6kw+ for half the price of a Fisher Pandas. Potentially more reliable?

Feel like I'm missing a step. Is exhaust the problem? Or do honda's disintegrate on a boat rapidly? Noise issue?

Thanks for shedding some light on this!

My main concern in using a gas generator is the gas, in the marine environment the alcohol in fuels these days deteriorates in your gas generators carberator if it's not used on a regular basis. Also, I'm averse to having gasoline in a confined space due to explosion risk, an explosion proof exhaust fan would be required to run prior to starting. Usually the base time to run is to turn over 4 atmospheres worth of air in the engine compartment to rid it of explosive fumes. in other words, take the cubic feet of space in the engine compartment, then use the cfm for the blower to calculate how long it would have to run to evacuate the air in the compartment. Then for safety, double the time.
Fisher Panda aren't my favorite diesel generators, in our cruising experience many of our cruising boat friends with them had repeated problems. If I were doing it I'd get a Northern Lights or other well supported generator. Getting parts in different parts of the world is not always straight forward, but I've usually been able to find parts for ours in several parts of the caribbean.
Diesel is also much less explosive than gasoline, you can throw a match into a bucket of diese and the match will go out. It has to be aerated into a fine mist to become explosive or flammable. Also, using a diesel treatment in the fuel will let it sit without deteriorating for a longer period.
One auction boat I bought had sat for 6 years in a boat yard with it's diesel tank full, just for a hoot i used my pickup battery to try starting it, to my surprise the 4108 started right up and cleared out in less than 45 seconds of cranking. If it were an old gas engine the carb and fuel system would have been fouled.
There are more considerations to your choice when planning to live with it over the long haul.

[cdcorl]

Electric outboard. We still have a propane stove, maybe induction someday. But we haven’t had to deal with gasoline in 3 years living on board, and we don’t miss it at all.

[smj]

Originally Posted by cdcorl

Electric outboard. We still have a propane stove, maybe induction someday. But we haven’t had to deal with gasoline in 3 years living on board, and we don’t miss it at all.

Electric outboard for the mothership or dinghy?

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by lifeofreilly57

It has to be aerated into a fine mist to become explosive or flammable.

Diesel is much safer than petrol, but the flammability of diesel is significantly greater than commonly believed by sailors.

Our drip fed diesel heater is lit using a small wad of paper (less than a fingernail size) dropped into the tray of diesel.

It is a bit scary to witness if, like me, you were under the impression it was very hard to ignite diesel. There is no fine mist, just a tray of diesel. There is no risk of explosion as there is with petrol, but the diesel is definitely flammable.

I can light the heater in the morning in this way even before I have had coffee, so it is not hard .

[asistephen]

Hi if it was me I’d look at the latest electric power generators a recent YouTube channel run his 50ft live aboard for two days of one charge . Some people are running there houses off these things .

You can carry them ashore and charge in about an hour while in a coffee shop . They also do a petrol generator for it that you yo can carry one handed .

I think it’s eco flow

The good thing is no installation and it’s portable. YouTube is full of reviews on these things

[Adelie]

Electric generators aren’t really generators, they are batteries with integral inverter. Marketing puffery and misuse of the word "generator".

The OP wants a generator, something that actually makes electricity rather than just storing it. That way they can be away from shore power for extended periods: day, weeks, months, even years.

[JBP]

You could, of course, pick up a used Honda or two and try it to see how you like it for practically no investment since you could easily sell it again.

[Dirk01]

Originally Posted by mvweebles

Never heard of a Fisher Panda going thousands of hours either.......

OP - if you decide in diesel inboard, and want a smaller, lighter footprint, consider the NextGen brand. Not as robust as Northern Lights, but significantly better than FP.

This belongs also to MADEHN:

What is the basis for the statement that Fischer Panda is such a bad generator manufacturer?
How does that fit in with the fact that FP is still able to sell so many generators every year? A bad product shouldn't actually remain on the market for decades with increasing quantities. That surprises me.

[merrydolphin]

Folks, it seems that he wants to put the generator in the box where the DIESEL USE to be! So can probably assume that he now has an outboard?? If so, the Honda could work well. I also had an Onan 8 KW diesel generator AND a Honda 2200. I found the Honda extremely dependable. I used it every day full time live aboard/cruise for at least 2 hrs per day, for yrs. I only used the Diesel to run the water maker about once every 2 wks. Honda ran holdover plate fridge and freezer, and battery charging on a 46 ft ketch. Went this way for many yrs. When I bought the boat I was going to convert all to 12VDC. But quite frankly this worked so well…………if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So kept it this way. And saved at least 6-8K dollars.

[CaptainShack]

We've been running an electric outboard for the past year. Its worked well.
So no gas on board as of yet. The distributer for the electric system I'm looking at using is having there technical guy run some numbers and give me some proper projections. I can share that here for those interested. Quote for twin pods, around 18kwh's of battery power and all the cables, connections, monitors, and dual throttle comes to around 17k.

Its a high cost. Good chunk is the new battery system. Which will also be our new house bats. Would be sweet to have that level of battery capacity.

The current 20hp Yanmar does need to come out no matter what. The mounts are rusted, Starter needs to be replaced and is in a horrible access point. Not to mention the prior owner made a jagged cut out of the fiberglass during install to fit the 20hp in a way he could actually reach the impeller, belts ect. Guess he measured if it would fit. Not if he could access it.

Needs to bee painted, cleaned, as does the bay. Its a bit of a mess. The cut out let water intrude into the bay during that hurricane we had drive through Saint Aug FL this past year. Water leaked in and built up over the fuel pump and I wasn't able to get back to the boat for a bit. The engine runs, just doesn't sound great.

NextGen quoted me 11.6k$ for a 5.5kw, 14k for a 9.5kw generator.
Honestly not sure its necessary. If we decide to go for this fun project best bet is finish the refit. Get the electric drives and the bats installed. See how much we actually use the motors. Get a feel for the ranges we can actually push then look at future upgrades.

Maybe a little Gas Honda is all we need to squeeze out those rare all day "day light hours" motors in tight channels like the ICW. Or maybe we want to have the option of generating a great deal of power at the flip of a switch with a proper new diesel generator in the old engine bay. Not only for the motors for distance but for generally powering our toys onboard. Hot water ect.

This forums been great source of info!

[R Hutcheson]

All other considerations aside, I don't recommend the Fischer Panda. I am on my second 12kw mini model. The first was replaced after 10 years of light use, it worked, but smoked and burned oil like crazy. I replaced it with the same model due to space constraints. We had a failure early on which resulted in the tech taking every connection off the generator and testing everything. He found no faults but when he reassembled it, it worked. We still don't know why. Also, I have gone through so many throttle actuators, the last time I ordered one the factory asked for the prior one so they could examine it. It seems to simply be a finicky and delicate unit. It is serving it's purpose, but if you have the room, I'd recommend going with a Northern Lights even if that means going with a smaller unit.