Calling all electricians

[Todd727]

Originally Posted by grindstone01

I installed a 50 amp plug for our house, it's pretty easy. Two things to keep in mind is to set the gen outside while running and you will need to turn off the main breaker. If you don't turn off the main breaker, the generator will back feed the grid and stall out anyway.
As stated, back feed concern is way overblown as your gen will not be able to carry the load and will immediately stall out. I believe a transfer switch is only needed for a permanent gen standby unit system like pictured below.
I actually use the garage gen plug to power the air compressor most of the time.

You are wrong. It is not overblown. You assume the entire grid is still up. If, instead the, break for your house is at the pole on the street or just on your line, you will be backfeeding that open circuit and risk injuring or killing someone. Horrible advice.

[Quickuc]

Had one installed on the back of our house, cost 500.00 . So let me see, 500. Vs being dead??? Money well spent.

[bldrbob]

It is interesting that when an electrical question comes up how many misinformed experts pop in.There are some that really know what they are talking about but some of these (experts) should not even try to plug in an extension cord.Not an electrician but know enough to stay out of trouble.

[grindstone01]

Originally Posted by janelewbill

grindstone01




Ok, so there were ”only” two killed. Have you no humanity? These guys put their lives on the line to go out in horrible weather to repair someone’s electric service and get killed because someone who owns a motorhome worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is too cheap to get proper equipment to run his generator. There is a reason it’s illegal. I certainly hope you don’t kill someone with your arrangement. If you do, you should go to jail.

Not sure about your legality claim, but this is getting way over blown. There is a mega times greater risk of killing someone while driving a vehicle than forgetting to pull the main on a panel. This needs to be kept in perspective, it is rare to use the generator for emergency power and even much rarer for someone to forget to disconnect the main breaker. The only people I know that use a transfer switch are people with a automatic start up generator, which are very few people I know.
Forgetting to disconnect a main breaker during generator use is just not a huge problem in this country. When it happens, it probably gets alot of publicity like a plane crash does. But the risk of getting killed from a homeowner back feed mistake during a persons lifetime is probably not high enough to even be measured or calculated.

[astrocamper]

Had to use my manual transfer switch yesterday due to a 3 hour power outage yesterday. There was equipment failure at our substation and it was a hot afternoon. It was very easy to use. Keep my evaporative cooler, fridge and computer related circuits up on generator while the power was out.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Reliance...0CRK/205793178

I only ran one of my Honda EU2200 generators because my load was low enough.I only switched over the circuits I wanted to use for the time. I use an L5-30 power cord between my generators and the manual transfer switch outside power inlet. The transfer switch completely isolates the circuits running on the generator from the house circuit breaker panel.

[grindstone01]

For $400, I think I will just continue to flip the main breaker! Last time needed was 3 years ago.

[HORNETD]

Originally Posted by grindstone01

Wow, I guess I got Tom Horne all fired up! There are a lot of homes (probably the majority of homes in the US) are hooked up by manually using the main breaker to isolate the house to run on a generator. If you only experienced 2 cases of back feed in your 45 years of service, then I think that most people must successfully remember to turn off the main breaker.
Another thing, at the end of a 12 hour lineman shift is not the most common time that homeowners are finally hooking up their generator, they would have been fired up 10 hours earlier.
I agree that a transfer switch is the safest solution, but the main breaker is the most common method used.

So I had 2 Deaths of outside wiremen in 35 years of service in the fire department in which I last served, in a town with a population of 19000 souls, and you say that this proves that back feed deaths of utility personnel are rare.

Did you check the OSHA web sight to confirm that hypothesis. Keep in mind that more than half the States are State OSHA plan states and that the deaths in State plan States do not make it into the data base which only gets reports from Federal OSHA plan States.

And then you argue that the generators would rarely be started during the 12th hour of a shift. Would you mind sharing what you are basing that assertion on?

It does not matter when the generator was started when there is a lot of damage. The distribution line supplying the transformer which normally supplies your home may now only be 2 blocks long and attached to only that transformer. Utilities routinely attach each transformer on a set of 3 phase distribution lines in sequence to phase A, then B, and then C. The fourth one in that set goes back to A and starts the sequence over again. This is done to balance the load on the phases. In our area a transformer (Or what the Linemen call a pole pig) serves one block worth of homes. That becomes very obvious during an outage when you can look at the service disruption map and watch the outage areas shrink as the repairs progress from the Transmission Station, to the Sub Station, out onto the local distribution lines, and finally to the damaged low lines; low because the are attached to the poles below the transformers; (240/120 volts) that serve individual groups of customers.

I can only conclude that you are arrogant enough to have no care for any life other than your own. Since you are using a suicide cord; which is any cord which has plugs at both ends rather than one end being a receptacle cord cap; that you are the one who gets killed when you make a mistake instead of the utility personnel who are unworthy of your consideration.

[HORNETD]

Originally Posted by grindstone01

Not sure about your legality claim, but this is getting way over blown. There is a mega times greater risk of killing someone while driving a vehicle than forgetting to pull the main on a panel. This needs to be kept in perspective, it is rare to use the generator for emergency power and even much rarer for someone to forget to disconnect the main breaker. The only people I know that use a transfer switch are people with a automatic start up generator, which are very few people I know.
Forgetting to disconnect a main breaker during generator use is just not a huge problem in this country. When it happens, it probably gets alot of publicity like a plane crash does. But the risk of getting killed from a homeowner back feed mistake during a persons lifetime is probably not high enough to even be measured or calculated.

In any jurisdiction were the National Electric Code has been adopted as the legally enforceable code by the local or state legislative body that code then has the force of law. Absent such adoption the code cannot be enforced except as a condition of your insurance contract. You should know that an insurance contract is legally classified as a "Contract of Utmost Good Faith." That means that both parties to the contract must adhere to the contract very scrupulously. Any failure to do so on the part of the insured voids the contract so that the insurer can walk away from any loss without paying for it. That is well settled "Black Letter Law."

[Solo_RV_Guy]

Originally Posted by grindstone01

For $400, I think I will just continue to flip the main breaker! Last time needed was 3 years ago.

"Do what you wanna, do what you will,
Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill." - Frank Zappa


As a guy that works with electricity every day (entertainment electrician on theatre, arena and stadium events) I find your cavalier attitude a wee bit distressing. Okay, more than a wee bit...


I'm beginning to wonder if, over the last century or so, that electricity has become too safe. The National Electrical Code (NFPA 70) has done a good job of making common use of electrical power much less risky than even 30 or 40 years ago. These days a failure that severely injures or kills a person, or a failure that results in catastrophic loss of property is a pretty rare event and often requires more than 1 failed or compromised product or methods to reach that point.


What you advocate is allowing a potential failure mode to enter into the picture. By itself it is not lethal (and probably neither immoral nor fattening) but introduces another possible way for a worker or neighbor to be injured or to sustain property damage. When one knows better, one should do better - why risk injuring or killing someone?


May all your travels be safe, fun, and enrich your fond memories.

[HORNETD]

Originally Posted by falconview

In the diagram, you have two hot wires. Those two are 110 v each and 50 amp each what is different is the phase. In the picture with a single phase is your 110 v outlets and such. In the picture of the 2 phase, you will notice the line are opposite of each other thus out of phase of each other. To make this more simple for a 220 if you were wiring up a baseboard heater you would connect one of the hot wires on each end of the resistance wire. Those two wires will cause the wire to heat up just like if it were 110 v baseboard heater with a hot wire on one end and neutral on the other end. In the house panel box, you would install a dual break. Using the correct size wire for the amount of run between the panel box to the outlet plus the amount of cord the RV has. Most likeiy would be 10 gauge or bigger 4 wire cable for 220 v. The Red and black wires in the cable are your hot wire. The white wire is neutral and the bare wire is ground.

falconview What I'm about to share is a bit of a quibble and of no earth shattering importance but I thought you might want to know. If a park outlet has the receptacle you shared there is only one phase across both the primary and secondary windings of the transformer. What keeps the voltage different on the 2 energized conductors connected to the secondary of the transformer is were thay are attached to that single winding. Take the single phase drawing you provided and add 1 hot lines at each end and the neutral in the middle. Once you do that progress the wave form through a single pass of the corresponding Engine Alternator; that most folks would call a Generator; exciter winding through that phase's winding. In other words keep moving the wave form to the right and fill in with the next cycle as the cycle that you showed in the first drawing leaves the field of view. You can see that as the generator continues to turn the voltages at each connection point continue to change without changing there voltage relationship to each other. The voltage relationship of the 2 energized conductors relative to ground does change but those changes cancel out and are effectively zero. To the degree that the 2 energized conductors' loads differ, because of any difference in the amperage flowing through the 120 volt loads supplied by each energized conductor, the difference in current will return to the transformer on the neutral. Or, if you want to be more technically accurate about it, vibrate back and forth on the neutral.

[Traildennis]

As Hornetd mentioned, it isn't just electrical linemen working on the damaged grid that are in danger. I worked at AT&T for 36 years in Louisiana and saw my share of Hurricane damage. We had a lineman get shocked ( he was ok but it certainly got his attention) by a chain link fence. It was a common back fence for several houses. A neighbor 3 houses down was running a generator because the line feeding his house was down and laying across the fence. It could just as easily been a child or neighbor seriously hurt or killed. The homeowner never thought to turn off the main at his house. Just one of several incidents i've heard about but i remember this one well because i was the lineman involved.

[NeilV]

Originally Posted by 45Auto

how difficult is it to install a 50 AMP hook up in my garage next to a panel to run my generator for some house power? I have a gene with a 50 AMP RV plug, so I would like to take advantage to use it for the RV or plug in for power outages.

It is very simple.

1 - Call your Cities Building Inspectors/Code Enforcement Office or better yet go see them in person and ask them what they will give you a permit to do or allow you to do without a permit.

2 - Verify that your Mortgage and Homeowners Insurance allows you to install the gear to use the generator to power your house as specified by the Building Inspector/Code Enforcement Office or if they require any enhancements to those specifications.

3 - Follow their instructions to the letter which may be that it will only be allowed if a Electrical Engineer Signs and Seals a Drawing which the Code Office must approve after which the work may only be allowed if done by a Licensed Electrician.

4 - Call them them at the required way points for inspections of the work in progress having any issues corrected as the inspector notes them.

5 - Once the work is completed and approved as Passing Final Inspection by the Building Inspector, etc file the documentation and follow the usage instructions for hooking up and running the generator.

There is no reasonable or ethical way to recommend that one do this outside of working with the local jurisdiction over building, electrical and fire safety code enforcement along with the requirements of any lenders or insurers one is in a contractual agreement with.

Telling you to do what might be allowed here in Clearwater, Florida or some unincorporated section of the country is moot as the legal details and process may be quite different where you are located so you need to check with the authorities where you live along with your bank and insurer to see what is and is not allowed.

[varoadbiker]

If your hook-up causes a fire your insurance will not pay unless it is inspected. 40 year contractor

[falconview]

Originally Posted by HORNETD

falconview What I'm about to share is a bit of a quibble and of no earth shattering importance but I thought you might want to know. If a park outlet has the receptacle you shared there is only one phase across both the primary and secondary windings of the transformer. What keeps the voltage different on the 2 energized conductors connected to the secondary of the transformer is were thay are attached to that single winding. Take the single phase drawing you provided and add 1 hot lines at each end and the neutral in the middle. Once you do that progress the wave form through a single pass of the corresponding Engine Alternator; that most folks would call a Generator; exciter winding through that phase's winding. In other words keep moving the wave form to the right and fill in with the next cycle as the cycle that you showed in the first drawing leaves the field of view. You can see that as the generator continues to turn the voltages at each connection point continue to change without changing there voltage relationship to each other. The voltage relationship of the 2 energized conductors relative to ground does change but those changes cancel out and are effectively zero. To the degree that the 2 energized conductors' loads differ, because of any difference in the amperage flowing through the 120 volt loads supplied by each energized conductor, the difference in current will return to the transformer on the neutral. Or, if you want to be more technically accurate about it, vibrate back and forth on the neutral.

What I showed is how it is nothing more I can say. In my comment it is only powering the RV and not using a generator on the RV to power the house.