Surviving a Power Outage Without a Whole House Generator -Top Tips & Tricks - With EcoFlow Delta Pro

I've been asked to show my setup to show how we uh how we managed uh to keep our Our Place running comfortably very comfortably during the tornado that took out our power for days and uh so um I'm kind of late in doing that we've got a hurricane barreling down on Louisiana right now and uh but anyway let me show you what what I've got what worked and what didn't work and I also need someone uh to comment that might know a little something about propane propane hoses things like that CU I've got an issue with one of my ecoflow products that I need addressed and I can't find anything yet so I need a little help on that so if you'll keep watching I would appreciate it so this is the room where I keep all my products um I keep my ecoflow this is a ecoflow Delta Pro ecoflow uh Delta X Delta Pro extra battery um the battery that that matches up with the uh the Delta Pro go ahead and turn them on for you and when you turn on one you turn on both I hadn't turned them on in a long time they're still at 100% I probably hadn't turn them on except to check uh percentage of charge in months uh but about once a month every few weeks I'll turn it on just to make sure it's still at 100 so this is the battery this is the brains of it and a battery uh when I bought this I did a review on it a lot of people said well you're just not going to find um uh you're going to find it to be a waste of money whatever I did not I found that it did everything I asked it to do and then some so let me tell you what how we powered everything up what we did uh and what we've done since then now I have done I have made some upgrad since then so how I run it next time will be a little bit different than how I run it this time so this time we had I had extension cards got four Outlets here we had extension cards uh one big extension cord running into the house a big fat one like a number 12 uh 122 uh running into the house had a bunch of these little diverters or three-way plugs and we just had two or three extension cords running in the house and run our TV our entertainment system it ran a refrigerator and another cable card running to a freezer that I ran sporadically you don't have to run a freezer very often but I ran that as needed um I've got a thermometer in the uh refrigerator and in the freezer telling me where they stand it's a little Bluetooth thermometer that I love keeps lets me uh keep an eye on freezers and stuff without opening them because if you open them you're letting all the cold air out so really nice to have I'll put a link to that below because it may be something you want to look into but the ecof flow from a single plug coming out uh ran those things that I needed to run now it wasn't in the middle of August it wasn't hot it was May 23rd if I remember right and with the tornado with the storm came a coldfront and it was unnecessary to run air conditioning now as it as the days drug on I got to uh wondering if that was going to be the case if it was going to start warming up and I would need air so I added a wind unit in our bedroom that we could go in there if necessary and cool off I didn't I didn't use it I didn't wind up having to use it so that's good because the power came on like a day or two before it started getting up in the '90s funny story my son-in-law came over after we'd been without power for about 3 days and I think he expected to see I think he expected to see us kind of huddled over a uh a can of soup heating up on a candle and we she we walked in and we were watching TV kick back in our electric recliners and my wife was covered up with a little blanket so we were doing good he was he was extremely surprised I think when he Round the Corner because he expected to see us kind of uh really in distress and we were not so it did everything we need to do so how did we run it during the day we uh would charge with a generator keep it charged uh usually just one time maybe two times with a generator to to charge them up and then at night we didn't use any uh any generator all we had at night was uh was running a fan in our bedroom uh in the refrigerator so at night very little draw refrigerator fan uh I think as far as I remember that's about all we ran at night so it ran all night long still have 40 or 50% in the morning but I've also got this eof flow generator and what would have been nice is if that had worked correctly now the generator nothing wrong with it but I can't get the hose supplied to run on my big propane tank that's in the ground it'll run fine on a bottle and uh that may be have how I have to run it unless somebody one of y'all can come up and tell me what I need to know and I'll again we'll discuss the hose on this discuss what what I need from from somebody that's a little bit more knowledgeable than me uh in in just a second but we would charge this up at night and it was uh it was plenty uh to carry this all night long then in the morning I'd recharge it and and it would run all day long and then I'd charge it one more time for just a little while to get it back up to 100% uh as you know getting towards Sundown so this ran fine the extension cards is a good way to go I've changed since then I will not run it that way now I've had had electricians come and install a generator plug with a manual transfer switch so I will do things different uh uh from now on because I I won't run suspension cards all over the house wasn't a hassle wasn't a big deal we again made it fine but just so much nicer to have uh to have this powering every plug in the house now you have to be careful what you plug in because it's going to suck it dry uh sooner than you know if you if you leave um all your Phantom draws on all the things in the house that show a little digital thing uh leave them on all the time you're going to draw it because they're all they're on all the time just be judicious about what you plug into the wall uh when you've got this run through a generator plug and running the whole house you got to be careful what you run because you can definitely overdo it certainly can't turn on anything that's 220 this unit is not 220 ecoflow has just come out with a an ecoflow Delta Pro 3 that is 220 and I'll put a link to this one I'll put a link to the battery I'll put a link to the ecoflow Pro 3 uh Delta Pro 3 in the link below and they've also got an ultra now you start getting into some pricey things uh so you know you've got to keep that in mind but if if if you've got some money and want to protect yourself and not have to listen to a generator all night which we did not have to do because we had this the generator didn't run at night the generator run uh as night approached I would charge it up and then I started off when these hit 100 and I can tell all that on my phone if got a ecoflow has an app on my phone I can tell where my state of charge is and I can go out there and uh and you know kill the generator when my uh my appliances when when my Deltas reach 100% And then I'm good all night long so that's what we did let me show you some of the problems I had and ask your help uh on the uh the propane situation on my little smart generator here and uh and also show you the upgrade we've made on uh on being able to supply the whole house uh a little bit more conveniently than running extension cords all the way through the house so what are the improvements what have I done to upgrade since that event well first of all I added some solar I don't have it up right now because I've got to fix it to the roof but I do have it I'm solar capable I have a hole in the wall right there that I drilled this is uh we're in a kind of a a spare Pantry here uh where where I have everything stored it's a it's a air conditioned semi a conditioned and I keep everything in here but I'm able to run the cable for my generator the cable from my my either generator the cable outside uh so since then I have upgraded uh and and got a little solar not a lot it's 260 wat panels that eco sales it's their uh uh portable foldable panels and they do a pretty good job uh I have had them up I just took them down because I don't have them affixed to the roof yet so I just put them up to to see what they would do how much generation I'd get and uh and they they do a decent job they certainly work so that brings us back to the um to the generator here this is the ecoflow Smart generator it's dual fuel it's uh gasoline or propane the problem is it has a proprietary Quick Connect I like the Quick Connect but this one is unlike any other Quick Connect you're going to find anywhere else it is ecof flows proprietary Quick Connect so I can't just uh put on another hose I have to use the hose that comes with it well the hose that comes with it has a regulator on it because it's it's used on a propane tank uh it's for use on it maybe mostly in the RV industry so the tank has a regulator on it well my 500-gallon tank in the ground has a regulator on it too and unfortunately uh when you put that regulator that's coming out of the big tank in the other regulator in line uh it's what's called double regulated and this is just not getting enough propane it will start it will run uh but it when you ask it to produce 1,800 watts to charge these up it just chokes down and and stops running it gets an error on the front of it if I hook it up to a propane tank a 5 gallon a 20lb propane tank it'll run like a son of a gun it'll charge these up it'll do exactly what it needs to do so I know it's the hose choking it down I'm trying to try to get my propane company to make me a hose uh they said they couldn't I am exploring other options I need help if someone knows how I can get a a propane pain hose made for this now I'll probably have to have my uh my female fitting this is the male proprietary uh Quick Connect now I'll probably have to send off my hose uh that has the proprietary female end I'll have to send it off probably with the hose or take it to someone if I can find it locally and get um get something made for it get a get a um a coupling put in it where I can use just a standard propane hose that like you would use on a um on a gas grill or something like that but without a regulator on it I need a I need a a hose going from that proprietary uh quick connect to directly to uh like a propane tank or in my case it would be the the the spigot that I have coming from the big tank but it's the same type of coupling same type of threaded U propane hose I just can't use one that has a regulator on it unless it's an adjustable regulator that I can crank up and give this enough propane give this enough gas so if anybody knows uh how to do that uh please comment below if there's you know someone that will build a hose like that that I can uh I can send off my my hose and get that proprietary end on it that'll plug into that uh let me know in the comments below now let me show you something else I've done so this is on the outside of the house and this is the outlet that I was telling you about it's a l14 30 I believe they call it four-prong and it's a 30 amp outlet now that 30 amp is not going to run my air conditioner so I'm probably going to upgrade that to a um to a three-prong 50 amp I don't remember exactly what that's called but I have the service they had them put in this uh this uh panel here 200 amp panel so anyway my my generator either my big generator will plug in this or we'll plug in the 50 amp if I decide to swap that out and I probably will if I if I go whole house I'll have to cuz 30 amp is not going to run my uh central air uh so anyway uh I have here a disconnect a a transfer switch where I can flip the uh flip one thing up and the breaker off and and all that so it's it's safety it's up to code and and it's um it's safe for me or my wife whatever to to be able to operate like this and not back feed on the power line so excited about using this hadn't used it yet but excited about using it for the first time uh and not excited about my power going out but I am excited about being able to use it let me show you that with my other generator that I have besides the ecoflow Delta Pro so this is my wind gen it's a 4750 I think on propan it's about 4200 4,300 Watts something like that I forget um 3 5 4 4350 surge 3500 um uh continuous so but it's it really did a good job I used this to charge my uh Delta Pros uh again running through this uh cord that's going through the side of the wall there uh that's where I also have the solar coming out and going at the time it was going up on the roof right now it's just laying here not doing anything uh and there are my propane spigots from my big tank now this what baffled me is this generator I I never had it up to 4,300 wats but this generator so was never Under full load but this generator ran fine on uh on that spigot on that from the from the big tank so that regulator on this hose did not choke this generator down but that's the hose that comes with it that's the hose that is meant for it and uh so I guess that's why but it did w double Reg in on that other hose on my eco load did choke it down so you know little baffling it took me a took me quite a while to figure out that it was it was not the uh generator uh that it was the uh the hose because I I set a a 20 lb propane tank here 5 gallon propane tank here and like I said that little generator little EC flow ran like a son of gun so it's not the generator it's the hose regulator on the hose choking it down and I just need help with that hope hopefully somebody can can help me with that anyway so that's what I'm doing now uh so I'm ready for I'm ready for anything that comes uh except in the summertime in the hot summertime I need a whole house generator and that is probably my next move uh getting a whole house uh 9 10 11 12,000 watt generator that will run off propane Tri fuel is what I'm hoping for I'm in the market I'm looking at westing house I'm looking at Predator uh Honda is probably just a little out of my price range for that wattage but um anyway that's what I'm looking for and um not you just can't find them right now they're just everybody's out of stock but I'll get something before next summer for sure but we're going to get into a cooler time when this wind generator is going to be plenty if I don't have to run air I have wood heat if I need to I mean we've got central heat but if I can't run it that's fine because I do have wood heat we we'll stay warm uh it's just in the summertime staying cool and this generator will not run that unit right there so uh anyway uh that's what I've got that's how it ran I I I really appreciate my ecoflow uh Delta Pro again they've got a new one Delta Pro 3 that runs 220 that'll hook straight up to that plug and will run the whole house now it doesn't have enough wattage to run the air conditioning but it will be able to stick straight into that plug this is right here will do 240 uh but it it's not enough wattage to do the central air conditioner that's what I'm trying to say so I'm still set up real well in the summertime we would struggle if I don't get a bigger Jin uh because even the EC flow is not going to produce the 220 needed and and the wattage needed to run the uh the big air conditioner so I'm probably going to go with a with a generator that will do the whole house I'm not going to do anything like a Genera something like that it will still be portable generator like this but just a lot more wattage uh 10,000 or so Watts 12 whatever so I can run my air conditioner also and run on propane and it should just sit here and run all the time great reviews on The Predator great reviews on the westing house if someone has a whole house generator uh and want to let me know in the comments how you like it um you know what wattage it is what brand it is and everything uh I'd be definitely interested in that again right now I'm looking at a westing house and a predator both of them have extremely good reviews and uh that's what I'm looking at now but you can't find them they're all out of stock so but they won't be one of these days somebody they'll they'll come back in to start and uh and I'll snatch one of them up or something else give me give me an idea of what is a good uh whole house portable Wheels you know not a not one that's uh that's built in uh but something I could plug into that plug over there and run the whole house uh let me know that in the comments I know this has been kind of along but I have you know if you're not prepared for what's coming uh and by that I don't necessarily mean a zombie apocalypse even though that is very likely one of these days uh but if you're not prepared for tornadoes hurricanes uh wildfires things like that that can shut off power to your house uh I I just really highly recommend that you do something if you can't afford an Eco flow something like that I get it I understand that uh but do something find a small generator that will at least allow you to um to run uh you a winter air conditioning if you're in a Southern Climate to run refrigerators freezers things that you really need and uh you can run $1,000 worth of meat in refrigerator uh in refrigerator and a freezer uh pretty dog on quick when you could just go out and buy a three or $400 generator uh and keep your keep your meat your food from spoiling so highly recommend you do that the reason I don't like gas is because I don't want to be standing in the gas line I want to be able to hook it up to my propane and be able to run it I paid about $700 to run that over here from my my big tank that was already in the ground and U I'm I'm ready to go ready to go hopefully hopefully I mean you never know what's going to come up but uh as of right now I'm ready to go let me know what you're doing to prepare or what you've done to prepare uh in the comments and I'll I'll definitely read them all and take heart because you never know uh what I am missing but if you know a way or know someone who makes a propane hose the hose I got from ecoflow needs a coupling on the end of it and I can't find anybody around here yet that says they can crimp it on there safely uh and then I need a hose coming from that type of Hose like you have just on a regular propane tank to u to an end well like that just a regular end like that that goes on on Plants uh whether it be uh something like this a generator or a propane barbecue grill something like that so help me out if you know something let me know what you're doing and I will appreciate all of it and we're gone [Music]