Champion Generator Update - Post-Hurricane Francine

all right it's Thursday September 12th 2024 it's uh 7:20 in the morning so hurricane Francine came through here last night we're in south Louisiana we were right in the middle of the track of the hurricane we started to have uh our power flicker on and off constantly at around 8:15 last night and after it went on and off several times in a row um decided that wasn't good for the appliances and everything so we turned off the power at the main and then powered up the generator at 8:20 last night with a full tank of gas ran the refrigerator uh 14,000 BTU portable AC and four floor fans and it uh ran almost 8 hours um it it went off somewhere between 7 and 8 hours but I think it was closer to 8 so now um we're getting ready to go to work so we know what it'll do on a full tank of gas which I don't know that's about 4 gallons um yeah I would say it's probably 4 gallons or so cuz I still have some left and a 5 gallon it might be 4 and 1/2 Gall something like that so now what we're going to do is we're going to hook up this propane so uh when you just a couple of quick tips um so before on power outages I've realized if you have a nest thermostat or something like that they can lose their their internal battery power so I pull that off the wall ours has a mini USB charger so I go ahead and charge that up while the power's off also our generator is venting here and then 10 ft away I got my air intake for my portable AC I don't want to introduce carbon monoxide into the house so I put the carbon monoxide detector that was normally plugged in in the kitchen I plugged it into that all right so if carbon monoxide were to be took into where we're sleeping we'd all die so you definitely want a carbon monoxide detector you're going to use a generator and then also have air intake somewhere so our carbon monoxide reading uh was zero so we're good but I'm still going to do that every time so normally when and all also the other thing is don't think you can come out and check your gas gauge and keep everything on by adding fuel these vibrate too much you can't add fuel while they're running anyway so every time they need fuel you're going to have to shut everything down for a little bit so you can either do that on your own or just let it run out so we let ours run out so normally if I was putting fuel in it I would fuel it up while it's off uh I I would unplug the refrigerator cord the other ones could stay in because when I turn them on they're not going to be any load on them all our fans and everything our push button so they would need to be turned on again anyway so there's not going to be any load on those other items but there is on the F on the refrigerator so I would start it up get it started up then I would plug in the refrigerator core which is this one and then I would go in the house and and start turning the other things on so what we're going to do is switch this over to propane so you'll come over to here we'll show you how we do that on this dual fuel so this is the fuel setting we would leave it there if we were going to put gas in it and run the fuel this is a propane setting over here this is fuel this is to cut your fuel supply off when you want to empty out your carburetor this is the storage position of off and this is my propane position also I learned uh from previous videos and reading the manual you do need to choke the propane on this model so I'm going to turn my choke back on and I'm going to start it up with a choke exactly like I do the gas so let's see so what we have here is this came with the unit this part right here comes with the unit um um so this is going to go on my propane I did purchase this little propane gauge on Amazon right here I'll put links in the description to items that I use I'll try to find that little gauge so it's supposed to tell me about how much propane is in that tank I also bought this base so it kind of stabilizes a propane tank I just bought one base and you know use it for all the tanks okay so I got that on this plugs in right here here's your propane symbol that green your propane symbol you've got this black plastic and you've got this hole right here align this black plastic piece with that hole so it'll allow this to snap in see how that snaps in so that's a secure connection I've already unplug my refrigerator so I'll be starting it up with no load I'm going to move this a little bit out of my way of my pull [Music] start oh it help if I opened up my propane tank going to open that up all the way going try taking the choke off a little bit all right so after I I had it on choke cuz I knew I needed to FR me but evidently it doesn't give you that start of a sound like it's going to start like with the gas so after about 10 PS or so I just put the choke off all the way and it started right up so I'm not used to using the propane it's only the second time I've ever started it with the propane so I'll just have to get used to that so I would put the choke on pull it like four times then turn the choke off and try it that's what I'll do next time that don't get it through this black hes and everything so now that we have a running going to start all the stuff that's coming off of here is should not be on right now this is our refrigerator everything that's on this the only thing that's on this is the Wi-Fi router and then all the floor fans and the portable AC will turn on one thing to note about propane on gasoline it's rated for 4250 WTS and 3500 running Watts but on protain you lose it's still 4250 starting but the running Watts go down to 3150 so you know it's about a 10% drop in power on the propane this propane bottle was new and the only time has been ran is the experiment I did with the propane many months ago um so it's mostly full um it's trying to get the gauge over here the gauge this is full so we're you know almost full so we'll see how long that last all right so this morning before I went to work we had gotten the generator running on propane and then we we were going to test how long one of these propane bottles last how many hours of runtime we got and uh Fort fortunately we still don't have the answer to that we ran it for about 3 hours and 10 minutes or so and power was restored so what I'm doing in a little note section on my phone is I am keeping track of how much run time is on this propane tank so that the next time we use it we can keep track and I'll end up being able to figure that that out so trying to figure out you know how how much a tank of gas lasts we found that it will go over 7 hours and then we're going to find out how much one of these propane tanks last so anyway we're very pleased with the performance of the generator and feel blessed to have come through the hurricane like we did thankful to God for uh protecting us providing for us and it's my first hurricane having a generator and the ability to sleep in Comfort uh was just a blessing and not having to worry about food spoiling so I highly recommend picking up something like that if you can afford it um cuz really you can get a good generator for you know somewhere around $450 to $600 range uh this price fluctuates uh 3 years ago when I bought it it was like 620 the year after that it went up over 900 and then when I check this week it's under 500 so um but anyway I can definitely recommend men the Champion brand they start on one pull and except when I've been figuring out how to start it with propane but on gas it starts with one pull after I figure the propane out probably get it on three or four Ps so anyway I hope that's been helpful and thank you for watching