Well with the poweroutages last night was wondering if the circuits in my coach will let the power travel out the powerplug if the genny is on to possiable power my house !?!

Short answer - Yes, as long as you do not overload the generator. We connected our 10KW diesel genset to our house for two weeks following Hurricane Ike and connected our refrigerator, washer/dryer and a few fans. DO NOT CONNECT TO A PLUG in the wall in the house - the backfeed to the meter and main panel is far too great and risks serious problems. Use extension cords (30 amp, not the little 10 amp type) and connect the appliance plug to the extension cord, use only three wire grounded cords between the appliance and the coach.

We've run the house after hurricanes on a few occasions. I run a good extension cord into the house, a good splitter, and plug in the fridge, the water pump, and the small TV. For coffee I go out to the coach and use that maker. The hurricane is over by this time and the weather is usually pretty nice, so going out to the coach and back is not a big problem. As was said here before, NEVER hook up directly to the house system unless you know exactly what you're doing. Use extension cords and be VERY careful.

Better than running it out the power plug (which generally disconnects when the generator is on anyway, to prevent backflow into the grid, possibly injuring linemen),is to run extension cords (min 12 ga) from a couple of outlets.

Being in earthquake country and having lost power for over three days in 1989, and a few major winter storms, I have a standby diesel generator, it is crude but works OK. I have a power transfer to switch to an alternate electrical source and to prevent backfeed on to the power grid. When I rebuilt my generator box on the Barth (after the speed bump incident) I also included a 240 volt 50 amp outlet so I could run our place off the gen set in the Barth in the event of another power loss or a diesel generator failure.

I agree with everything said about NOT plugging into a house outlet but simply running an extension cord to the various appliances you wish to keep alive during the outage.

Down here in Hurricane Country, I also have a standby generator, which I connect via a transfer switch - it's only 5KW, but it runs half the house (I put the transfer switch between the main panel and subpanel that powered the house before the additions).

It's earned its keep, having around 240 hours on it since '95. The biggest usage was after Frances, where I was out for 12 days.

well if i cut off the main breaker in box incomming can i run the power back thru my 50 amphome connection?? just wondering about 8 yrs ago was without power for 6 days cause of a ice storm

Yes you can do it that way but out here if PG&E sees this they will pull your meter (unless you have an approved transfer switch). In the past, before I got the transfer switch installed, I would pull the meter, that way there was no doubt. Sure, I broke the seal but no one noticed that for years.

quote:

Originally posted by MWrench:
In the past, before I got the transfer switch installed, I would pull the meter, that way there was no doubt. Sure, I broke the seal but no one noticed that for years.

That is the only sure safe way to do it without a transfer switch. Which is incredibly overpriced.

I got my transfer switch on ebay (several years ago) - 120V/250A for $90. Bargains do appear occasionally.