Another thought since it's been mentioned is furnaces and well pumps. I'm not aware of any code requirement that they be hardwired. You can easily and inexpensively make them cord connected devices with dedicated outlets, allowing you to readily connect them via extension cords to your generator.
Pete C.
And in a perfect world, nobody would accidentally flip a breaker.
Exactly so. I understood the foreman's question to me on two levels, and I answered him on both levels as well:
"Is your main breaker open?" (Do you know what 'open' means?)
"Yes, it's off." (Yes, I know what you mean, and yes, it is.)
Yeah, those fellas have some major heavy-duty insulated gloves. :-)
Be realistic -- who's going to "accidentally" flip the MAIN??
Realize that you can never do that 100% of the time, with exactly 0% chance of error. More simply: perfection isn't.
That is, 100% multiplied by the probability of no mistakes, and that can NEVER be 100%. Not here. Hot anywhere anything like here.
It's your choice. With my electrical utility, if you "tickle" a lineman, they will stop work, trace down where the electricity is coming from, cut your lines off, and you will NEVER get electrical service again. It's a union thing. They will blacklist your address.
What, you think there *is* some way to backfeed the utility with the meter removed? Not unless you deliberately *try* to do it.
Sounds like an urban legend to me...
I didn't say that. I said that nothing can ever be done with 100% reliability. That is, there is never a 100% guarantee that you will remember to remove the meter EVERY time and that that meter will STAY removed.
I considered doing that (connecting generator that way) once but never did it because of the small risk of severe consequences.
By the time you find out, it'll be too late to stop it.
I never understood why people assume the one thing (perfection) that's actually impossible.
My furnace (burns gas so it doesn't need a lot of electricity) is cord connected. The outlet in there is the only thing on that circuit, although it's used for the doorbell transformer also.
This is getting absurd. Do you think the meter is going to get up off the ground, climb the wall, and reinstall itself into the base?
I guess if you don't trust yourself to throw the main breaker, and/or don't trust other members of your household to leave it alone, then this makes sense.
Like I said... be realistic. Learn to distinguish real hazards from imagined ones. Do what you can to prevent the real ones -- and ignore the ones that arise only from your imagination.
Given that linemen have died in situations similar to what we're discussing, I think we need to consider this a "real" hazard.
Ours (telco) are rated to 20kv, the local power utility's to 35kv.
And, yes... We test everything before touching it following a storm.
Still, with all the idiots out there, and the increasingly popularity of generators, it's a pretty scary thought that someone would simply splice-up a two-male-ended cord and plug 'er in without a thought to open the main breaker or pull the meter.
Not to support the other "side" but, once tested and found safe, power guys bond-to-ground the stuff on which they're working.
I WAS going to do just that when we replaced our furnace last February. However, since the low temp during the outage was -8F, we were in a bit of a hurry to get it back up-and-running, so I "hard-wired" it as before.
I suspect that, during a protracted outage, I could easily and quickly attach a plug to the input and be warm again.
That is absurd, considering that is one of the LESS likely possibilities.
I don't consider myself perfect. That's enough.
Actually, they arose from other posters on this group first.
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