I have my portable 5000 watt generator ready to go for winter if I need it. Instead of running a cord from the generator around the outside of the house and under the garage door to the appliances that I want to run in side the house in case of an electrical failure, can I put a female outlet on the outside of the wall connected to a female outlet inside the wall, then plug in a 12/2 with a ground coax from the generator to the female outlet outside on the wall and run my inside cord from there? I would have a male plug in on each end of the coax. Any suggestions on this?
So when the utility lineman goes to restore your power lines, your generator creates the 4,000 or 13,000 volts that kills him? Good reason why we don't do what you are proposing and why emergency generators connect to household power using specific switchover hardware. It should have been intuitively obvious why we don't do what you have proposed.
The switchover hardware > I have my portable 5000 watt generator ready to go for winter if I
1) 12/2 will only carry 20a. (or, 16a at 80%) Your genny puts out 42a. If you generator has two 20a outlets on breakers, you could run two of your circuits.
2) The double male cord is called a suicide cord, for obvious reasons. Plenty of people use than and I have not heard of a problem, but the potential is there. To do this properly you should have a recessed male outlet and a regular extension cord.
Get a transfer panel. A Generac 6 circuit with 2 watt meters , wire, exterior box and plugs 200$ at Lowes, separatly apx 350-400. Install apx 3-5 hrs. The panel is pre wired and labeled. It is the safest way, plus your gen puts out power on 2 legs , a panel lets you balance the load
That's called a "suicide cord" rig. It's physically possible, but highly risky. One of the many risks is leaving the mains on for the house, and frying a lineman down the street. I'd reccomend against it.
There has been, in the past, much discussion on this topic. However, I really wonder what would happen if you connect a 4KW generator to the dead grid. My guess, and it's only a theory, is that the generator would stall out due to all the other loads on the line. Just the loads on your side of the transformer could probably kill a small generator. I have almost killed my generator during a power failure, by just turning on a large heater along with all the other loads.
Ready .... discuss.
Storm> That's called a "suicide cord" rig. It's physically possible, but highly
On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 12:07:53 -0500 "w_tom" used 24 lines of text to write in newsgroup: alt.home.repair
I think maybe everyone mis-read his post. I don't think he was planning on hooking the generator to the rest of the house wiring. I think he wanted to simply have a way to get the power from the generator inside the house, then plug in appliances to the isolated outlet, eliminating a long extension cord run to his garage.
"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message news:N7Vld.6053$ snipped-for-privacy@twister.nyroc.rr.com... | How do you get 4,000 volts out of a portable generator? I'd like to buy that | brand of generator next time. |
Everyone seems to have misunderstood the OP's question, but in answer to this one: Easy: When used without a transfer switch, the generator power in the house also goes out thru the fusebox to the transformer on the pole, and on the other side of the transofrmer, where the linemen work most, it becomes the x,000 Volts or xx,000 Volts, that is so dangerous. The normal step-down action of the xfmr becomes step-up when you put voltage on the house-side of it.
And, should the power come back on, the generator WILL become toast, even if its voltage settings are higher than the utility voltage. Being ac, it will not be in phase with the utility and something's going to have to give - most always the generator unless it's a huge one, in which case the pole xfmr will explode or at least smoke with vigor. Circuit breakers might help limit the damage some, but most likely the generator is still going to be toasted. If they protect anything, it will be the pole xfmr.
We are discussing human life. That means everything needs, at minimum, double redundancy. Where are the layers of protection? Again, this is obvious and a basic fact of life. Flip one circuit breaker and numerous failures could occur from damage to the generator, house fire, and even electrocuting a lineman with 4000 or 13000 volts.
If that need for redundancy is not extremely obvious, well, I sure h>> The switchover hardware includes basic redundancy that all
The original poster was not connecting ANYTHING to the grid, or to his houses wiring. He wanted, simply, to have a connector on the outside of his house that joined a connector inside the house so he wouldn't have to pass a cable through an open door or window.
There are at least two more that have been documented by OSHA FACE reports. The answer depends a great deal on the nature of the damage to the outside lines and the nature of the connected loads. Please keep in mind that it takes a tenth of an amp to cause ventricular fibrillation which is invariably fatal unless a defibrillator is applied within minutes.
I am just one of the nations fire and rescue personnel and I have responded to an incident of a utility worker injured by a generator back feed. The risk is real even though that has nothing to do with the OP's original question.
The recommendation for a proper transfer switch is a very good one.
The transfer switch allows you to leave everything inside the house more or less as it is, and you get to run whole in-house circuits off the generator.
I'm just going to point out something that people missed when they started talking about "suicide cords".
What you're trying to describe is run an extension cord thru the wall and run your equipment off extension cords on the inside of the house.
No need for double males/double females, or any of that sillyness.
Suicide cords are "required" (and code-illegal) when you're trying to backfeed an existing circuit...
You want something slightly different.
Think of it this way, it's just a short extension cord running through a hole. You could string a piece of suitable cord thru the wall and attach the appropriate connectors. But, running power cord thru walls is a code no-no.
You want a male receptacle on the outside of the building, and a female on the inside - you need nothing more than a single box open at both ends. You run an ordinary extension cord from the generator to the male, and an ordinary extension cord from the female to the loads you want to run.
You _can_ get weatherproof _male_ receptacles. I have one on my shed, so that occasionally I can power a few things in my shed with an extension cord from the house.
Obviously, with a 5000W generator, that's more than a regular extension cord can handle. You'll need two separate sets (of 20A) for opposite sites of the feed. Or, use a 4-wire connector/cable from the generator and a mini-panel on the inside feeding a few circuits of its own...
And then you have to consider grounding et. al.
Once you think that far, you'll want to consider transfer switches ;-)
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