If used in inclement weather will you need to build some sort of canopy to keep the elements from affecting its operation? They are not enclosed in any sort of enclosure. In addition to the above, portable generators tend to be noisier than home standby units. In the past during extended outages the local fuel stations have been inoperable too! Now what?!!! If you haven’t stored a dangerous amount of fuel on your property you are dependent on the local fuel station. Every 3-6 hours you will need to refill the tank on the portable. Their tanks often don’t hold more than three. Portable generators consume 12 to 20 gallons of fuel per day. You go inside the home and you manually transfer the switch and power up the select loads on your protected panel. Now you hopefully have not had to tinker with a finicky generator and it’s finally running. Just how many fuel storage containers do you have on your residential property?Īre you comfortable with that? Is your home insurance company ok with that!!? Have you conditioned the fuel in the generators tank and fuel delivery system for storage? Have you conditioned the fuel in all your stored fuel containers for storage? Will any of that fuel work, or is it now varnish. What we have found with those who don’t pull out the portable unit and exercise it with some regularity is this is not the case. Once this is done, the best case scenario is the portable starts right up. Once there you find the cord that is made to go from your portable unit to the power inlet and you plug it into the generator and the power inlet. Rummaging through the garage or shed in lousy conditions you find the generator and you drag it, possibly through the snow, or carry it to the power inlet location on the exterior of your home. After all, you did just have a power outage, adverse weather could be likely. This, according to Murphy will happen when it’s dark out, you have no light other than a flashlight, and it may even be cold and snowing. Make no mistake, even on wheels a portable that’s capable of running most of your home is a heavy piece of equipment. The power goes out, someone must go get the portable generator from where it has been stored. A Common Drawback of Portable Generators and Manual Transfer SwitchesĬonsider this likely scenario – portable generator solution installed. Usually the manual transfer switch is mounted near the homes breaker panel with cabling to an exterior mounted inlet. While a permanently installed home standby unit is more money than a portable it is not nearly the same solution.Ĭonsider the code compliant (many are not) installation of a manual portable generator / transfer switch solution as a backup source for your home. Power quality varies greatly with the use of a portable, and this can affect the sensitive appliances within your home. Now you’ll need one power cord to plug the generator into the manual transfer switch for information on selecting the right power cord to accompany your generator and transfer switch.As a Generator installer I frequently get asked why one should choose the home standby option, when a portable generator is available for less money? After all, manufacturers produce portable units today that can power up the essentials, and both produce electricity right? Power from a portable is the same as power from a home standby unit isn’t it? The practical answer is no. You can put away the multiple generator cords, so tedious and easy to tangle, that once hooked appliances into your generator’s outlet panel. After you have chosen the circuits you want hardwired, it’s a quick and simple procedure for a licensed electrician to connect these to the circuits of the transfer switch. Many homeowners choose to power a utility or laundry room, frequently the location of a water heater or furnace. Probably so will your living room, and each bathroom in the house. Your kitchen will probably have its own circuit. Any of the circuits you see, which can be turned on and off by the switches in your fuse box, can also be run with a portable generator. To gets a feel for the circuits that can be hooked to a manual transfer switch, examine your fuse box. They will also require a portable or home generator of over 10,000 watts to operate them effectively. As a rule, these models will have a 10 or 12-circuit capacity. There are large manual transfer switches that can channel power to an entire building or house. How many of these circuits can be run simultaneously will depend on the wattage of your generator. Most manual transfer switches can run from 4 to 6 circuits. A generator transfer switch is installed beside your fuse box, and then hardwired to the circuits you’ll wish to run in an emergency.
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