Cummins Onan Generator VS Firman Portable Generator

what's going on everybody and welcome to another episode today we are going to be talking about generators I'm excited for this episode generate generators in general oh that's cool are just neat I think they're so cool you know everyone's got a power outage and you're just like hey did you like that sound if I rub them and you just have power how neat is that right it's so self-sustaining I love that I love that so today we're gonna be talking about my onboard generator which is a Cummins Onan 2500 watt LP propane it runs off propane so that is my onboard generator and the second generator we're gonna be talking about is the one that I bought the portable Furman 2000 watt generator let's talk about some pros and cons and then I did a little test that I really wanted to find out what fuel economy fuel efficiency fuel consumption how does it all work let's do it okay so let's start with the Onan Cummins generator the onboard generator I'm just gonna say that's the onboard generator and then for my portable Fermin generator the small one I'm gonna say portable generator just so I don't have to say those names all constantly think I'm saying that cook properly Fuhrman Fuhrman sure okay pros and cons of the onboard generator the one that's running right now you may be able to hear it can you hear it let's suck it with the pros first let's talk about the cons later the con is for sure it's loud right off the bat is 2501 so it's bigger than a portable generator at least a 2000 watt portable generator it's bigger it's more powerful produces more power with it being liquid propane it runs off propane that's its fuel source you don't have to carry any other fuel such as gas or diesel all you need is your propane tanks that you already have for your RV so that's really nice it's just straight up hooked up to your propane tanks also a great thing about that is that that generator won't run out of fuel for a very long time essentially because it's hooked up to the 230 pound propane tanks it has a massive fuel tank and then another massive Pro massive Pro I have this button over there and it's super hard to start I just press one side I said I press the stop actually to prime it did you see that absolute prime I [Music] press the stop to prime it and then I just press Start and it buh-buh-buh and then it runs for a little bit just to kind of figure itself out and then it turns on everything in my RV I don't have to go inside I don't have to get wet and it's all enclosed so it is so safe from all the other elements such as its main element would be rain so that's really nice it's very convenient convenient as the word let's talk about cons yeah it's super duper loud I was watching a YouTube video on this generator when I first bought American Fox because I wanted to know more about it and the guy had had it on the ski may have watched this video too he had it on a stand beside himself he started up and he's yelling yeah it's a pretty quiet generator and you're just sitting there in the video going that is the worst lie ever no it's not a quiet generator maybe in its class of the whatever class that's in but it's not it's not quiet it's a very loud generator because it's on board it's connected to the RV I can feel vibration right now so you can feel a little bit of vibration when I would you know watching TV not only can you feel vibration but you can also hear it inside of the RV so it's not like a portable generator where you can throw way out in the woods and forget about it you you can hear it costs Canadian I'm Canadian Canadian dollars 30 I think it was thirty five hundred dollars depending on what deal you get online right around thirty five hundred dollars that's a lot of money how much I paid for my portable generator seven hundred dollars that is a massive massive difference and the last con that I want to talk about is is a big one when my batteries get too low I don't know the exact number because when I was new to RV and I didn't really pay attention to that but I remember you know I would drain my batteries down quite a bit it wouldn't be you know it wasn't like zero or ten percent I was like right around 50 percent I would go to start my generator and it just wouldn't start not enough to amps could get that that generator and started and I started thinking well that's silly what you know you're way back in the woods and say your say your truck dies your your RV dies you've got no heat no propane and you're trying to start this generator and you can't because you got no electricity started that is a he that's that's a pretty big deal and so I'll talk about the portable but the portables got a pull a mechanical system so you don't have to worry about that and it's just something something - something to think about okay those are the pros and cons for the Onan generator let's talk about the Furman generator I think I'm saying that right it just seems weird to say I think I'm saying it wrong ro right I don't know I don't know right off the bat it cost less that's a huge Pro $700 Canadian is what I paid for this portable generator it is quiet it's much more quiet than this onboard generator it's 59 death decibels decibels 59 decibels which is quite quiet but then it's got this little economy mode on it so you can just click that down and it takes it from running to just almost an idle where you can see you could almost sit there with it running by the fire and not be too bugged by it it takes it really really quiet and that mode is for if you're not running heavy loads off it so if you're just you know I've got one light on in the RV and I just want to kind of charge my batteries up a little bit then you would flip it on economy mode if you're running devices you know dehumidifiers and all that you better turn up to the actual run mode but it's a neat feature very neat feature very quiet feature it's a portable generator crazy right so you hook that up you've got a long extension cord and you go toss in the bush you know and some someone commented saying you could build a little tent around it so it doesn't get wet you go toss in the bush you can have it running you can have friends in the fire having a nice conversation and and it's not bugging you which is really nice and then you can take it away you can use it for other things you know construction job site whatever that is so a portable portable generator awesome and the last is is pull start it is pull start so you give it a pull in and it starts up which is nice it's like I said if your trucks dead if this is dead that doesn't need electricity to start and so you can pull that get some power and then charge all your systems up again alright the cons are that it's a 2000 watt generator and I think that it's running watts or even less than that about 1700 so it's not gonna create as much power as my onboard generator for the portable generator that I have right now I do need gas so it's a different fuel source so when you're going to the gas station you know you're filling up your propane you're filling up on firewood and blood it's just what extra thing you got to worry about oh do I have you know you feel your truck up with gas and okay I'm gonna do the jerrycan with gas then I've got to do the portable generator with gas it's just a little bit extra to think about an icon is is also that it's portable so it doesn't just have this fancy switch where I stay all cozy in my RV I've got to actually get out set it up you know turn it on you will it up hook it up and it takes a little while to set up rather than just turning this onboard generator on also it's run time I think it's that with its run time with 25 percent load so next to no load would be bread about nine hours and the fuel tank on my generator is 0.9 gallons and so nine hours and say you're watching TV you're on it all day or all night or wherever you are and and yeah and then and then you've got to go outside and refuel it when it starts rum rum let me run it out of fuel that's what it does by the way then you're like oh no generator are you gonna run to it and fill it up and last but not least another con would be its exposed to the elements so it's a portable generator it's not enclosed so when I run it I either have to put it under my truck you've seen maybe a couple of my videos where I put it kind of tucked under my truck but if the rain is coming in on the side it's still gonna get wet and you don't want generators to get wet because electricity or I'll put my on a note it's a little bit more of a hassle you got to figure out a place that it won't get soaking wet to you know get some power into your V so that is obviously another con and that is our last con alright so the next thing that I want to talk about is the test that I did I'm very excited where's my piece of paper guys did you did you steal my piece of paper no I got it you guys stole it fuel consumption fuel consumption what are we talking about here what when I this is the question this is the question that I had when I had when I moved into here and I was looking at our V's you know I'm fire up my generator and I think oh man it's just burning this fuel because such a loud generators burning this fuel how much fuel is it actually burning and you can actually go on to their website and you can look at the numbers and I'll tell you the numbers after but for me it doesn't really click in my brain like I'm like I don't okay so there's that number and they're the that number and you know at 25 percent lower and fifty percent load and this and that so what I did just recently I should've done this a long time ago cuz I toss them I this way I did so I did two tests one for my onboard and one for my portable by our board obviously sips propane so I had a full propane tank and I opened that up and hook that up and it turned everything off in the RV that's it propane so my fridge my furnace everything and all the pipe all of the power sources except I ran one thing and that was my dehumidifier so the test that I did were an hour of each so an hour running my onboard generator and a power running my portable generator and I was thinking of just doing it strictly just running the generator and I thought you know what why don't we just put a little bit of a load on it so I put my D I turn my dehumidifier on my dehumidifier is right around 500 Watts give or take 500 real-world watts probably so that was on and then the only other thing that would have been that it would have been powering is it charged my battery and for both tests it was charging at 13.4 volts so we have a pretty decent test right now also I heard the line to the generator when I switched the propane tank so it wasn't it didn't have any leftover propane to suck from in the lines I did I did as much as I possibly could so random for an hour both of them had my dehumidifier on and was charging my battery actually was really cold out so I was just kind of freezing here just waiting for hours and so this is this is the result onboard generator after one hour of using it I went to filled it up and I wasn't filled out that propane tank I mean and it burnt point four nine litres in one hour and in gallons that's point one three and four the cost at Costco that's 41 cents for one hour 41 cents for one hour of using my onboard generator burning propane so pretty neat those are pretty neat numbers I want to talk just really quick I went to their website because I wanted to see if this was somewhat accurate I went to their website and it says with a half a load on this generator it should burn 0.3 gallons per hour so if you think about that I'm right in the ballpark's I didn't have half a load I had about 500 watts and it's a 2500 watt generator so I was under 25% so that number makes sense pretty neat right so if you had half a load you're probably point three of a gallon now to the portable I was wondering about this one and it's pretty much the exact same numbers so exactly like the on board I filled up the generator to the little red line it says the fuel stop line right to it ran it for an hour that went to a gas station filled it exactly where I filled it before and and this was the numbers so 0.45 litres in two gallons that's point one two and because our gas price is ridiculous it's like $1 32 a litre for you Americans for four liters to a gallon makes that over five dollars a gallon it's unbelievable so anyways but 61 cents for for an hour of runtime half liter in both in both cases other than that I think I'm gonna end up to end the video now actually know what let's do a bonus feature let's do a bonus feature see if my portable generator will fit in the slot in my onboard generator spot because if I do sell this generator but I'll just put my my portable in here oh for sure okay let's grab it by the way in Costco parking lot gotta love Costco do a full video on what it's like living in a parking lot cuz that's what I do you know you yeah I do whatever I'm doing than the day and then I just go hang out and have a nap at a parking lot ok so I'll set you up here I'm just gonna eyeball this yeah I could get a measuring tape easily guys easily easily yep are a my friends I think I'm gonna wrap it up here I hope that you enjoyed the video I hope that you learnt something tomorrow's videos gonna be different we're gonna get up and out of the camper and do a proper vlog and we're actually gonna be talking about batteries tomorrow as well because my batteries are not functioning properly so I'm getting a mechanic to come to my RV and test out some things in the RV so it'll meet - it'll be neat for me to share that with you so that's tomorrow have a wonderful night take care of yourself and bye bye [Music]

Channel: Taylor Dzaman

Views: 108,909

Rating: 4.8016901 out of 5

Keywords: Generator, Cummins onan generator, firman, firman portable, firman generator, cummins onan, onan generator, truck camper generator, portable generator, fuel generator, full cummins onan generator, Propane generator, gas generator, how much fuel burn generator, how much generator, pros cons generator, which generator to buy, best generator, propane vs gas generator, cummins onan vs firman portable, portable generator vs cummins onan

Id: yar7Cqdw6O0

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2018