Portable generator or not?

[Wandering1]

Originally Posted by Leadfree

All of you claiming that these gens are quiet…

NO, THEY ARE NOT. NONE OF THEM. Especially when it is a low wind calm night. Maybe your TV etc drowns it on your boat, but the rest of the anchorage will certainly hear your gen. That includes the famous Honda.

Yes. You won't make any friends running any portable generator in an anchorage. Hateful things. Buy some solar

[Letterkenny]

I was running my EU2200i last night and it’s not very loud. Mostly white noise when down below and fades away quickly if you go to the next boat over. Yes I have solar but it wouldn’t be possible to have enough onboard to satisfy my loads and to be able to recharge the bank.

[sailingharry]

Originally Posted by Letterkenny

I was running my EU2200i last night and it’s not very loud. Mostly white noise when down below and fades away quickly if you go to the next boat over. Yes I have solar but it wouldn’t be possible to have enough onboard to satisfy my loads and to be able to recharge the bank.

I think that a LOT of the concerns about noise are addressed by not running it at night. Run it from noon 'till 2PM, get your batteries topped up, and then not at night. Mid day, folks should be running around doing things, dinghys are motoring, lots of fishing boats, construction equipment and trucks ashore, etc. Evening/night, things and people quiet down.



Of course, I don't spend much time in "crowded" harbors where this is an issue, so I haven't heard them. And I don't have a generator and don't make noise.

[Cheyne]

When we have to use our Honda we never start it before 9am on weekdays and 10am on the weekend. We only let it run long enough to run a tank of fuel through it. This is about 4.5 hours. Now that the days are longer we haven't used it in about a month and pry won't need it until October.

Cheyne

[Bowdrie]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

but a separate start battery is a better solution to this problem. Even better if it has its own alternator.

With me you're preaching to the choir.
We probably should save our breath.
I've been telling people that for 30+ years.
So many will spend multiple hundreds of dollars replacing a smallish stock alternator with a high-output one, and then spend hundreds more with all kinds of relays, DC>DC chargers, combiners, and various black boxes in order to put all their eggs in one basket.
You want to get a high-output alternator for your house bank? Great, then mount it somehow, (on or off engine,) and charge away into whatever kind of batts you use for the house bank.
Keep your little alternator and use it to only charge your starting bank.
Rudyard Kipling knew about keeping separate systems;
"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"

[Letterkenny]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

I think that a LOT of the concerns about noise are addressed by not running it at night. Run it from noon 'till 2PM, get your batteries topped up, and then not at night. Mid day, folks should be running around doing things, dinghys are motoring, lots of fishing boats, construction equipment and trucks ashore, etc. Evening/night, things and people quiet down.



Of course, I don't spend much time in "crowded" harbors where this is an issue, so I haven't heard them. And I don't have a generator and don't make noise.

That’s what I try to do but I also run it for a half hour or so at night just to heat up water for the admiral.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Letterkenny

I was running my EU2200i last night and it’s not very loud. Mostly white noise when down below and fades away quickly if you go to the next boat over. Yes I have solar but it wouldn’t be possible to have enough onboard to satisfy my loads and to be able to recharge the bank.

57db is not that quiet, and sounds carries extremely well over calm water. Does not indeed "fade away". 57db is of course much quieter than many other portable generators, but in absolute terms not that quiet and plenty loud enough to disturb people.


Not a big deal during the day but common anchorage etiquette says don't run it after sundown or early in the morning, if there are other boats in the anchorage.


This is an advantage of low speed diesel generators with water separator mufflers and sound enclosures. These are really not audible at all from any distance. The water separator muffler is essential because otherwise you get an annoying splash of water.

[Letterkenny]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

57db is not that quiet, and sounds carries extremely well over calm water. Does not indeed "fade away". 57db is of course much quieter than many other portable generators, but in absolute terms not that quiet and plenty loud enough to disturb people.


Not a big deal during the day but common anchorage etiquette says don't run it after sundown or early in the morning, if there are other boats in the anchorage.


This is an advantage of low speed diesel generators with water separator mufflers and sound enclosures. These are really not audible at all from any distance. The water separator muffler is essential because otherwise you get an annoying splash of water.

Technically all sounds fade away. The further away you are the less likely you will be able to hear it. Granted, a crowded mooring field like Avalon it will be more noticeable to more people given the density. When anchoring a couple days ago, I went past someone running their portable on deck and I couldn’t hear it anymore after I got two boat lengths away.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Letterkenny

Technically all sounds fade away. The further away you are the less likely you will be able to hear it...

The further away you are from the sound source, the lower the perceived sound intensity [sound pressure level, or SPL].
The rate of attenuation is approximately 6 dB, as the distance doubles.
A gain of 6 dB is actually a fourfold increase in SPL.
Each time you reduce the distance to the source, by a factor of 2, the SPL increases by a factor of 4 [Inverse Square Law]

Remember: 40 dB is 100 times louder than 20 dB. Similarly, 80 dB is 100 times louder than 60 dB. This is because the decibel scale is logarithmic, and an increase of 10 dB corresponds to ten times more power..

[Hoosiersailor]

For reference...

[Wandering1]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The further away you are from the sound source, the lower the perceived sound intensity [sound pressure level, or SPL].
The rate of attenuation is approximately 6 dB, as the distance doubles.
A gain of 6 dB is actually a fourfold increase in SPL.
Each time you reduce the distance to the source, by a factor of 2, the SPL increases by a factor of 4 [Inverse Square Law]

Remember: 40 dB is 100 times louder than 20 dB. Similarly, 80 dB is 100 times louder than 60 dB. This is because the decibel scale is logarithmic, and an increase of 10 dB corresponds to ten times more power..

And a 3dB increase is twice as loud

[sailorboy1]

I have pictures in my mind of some of the posters getting up at night and screaming at the gulls to shutup.

[Franziska]

No generator is good, but only if you don't suddenly encounter a failure in batteries or solar. Or it's overcast and/or no wind.



I have a battery issue at the moment (looks fixable in a while).
So I'm very very glad to have a Harbour Freight /Maxspeedingrod Genset as backup.

Can make water, cook,...

Runs fine, had Hondas before, great but can't say the current one is much worse.

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by Wandering1

And a 3dB increase is twice as loud

I think folks are mixing watts or sound pressure level with perceived sound.
Each 10 dB increase we perceive as a doubling of sound. The watts, sound pressure level, required to increase 10 dB is 10x. A 3 dB change in loudness is just barely perceived.

sound article

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I have pictures in my mind of some of the posters getting up at night and screaming at the gulls to shutup.

I was running my Webasto heater one evening. The exhaust was pointing away from the other boat that must have been at least 150 feet away. The guy on the other boat was fake whispering in a loud voice about jerks running their generator. So any convivial conversation we were having on our boat would have been heard by him, but a mechanical noise that must have been much quieter is what he was complaining about.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Letterkenny

Technically all sounds fade away. The further away you are the less likely you will be able to hear it. Granted, a crowded mooring field like Avalon it will be more noticeable to more people given the density. When anchoring a couple days ago, I went past someone running their portable on deck and I couldn’t hear it anymore after I got two boat lengths away.

The inverse square law, sure. But that law applies in free space, not in proximity to a water surface which reflects sound. That's why sound carries so far across water. The sound pressure still diminishes with distance from the source, but at a much lower rate.

Honda generators can be heard from far greater distances than two boat lengths, in quiet weather and over still water. They are noticeable from a cable or two away at least.

That is why so many people hate them, and why good etiquette frowns on running them early in the morning or after sunset.


I don't recommend meeting the complaints of someone bothered by your generator, with lectures on the inverse square law. If they were bothered then ipso facto, they were bothered, and you need to do something about it if you don't want to be a jerk.