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PHILL's first fill |
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My life with Phill: A user's perspective
| Now it was time to fill the car up. I had pretty much run the thing
to empty taking it for granted that the PHILL would be working the next
day. This was pretty cocky if you consider that I have to drive 20 miles
to the nearest CNG refueling station.
The fuel filler nozzle is a really good quality component made by Parker. There are nice strain reliefs on both ends, although I would have appreciated a longer hose. UPDATE: the hose length is limited by the capacity of the blowdown system. In other words, the relief venting has to accommodate the total volume of gas in the hose. |
| I was already a little wary about trying the thing out after my wife
emailed me at work to tell me that the unit kept "tripping the breaker".
OK...I used to design circuit breakers for a living so I should be able
to figure this out. It turned out that it was the GFCI outlet that was
tripping out, not the circuit breaker. I tried plugging into another
GFCI outlet through an extension cord and the same thing happened. I
finally did get one to hold, but as soon as the compressor kicked in the
outlet tripped again. I wound up plugging into a outlet in the garage
that is series connected to a GFCI and that held. Guess I'll have to run
a dedicated power feed to the PHILL this weekend. Bummer. UPDATE:
the folks at Fuelmaker acknowledge that they have been having problems
with certain ground fault devices and they will be sending me a ground
fault outlet that has been blessed by engineers at Fuelmaker. We'll see
how that works out. Also, I should point out that the PHILL is supposed
to be on its own dedicated branch circuit as per the installation
specifications. My bad. UPDATE: after installing the GFCI outlet
supplied by fuelmaker, I have had no problems with nuisance tripping. If
Fuelmaker make a recommendation for a GFCI, I suggest you use it. The control panel for the PHILL looks like this: |
| When you first plug it in, the power lamp flashes while the unit is initializing, then stays on when it's done. You then hook up the car and press the start button. As soon as you press the start button, the cooling fan comes on. The cooling fan puts forth a reassuring whirr and is the only thing you really hear when the unit is in operation. After a short delay the compressor kicks in and the FUELING indicator comes on. Fuelmaker did a pretty good job providing vibration isolation between the Phill and the mounting bracket. I now understand why this elaborate mounting system was necessary, as the unit shakes around pretty good at times. There is a visual display of the system pressure shown by the green lights on the right. You get E (empty) to F (full) in five steps. When I first tried to start fueling, I wasn't lucky enough to get the FUELING indicator. The unit shut down with the ERROR light flashing as soon as the compressor kicked in. Sometimes it tripped the circuit breaker. UH-OH! |
| Remember the gas shutoff valve? It eventually dawned on me that the
installers left the shutoff valve in the OFF position, so the Phill
wasn't getting any gas. D'OH! Again, not a big deal for an engineer but
could you imagine trying to troublehoot this problem over the phone
talking to your average consumer? UPDATE: There are some
diagnostics available for troubleshooting. If the error light
comes on, you can hold down the STOP button to display a binary weighed
pattern on the fill display. If I would have read the
manual (HA!) I would have looked for an error code and it would have
told me that "the gas is off, stoopid". As I will find out over the next couple
of days, this thing tends to wind up with the FAULT light on much of the
time. Fuelmaker did say that they will be revising the firmware soon, so
some of these glitches should be taken care of in the next release. At
least I know to look for the error codes now that I know the secret
handshake. UPDATE: Fuelmaker came through with their promise and
delivered a brand new Phill. This one works FLAWLESSLY I must admit.
Good job, guys...this is how it should work! Obviously, not having any gas supply is pretty much a game ender. You should also know that the unit will shut down if there isn't sufficient pressure during operation. The Phill requires a supply pressure of at least 7" of water to run. I hooked up a pressure gauge to my gas line before I ordered Phill to make sure that I had enough. |
| Of course, when I first tested my gas line the gauge only read 4" of
water. Before you go asking your gas company to turn up your supply
pressure, you need to understand something about your gas meter. Most
residential gas meters are not pressure compensated. In other words,
they are calibrated to deliver an accurate reading at a specific
pressure (usually 7"). If you have less than 7", you are getting less
gas than you are paying for. On the other hand, if your pressure is
greater than 7", you are getting more gas than you are paying for. The
difference is miniscule, but your gas company will most likely be
reluctant to turn up your pressure past 7". A manometer would be a
much more accurate tool for this job, but I didn't have one handy and
you can pick up these magnehelic gauges for almost nothing. You
shouldn't leave them hooked up to your gas line permanently by the way. At the end of the fueling cycle, all five FILL indicators lit up and the error light came on as well. The cooling fan came on periodically after the fill cycle for some reason. The error light went off after the STOP button was pressed, and I disconnected the fill hose and returned it to the nifty holster provided. Just as I turned around to go back inside a high-pitched buzzer went off and the fan started up again, accompanied by the now familiar ERROR light. I waited about 10 minutes for PHILL to come to his senses, after which I cycled power in order to get it to stop the damn buzzer. What happened? Maybe the gas leak sensor was activated. UPDATE: the buzzer means that the gas leak detector was triggered. If there is a gas leak, the LAST thing you want to do is pull the plug on Phill because it is busy trying to vent the gas to the outdoors with its' exhaust fan. When the unit was first installed, the auxiliary gas leak sensor was left dangling under the Phill instead of being mounted up high towards the ceiling. As a matter of fact, the sensor was hanging RIGHT OVER AN OPEN GARBAGE CAN stored in the garage. I do believe that the fumes coming from the garbage can set off the gas detector. On the plus side, I now had a full tank of CNG in my car without the 40 mile round trip to the gas station. How cool is that? The error light does always seem to come on at the end of the fill cycle. UPDATE: with the newer firmware, at the end of the fill cycle Phill stops pumping and quietly waits for you to decouple the hose. The fill lights stay on until you press the STOP button so you know how much of a fill you got.
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