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I don�t know why people pay the price of a transfer switch on a �Emergency Panel� alone plus all the extra mess, cost and time to wire it in or have it hired done? Just take the money you would have spent extra on your emergency panel wiring and get a generator big enough to run most of the entire house loads. Just tell the wife not to use the electric clothes drier or the electric stove oven. You get what you pay for with a generator. A Coleman unit is good for running plain motor loads, electric heating and lights only. A cheap computer UPS will have to wired into the 120 V electronic furnace controls to prevent ruining them. Short cuts with electricity with wait as long as they need to, just to bite you, ruin equipment or start a fire.

You need to ground whenever you use electricity, whether it comes from the power company or your own generator. Farms and county places are often said to be poorly grounded. That's why lightning tears up your electronics.

Generators pose several risks. You can electrocute the workers trying to repair the lines if you don't disconnect correctly. The power company can catch your generator on fire if you try to connect to their energized network.

Someplace you are going to set that generator. Drive another ground rod there and run a piece of #4 or #6 to the rest of your grounding system.

Home owners have drywall so they can tear into it. Someday you'll make an electrical improvement that is a real hit. Your leash and your honey do list will get longer.

At this house all I have is a 1.65 KW Coleman, though, and I don't want to risk my gas furnace and circulation pump on it. If it gets cold during a power outage I'll try it, but not until.

The thing is the Coleman produces lousy power. I have measured the voltage at various times between 95 and 135 volts. I shudder to think of what that does to the phases. Just for the fun of it I plugged the same 100 watt trouble light into each machine in turn. The Honda's light was even and smooth. The little Coleman's flashed a lot.

I'll use the Coleman on electronic things only in an emergency. For the rest it can run a drill, saw or light just fine, and it's easy to move around.

But a 12 kw generator is likely a lot more sophisticated than this little portable. My friend's 7.5 kw Coleman makes pretty good power. What if you rounded up a disposable computer and monitor, then rigged it up to run whenever you have the generator on and watched to see if anything bad happened over time? It could be fine.

The generator supplies a hot, netural and I suppose the ground circuits, and that should be all you need. I've never seen anything that suggests that the frame of the generator be grounded to earth.

Charles

First off, I'm NOT an electrician---

But, if you are directly UNPLUGGING the well and water heater FROM the house and PLUGGING INTO the generator 240V outlet--doesn't seem to present a problem.

Now, to my way of thinking---if you are UNPLUGGING 120v equipment FROM the house electrical system and PLUGGING INTO the generator at the 120V outlet�

I really don't see the problem----

Unless I missed something here.

Now the Tripplett is really about the same as a UPS which keeps a constant 120 volts and probably constant 60 Hz frequency even with varying generator speeds and is ideal for most sensitive devices but most transformer devices can survive 50-70 Hz with no problem. The Triplett provided the neutral/ ground bond internally. Also this may be more of a safety problem because you do not have an actual ground connected to your set up as I understand and your devices could be running hot to touch. I think you spent a lot of money over something that was not a real problem in my estimation.

• Grounding generator

The book is, Wiring a House, I got it at HD last week. I found mine by the contractor checkout. It's got a section on transfer switches. I think Northern Tool has some small transfer switches, I thought were reasonably priced. It's worth a look the next you're in there. The front copy on the rack was pretty dog eared.

I am just setting things up. But I am considering a subpanel transfer switch near the furnace/pump/refridge. When the power goes out I will transfer that panel out and still keep perishibles frozen and the toilet flowing.