Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Stocking
 best solution by far --if possible.
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But even better is to insulate and seal the whole
engine room, THEN put a genset in a soundbox inside THAT

And on rubber feet.
The only problem with that setup (which is what I have) is that you might once in a while forget to shut down the genset because you forgot it was running . . .
Concerning Phasor and other
cheap one-cylinder gensets versus three-cylinder heavy duty sets like the Northern Lights -- it's a question of priorities. You save
money and, more importantly for many of us, weight -- with the one-lunger rototiller
motor jobs. They are good enough for occasional use and they will last longer than suitcase generators (mostly).
But for real long term use, you can't beat the heavy duty ones. They are much quieter, much smoother, and will go for thousands of hours. My Kohler is rated for continuous use -- as prime power. The tradeoff is cost and weight (lots of weight -- my 6.5kW set weighs about 500 pounds with the sound shield). Not worth it for everyone. But if you spend months a year on the hook or on a non-powered
mooring like I have -- worth its weight in gold, and no way would a light-duty Kubota-powered job be any kind of substitute.
Among heavy duty three-cylinder
marine sets, Northern Lights has clearly got the best reputation. The Lugger engines are supposed to be masterpieces of engineering. But I am very happy with my Kohler as well -- it is
Yanmar powered and hasn't given me a bit of trouble which wasn't caused by my own stupidity -- 13 years old and still going strong.
One more tip -- if you have a charger/inverter with power limiting feature (it supplements genset power with inverted power to "shave peaks" from your power demand -- you can use a smaller genset than your maximum expected load and run the genset more efficiently. And at the same time saving
money and weight. If I were building my boat all over again, I would use the smallest Northern Lights set, which puts out 4.5kW at 230v. I would use my charger/inverter to cover the occasional shortfalls of power over 4.5kW.