Equipt FAQ: Eezi-Awn Bat/Manta/Swift Awning Safety

Video Transcript

Intro

Hi, this is Paul with Equipt Expedition Outfitters, and today I want to chat with you a little bit about the Bat 270, Man 270, and Swift awnings. All of our awnings are based on hinges that are mounted to the base against the vehicle and slide out this way. This is the Bat awning I'm in front of, and these freestanding awnings are wonderful awnings. You can see right now that I have in our warehouse here, I have this set up without any legs down. I want to talk about that for a minute.

The idea of a freestanding awning is awesome. Everybody likes it. It's a very dynamic view. You have coverage without any support here. It's a wonderful idea, but it's not very safe at all. It doesn't matter the type of awning that you have, not just the Eezi-Awn products but the other products out there. When you have this much material and structure cantilevered out this far, you've got a lot of torque with no support at all. It's a torque down on the vehicle, it stresses the vehicle. If there is a wind, it's going to be a torque up because it's a big umbrella on the side of your car. It's going to torque up, creating a lot of stress on the pieces on your vehicle regardless of manufacturing.

The best thing you can do is to stabilize that awning with a leg and some support to hold it up and to hold it down. Now, what I mean by that is Eezi-Awn has developed all of their rafter arms to be able to encase a leg inside of it. So what we have here, here's one of the rafter arms to the Bat awning. Inside that awning arm, this leg is in there. And what this leg does is it alleviates the stress of the hinge point back here against the vehicle, takes all of that weight off of there by supporting it upwards, and it holds that in place.

This makes it very nice, makes it easy to go around in there. It's just a couple of legs. It's not like we have all sorts of guy wires out in place, and it makes it a jungle gym to get around in. No, what we have is just a few legs to hold the awning upward in place. Now, what's also nice about this awning and the leg system that they have built into this is that I'm going to swing this up for you to see. Every one of these legs has on the bottom of it a foot, and that foot has two holes, one on each side of the leg.

Now, what that is designed to do is to hold a couple of stakes into the ground. Now, what I suggest, and this is me talking, me Paul talking, is that I would suggest you take two stakes and you take those stakes and put one in each hole, and you put them in an x pattern this way. This is an anchor. If you put them in this way, wind will take the leg and pull them straight up out of the ground, and that's not going to be good for anybody involved. But if you put a slight angle on them, it's very hard for those to come out, and I've had these awnings set up in winds 30-40 mph staked like that with no guy wires, and it's worked just fine.

But this awning, if you leave it up freestanding in winds like that, it's going to tear the awning apart, and that's not good for anybody either. Now, what Eezi-Awn has also done is that these rafter arms are tied into the hinge system with a set with the hinge and a set of four rivets. The rafter arm comes in over this, four rivets hold it into place on each side, and that pivots on that position. So what that is, is this is a fuse. If a big wind comes on, for some reason there is a problem, and a wind comes on, it's a lot easier for us to replace this hinge for a few dollars than the entire rafter arm for a lot more money. So those are designed to let go and let the awning fold so that you can replace this thing instead of this thing.

And that's one of the key secrets there. It's something that Eezi-Awn has taken a lot of time to develop, and it works very well in that application. Now, is it going to always work that way? No, situations come up, and you end up with some more damage. We carry all of the pieces to rebuild one of these awnings, it's not a problem. Life happens, but what we would like to show you is how to avoid all of those situations by putting the leg in place, putting a couple of stakes down. You still have a wide-open area with a couple of legs, and it'll work just fine.

I'm Paul with Equipt. I hope that helps.