My fatherinlaw has a cheap generator. He purchased it some years ago and is in the 4000 watt range with a briggs flathead on it. Has very few hours and runs well enough. My wife expects me to maintain and get it out for use when needed. Both my wife and fatherinlaw has very high and unrealistic expectations of this generator. At best it will run the furnace, tv, a couple lights, an oxygen maker, and a c-pap machine along with a fridge if you are careful. Even then it is working right along. Other things can be ran if you are on site to manage it. My fatherinlaw cannot manage it. Running it with just the c-pap and oxygen maker is more than likely a waste as it does not make for a load. Planned power outage of 4 to 8 hours at night is what we have used it for the last three years. Cheap generators are handy, have some value depending on age and time of year, but leave alot to be desired, waste about as much energy as they produce under light loads, are expensive to run for any length of time, require maintnence, planning, extension cords, are a pain to set up, take down and prepare for storage, require a fair amount of gasoline on hand, are to gutless to run most central air conditioners and are pretty much pointless to own if you are planning on hooking it up to the whole house with proper up to code connections, and take far to long to get them serviced when they conk out. The cheap units of this size really are not made to run at rated power for very long esp. in hot weather. They are loud, attract everyone that wants to borrow or steal it, have to be babysitted to much of the time and are a false sense of security for most. Buy a large one gasoline powered with a code approved hook up and plan on lots of gasoline along with someone to help you get it into position and back into storage, or buy a standby unit installed permanent to natural gas or propane that starts and stops auto. If all you need is something to run a sump pump or furnace to save yourself property damage or run sleep apnea type stuff then buy a Honda unit that can be carried around in one hand with idle down feature on it but enough power to do what you need not what you would like to have.