Boondocking Beast? Testing the Firman Dual Fuel Generator for RV Use! - #fulltimerv #fulltimervlife

hey friends welcome back today we are going to take a look at this Ferman portable generator that I had to buy last summer when a tornado came through the campground in Georgia and I promised you a review of it so here it is jumping right into the video this obviously is the generator it is a dual fuel generator runs on propane or gas lots of buttons and knobs and doodads let me go over them here real quick for you this is your fuel selection right now it is selected in propane if you're going to run it on gas you just flip it down to the gas when you do store it you have to put it in the propane mode is what the directions say to do here's your choke your manual pull to start it your connection for your propane your on and off button and your start button right now it's off flip it up in the middle to run and if you push it another way it will actually start it your eco mode button this light here is a uh Co carbon monoxide alarm it does turn on when you when you first power it on to kind of go through a self test and then I haven't seen it come on since you have a little gauge down here that gives you your uh volts Hertz and runtime for the engine you have a 30 amp 120 volt RV plug that was really nice two 20 amp 120 volt plugs a 12v DC or 8.3 amps these guys here I don't know if you could tell by that little picture but you can connect multiple generators together to increase the wattage you got some circuit breakers up here in case they trip they're just resettable this port here it comes with a trickle charger to keep the onboard battery charged you just plug it in and plug it into a wall you got a 5V 2.1 amp USB charger this is a battery wakeup switch if it's sitting for a while it kind of turns off the battery so before you start it you got to turn that on it kind of wakes up the battery and says let's go output on this on gasoline you got 4,125 starting Watts 3300 running Watts propane you have 3750 starting and 3,000 running I purchased this generator in June of 2023 I didn't go out looking specifically for a ferment I actually had never heard of this brand before but I got it because a tornado had come through the campground that I was staying at in Blue Ridge Georgia knocked out the power for day is and I needed power to be able to work I do work remotely on the road in my transcend I had my heart set on the Predator generator at Harbor Freight seeing all the videos of those on YouTube but I couldn't find one it was right after the power went out all of the generators within probably a 2hour radius were sold out this one I purchased from a Lowe's 2 and 1/2 hours away from the campground and the only reason I got it it was $300 off it was on sale and I I like the fact that it's dual fuel my truck is diesel I have no use for gasoline so I kind of really didn't want to have to get gas and carry that around with me and worry about it going bad propane you see there's three tanks there we've got another tank here and I have two tanks on the front of the camper so I always have propane with me here are some of the other accessories that comes with it they do include a cover for it this is the regulator to hook up to a standard uh 20 lb propane tank you have your user manual they give you an oil funnel a some alligator clamps here so you can plug that into that this DC Port right here and I guess you can charge a battery I don't know that I would ever use this but good to have they give you a little tool kit with some tools to be able to change out the spark plug on here on the top here they do give you a whole bunch of pictures on how to start it how to select between the gas and the propane mode we are going to go through that in a little bit here is the gas cap it is 1.8 Gall or 6.8 L of gas a little strainer that goes in here for when you're filling up the gas and there is the inside of the tank as you can see it is bone dry because we are going to run this on propane so what we're going to do is we're going to run a little experiment because I would love to know how long it runs on a full propane tank a 20 lb propane tank I do have one of these uh propane sensors that we can put on the tank we'll check the level of it that tank is full I just had them full not too long ago and then we're going going to start it up plug the camper in and then I'm going to go throughout my day I'm going to be running a space heater my work computer two monitors my personal computer I'll have the TV on probably you know all the lights the refrigerator so on and so forth and I just got a new bread maker today so I am going to be making a loaf of bread that thing draws 550 watts of power so I think through all of that we'll have a good idea of how long a 20 lb propane tank will last oh and starlink will be running as well for my internet let me open up the case and let you see the business side of it here and I'll go over kind of the inside stuff it was very easy to set up it does ship without any oil but they do include the oil so you just have to put that in connect the battery put gas in it or hook it up to your propane whichever you're going to use and then fire it up and you have power on the opposite side of the generator you have the access panel to get on the inside it's held together with just four Phillips head screw drivers you've got all the dangers and warnings and end of world things that go on here so make sure you read all of those but let me get these four screws out and then we'll get into the business side if you are new here my name is David and in November 2023 I sold everything to hit the road fulltime in my grand design transcend accompanied by rert May and my brother Kevin who spends 4 months out of the year with me we are out there living the full-time RV Life One campground at a time okay we have the case open hopefully you could see it I do have the light on the camera here there's really not much to do in here uh this here is your oil fill so when you do get it you'll have to take that cap off and put the oil in there and they do give you a really long funnel to get that oil in there the one in the back there is your oil drain I'm not 100% sure if there is a panel down there to where you could like open that panel up it looks like there might be maybe you can open that panel up and then the oil will drain out the bottom the only thing you have to do when you get it this is the starting battery right here and right in here of course I can't get it or those two clips have to be put together when you get it because it does ship with the battery disconnected the air filter is accessible through here so that way you can clean the air filter or replace it as needed and that's really it I mean there's nothing to really service in here other than this and actually as I was putting the cover back on I did notice it actually has it right here you have the cover how to get the cover off the spark plug maintenance if you need to change the spark plug is accessible in here that tells you how to do it using the tools that they provide and here is the oil fill and it does have a hole in the bottom that you can drain the oil of course that picture has it nice and neat and no oil goes anywhere I'll bet you 10 bucks it's going to make a huge mess and there's going to be oil everywhere so when it is time for me to service this generator I will have to do a video of that as I said before I had never actually heard of the Ferman brand of generators I bought it because I was desperate I had no power for like day three I needed power because I couldn't take off any more time from work and it was summer it was hot I needed the AC so got this bad boy it got me through that power outage and then I think it was a week later another storm came through and knocked the power out again for another 3 days so it did great this is an inverter generator so I didn't have to worry about uh harming the electronics in the camper or anything like that that's pretty much everything that I know about the generator the Ferman brand itself I did kind of look them up did some Google reviews all of their products have really good reviews it seems that they're very reliable um if you do have a problem their customer service is apparently really good luckily I haven't had any problems with mine so far good morning it is the next day so let's get out there and get that generator started and start this experiment we've got the propane regulator hooked up to the generator we need to put our little regulator on here let me do that real quick this just goes underneath this tank there's our tank level at 100% we are on propane we don't need to choke it using the propane turn our switch on wake up our battery I just heard the regulator go click and let's start her there just took a minute going through a self test we need to wait for that to turn green there it is 126 volts 60 HZ 599 21 hours let's plug her in got blue light I do have it on eco mode Let's go see if we have power microwave is flashing currently the time is 6:55 let me see if you can hear the ambient uh noise of the generator it's actually very quiet all right let me turn the uh space heater on here I heard the generator bogg down so I do have to be mindful and keep my usage below the 3,000 WTS that the generator can put out I am in a 30 amp RV after all so even if I were plugged in I kind of got to you know maneuver things around to make sure that I don't go over that amount so I'll check back in an hour we'll look at the gauge for the propane tank and we'll kind of do that throughout the day and see how long one full 20 lb propane tank will last running on this generator and before I forget if you would do me a favor I would really appreciate it if you would go ahead and Boop that like button it's easy to do it's down at the bottom down there and it does help me get this channel out I am trying to grow this Channel and also while you're down there booping that like button just go on over a little bit and Boop that subscribe button become a member of the travel pause RV pack we would love to have you guys along for the journey all right we are 1 hour into the generator running off of propane and our tank is still at 100% check back in another hour hour two is up and I have added the bread maker and my washing machine Hi Mr rert hi Miss may still at 100% hour three tank level 77% see you in an hour hour 4 says it's down to 69% all right hour five I can't remember if I told you last hour or not but I have now added my dryer 56% hour 5 Hour 6 47% hour 7 39% all right we are at hour 8 and we are at 27% hour 9 19% she conked out I think what happened is it's cold in the uh look at the tank see that all that's ice so I'm pretty sure that it started to freeze in the uh it started sputtering surging I guess you call it so I think with it being so cold as the propane level got low you saw the ice crystals forming on the outside of the tank I think it just couldn't vaporize any more of the propane liquid so it wasn't getting enough uh gas to keep the generator going so I don't want to cause any damage to the generator or anything like that so I turned it off it was a little over 9 hours that it ran for according to the gauge there is 19% left and I'd say that's about right when you pick the tank up and shake it you can you can hear and feel that there's still propane left in there but like I said I don't want to do any damage or potential damage to the generator since that is an inverter generator they apparently don't like to just be turned off especially when there's a load applied to them so I did unplug it um I did turn it off for a second uh let the gas kind of vaporize a little bit more and I restarted it for about I don't know 3 minutes with no load on it just so it could cool down and all of that good stuff so I think that's going to do it for this video I hope you guys found some useful information out of this firman dual fuel generator don't forget if you like this video to go ahead and Boop that like button and while you're booping that go on over and Boop that subscribe button and become a member of the travel paw RV pack and until the next next video I hope your power stays on safe travels I'll see you next time

Channel: TravelPawsRV

Views: 7,320

Keywords: grand design, transcend, transcend 261bh, rv life, full time rv, grand design rv, travel, camping, grand design for life, pets, camping with pets, rv generator

Id: kPt3UVnPwvM

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024