I purchased this portable unit about 3 weeks ago, and it is a wonderful generator. I do have a few issues with it though. First off, it is way to loud. I had to build a house for it about 100 ft away from the house to avoid hearing about it from my neighbors. My other issue is being able to read the fuel gauge to know how much fuel is in the tank without me having to look directly inside the tank. I had a GP3250, and it was very easy for me to read the fuel gauge, but the fuel gauge for the 7500E is not reader friendly. Besides those issues, I have to admit that it has a lot of power to keep your house powered up for a lengthy period of time.

Generac makes a quality product at an affordable price; plus I prefer to support American made products. I bought this model on sale for $800. In the past 15 months, I've only put 75 hours on this unit to date (although it ran for 72 hours recently with several cooling/fueling/oil check breaks - at 40 hours, I hadn't burned a drop of oil but I did the first oil change). Basic maintenance is simple enough for anybody to perform. The GP8000E feeds my main panel and powers everything I demand in my house, such as my pellet stove, electric range, well pump, lights, microwave, outlets and TV. I haven't tried powering my hot water heater but at 5,500 watts, I think it would do just fine if I shut some stuff off. It sits approximately 20 feet from my bedroom; the noise is barely noticeable when I am laying in bed. I do ensure that my carbon monoxide detectors are on whenever I have this unit powering my house. It's much more fuel efficient than I expected, averaging around 2 hours per gallon of fuel. With all of this being said, I do hear a bit of occasional surging once the temperature hits 25 degrees or below but it has no performance issues. In my opinion, portable gas powered generators are the way to go for powering a house during an emergency. Natural gas isn't an option in my area so we are limited to propane; getting a propane delivery after being without power for a week isn't always an option!

I had been looking at a generator for awhile and contemplated many different brands. For the price, wattage and most importantly, name brand quality, I found that Generac was the way to go. Spend the money and get the electric start. Save yourself the aggravation at using a pull start. Just push a button and rock n' roll. Upon first unboxing it, everything was zip tied together very neatly and it was well packaged. It wasn't so overdone that you spend hours cutting away zip ties like you do with your kids toys on Christmas morning. Cut a few of the zip ties and you are ready to connect the batter cables. The generator was SUPER easy to get set up. If you can use a wrench or socket set, then you are good to go. You don't have to be super handy at all to do it. The directions were very simple and easy to follow. A matter of securing the wheels to the frame with the axle and washers (Provided) and also securing the pulling handle to the frame. Other than connecting these bolts and two very small bolts for the batter connection, it was a snap and took only minutes to unbox and be fully ready to use. The generator comes with an initial package of oil and it's a matter of opening up the oil valve and pouring it in. Heck, I can do that. This unit is very heavy. So if you plan on wheeling it around your house, or you have an outlet on a further away side of your house, just remember that you may be trudging it through feet of snow, like I do in Maine. So just have a plan in place to have it put somewhere for awhile or the ability to wheel it around with ease. Overall, the generator just looks cool. The black and orange color is cool looking. Obviously not a requirement and individual tastes vary, but it looks like a well built machine and the colors pop. The Generac name is why I went with this one. From past experience of buying cheaper name "knockoffs" to save a few bucks, I have always had it come back to bite me. It's true that you get what you pay for. This unit was priced the same as the knockoffs, too... so why not go for quality, even if you pay just a tad more. But I was very pleased with the price point. LAST, and my ONLY complaint was that I thought the unit came with the L14-30R cord. It DOES NOT. So, if you plan on hooking it up to a 30amp power source, with the 4-prong outlet you will have to purchase the cord separate. Other than that, I am 100% please with the purchase and think you will be too. It powers everything in my house that I need.

Ever since I bought this in May of 2014, I have yet to get it started using the battery. I can pull start it but my wife can't due to the fact it's pretty hard to pull start. Battery doesn't even turn over the motor even after a full charge. Called customer service today and they were helpful but now I have to bring to get it fixed at a authorized dealer.

Although we've only had the generator for a couple weeks it's already proved its worth. Sturdily built this champ can take it. We opted for a portable instead of a whole house so we could take it to our homestead in MO. Took me awhile to get power running because it wasn't clear the 240 circuit breaker was the breaker for the entire electrical panel not just the 240 breaker. *facepalm* I wanted to get a maintenance kit but couldn't find the one I needed for my particular model. Anyone know?

This seems to be a good generator is provided backup power for me for 4 days straight. The only thing I wish the generator had was a percentage used of power as other generators offer that feature. The only feature offered on this is the hour meter which is very good for maintenance

this machine is a beast! it is heavy and powerful and should provide the essential back up power my home needs. The manual for the initial set up was small in size which was a shame as a big machine should equal a big picture. the generator is on wheels but is not easy to move as it is soooo heavy. it also would have been nice if generac offered a custom cover for the machine as well.

I purchased my GP6500 primarily to run power tools. I have a large lot which makes it impractical to use an extension cord. I opened the box and followed the instructions on assembly which was easy (putting oil in the machine, wheels on etc.). I put gas in it and it started flawlessly. I have run a 15 amp table saw and shop vac simultaneously with no problem. In addition, I plugged in a power washer and ran it for hours without an incident. When you start it and hear it run you can tell it is a quality machine. It has a lot of power and runs very smooth. I even use it when I have access to power because I like it so much.

Bought for emergency use only, to power a sump pump and maybe a gas fired heating system in winter. Used only once so far, to help a friend during power outage. It started up easily. They were able to run their heating system (hot air), which was nice because temp was down to freezing at night. Since then I tested it one other time during mid-winter, to make sure it would work in cold weather, and it started up no problem. This unit has one duplex outlet with 15 amp breaker. Only enough power for essentials, but that's all I wanted. It is relative small, and one able bodied person can move it if required.

The generator is being used to charge batteries and run a small cottage at the same time. No complaints about weight and size as it's expected. It fired right up and started going to work. The only problem we have encountered is the 30AMP breaker keeps tripping if we run small window air conditioners (5AMP) or anything at 1,500 watts=12.5AMPs for a brief 5 min. The offgrid includes four banks of 48V AGM batteries. We set the Magnum inverter down to 80% and AMPs down to 38. This seems to be helping but we can't put a larger load on. So we installing a 50AMP plug on the house with a cut off and bipass, essentially we will be running the 30AMP plug to charge the batteries and the 50AMP to run the house. Typical charge on those batteries is around 4 hours. If you plug an appliance at 12.5 AMPs direct to the generator - there's no difference in load sound. As a building contractor we designed our own off grid system and will be writing a book with as much detail as possible.