Hi I'm Mike and this is Mike's Road Trip. "Get off the road..." "All right!"
Hi I'm mike of mike's road trip and on this episode I'm going to share with you an
indispensable item if you plan to boondock with your travel trailer it's the champion
3400 watt inverter now depending on your needs you may need a larger or a smaller one but this one
works perfectly for my size trailer which will run the air conditioning the microwave hair dryer
you name it this thing will do it now this is an inverter versus a generator or they'll sometimes
call it an inverter generator and the difference is quite dramatic one an inverter is much smaller
in size it has a circuit breaker built inside so that it will be much cleaner energy going to your
more sensitive items like electronics your computer your iPad um other items like that
this thing is also much quieter than a traditional generator the downside they're a little bit more
expensive but they're also more fuel efficient so i think if you weigh both sides the inverter is
absolutely the way to go so come along with me and let me show you around this incredible inverter
so i did a ton of research before deciding on this champion inverter and one of the deciding
factors for me was this thing is dual fuel what does that mean well it runs off a gasoline and
it runs off a propane this is just awesome so like if you run out of gas
you can just run up your propane right to this thing start it up and you are off and running
now granted the efficiency of propane is not quite as good as gasoline but still it's uh it's
in some cases i think it's more affordable so it might be one half dozen of another
another important factor was that it has a direct 30 amp circuit so i can just plug the
travel trailer right into the inverter turn it on and everything is up and running that's it
and sometimes I'll just leave this in the back of my truck and just open the tonneau cover so
that it has some ventilation if I'm only going to be somewhere for a night or two otherwise um
it does weigh I'll put the exact amount of weight on the video but i believe it's around 90 pounds
so it's a little bit heavy for one person but two people can easily handle this thing getting
in and out of the truck and then you can just tote it around with this built-in little handle
so that's pretty slick and then there are two handles up here
so it's not lightweight but certainly manageable
another thing i really like about this unit is it has an electric start
it does have a pull start as a backup but all you have to do is hit this and then start right up
so i'm not sure what the rated decibel range is for this unit but i thought i'm
going to go ahead and test it with my apple watch i will test it right around the unit
and then i'll walk away about 15 or 20 feet and we'll see what the readings are
wow quieter than i thought i'm going to actually video it from my phone so you guys can see it
it only says 70 decibels that seems really low when I'm talking it goes up to 81.
anyway i'm going to walk away from it and you can probably also hear
because I'm standing right next to it you can kind of hear how loud it is maybe and have a judgment
there but I'm going to walk away about 15 feet and I'm going to video what the dbs are for that
all right well using my watch and showing the dbs on here um i'm not sure how well it
worked me walking over here very unscientific i will say but when i was about 20 feet away or
so it was 50 decibels which is like pretty darn quiet now that i'm standing right next to it it's
about 70. now mind you this is in idle mode so i'm going to go ahead and test it while i hook up
the power to the rv or to the travel trailer and then i'm going to turn on
the air conditioning which will be the greatest draw and we'll see what the dvs are for that
okay let's go turn on the air
you could hear it go up definitely okay okay it's about 72 which is only two decibels higher
right next to the machine
76. okay i'm going to walk away and then we'll see
what they are from the distance so it looks like it's just about 55 from the same distance so
that's pretty impressive but i'll be interested to hear what this sounds like me talking into
my microphone and standing right next to the unit uh that will be interesting so next up i'm
gonna try out the propane and show you guys how that works okay i'm gonna shut this off
okay and to in order to switch from gasoline to propane you just flip this
little lever and then we have our propane okay turn it on
i have to tell you this is the very first time i've actually used the
propane so let's i'm excited to see how this works out okay so the propane is on
okay took a little bit to get started probably because there was no gas in the line
but uh and then I'm also curious about the decibels if it's any louder
i think it actually is
it's about 71. that's interesting and i don't think i have anything turned on
now the electric is on or i'm sorry the air conditioning is on
with air conditioning on using propane I'm running at 75.
in addition to the 30 amp circuit there are two 110 outlets as well as a cigarette lighter plug
these plugs allow you to hook up an additional inverter in parallel
for twice the power there's also a built-in collapsible handle
hey well that's a look at the champion 3400 watt inverter if you have any questions at all please
leave a comment below i'm absolutely happy to help so until next time we'll see on the
MikeRoadTrip.com