Twenty or so years ago when my house was rewired, I had our electrician install a ProTran 10 switch transfer box with a receptacle mounted on the outside wall. My thinking at the time, based on what my wife and I had been experiencing, was to protect the house and its contents from burst pipes caused by the long duration power outages from frequent ice storms occurring in our area.
We dedicated the 10 circuits to the main and pantry refrigerators, the furnace, kitchen lights, the oven, microwave, master bath, etc. Power was supplied by a 5500 W gas generator I would wheel over from the barn.
We’ve had plenty of occasions to use this setup in the winter, but now we’re experiencing more outages during the summer, which the existing transfer box selections really don’t map into as well, such as running ceiling fans. Additionally, over the years we’ve replaced incandescent bulbs with CFLs and LEDs and more efficient appliances, as well as a basement freezer.
So, my question to the professionals: Leave things as they are, or replace the transfer switch box with a simple switch to put the entire house on the generator, then selectively monitor the load to stay within the generator capacity? There’s no intention of running heavy loads like air conditioners or dryers, but having the ability to turn on lighting anywhere in the house (as opposed to only the dedicated lighting circuits in selected rooms as currently defined by the transfer switch box) would be beneficial, especially as we get older.
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As you get older, it may be better not to have critical utility functions rely on your clarity of thought. Also, someday another person will have to operate the setup, and they may not have your abilities.
The process of a hook-up would require not only hooking up the generator, and operating the transfer switches, but also selecting main panel breakers for circuits you want to run (and not run). Too much possibility of hooking up and having everything come on at once, overloading the generator.
You may want to consider instead carefully reviewing loads and combining of your circuits inside the house. You might be able to combine lighting circuits and stay within acceptable loads.
Another option would be to use a sub-panel wired to be operated from one (or two) of the transfer switch circuits.
In most areas it is not permitted to hardwire an auxilary power source to a metered installation with out a transfer switch. In the event of an outage power that feeds back into the grid could endanger electrical workers.