[img]images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] If the gen set is a 240V unit, you will have FOUR WIRES. The green goes to the cabinet of your house service panel, the white goes to the neutral bar, and the red and black wires go to the two hot legs. If the gen set is 120V and has three wires, then you will need to run the gen set leads to a place where the black, white and GREEN wires from the gen set can be connected accordingly. Some of the older stuff will have a lug right on the machine labeled "equipment ground" and THAT is supposed to be the wire that bonds to the house panel enclosure. [img]images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
You should also register your generator with your local electric company. Even a small generator can back feed enough juice into the lines to kill a line worker who's working somewhere down the line trying to restore your power. I work for the largest electric company in NH and all line workers freeze in their tracks when they hear a generator in the distance kick on during a power outage.
Generators must be selling like crazy in Florida lately. I don't know where Lutz is, but I hope you didn't get hit too hard by the latest hurricanes.
Yes, generators are hot sellers here right now. I am just north of Tampa. The only generator I could get my hands on was small like I said, only 2800/2400 watts so I will not be wiring into my electric panel box. I have mounted two outlets on the wall inside the house in difference rooms and am running the wiring through the wall from the outside. The generator wiring will be seperate from the house wiring.
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Even better would be to place a disconnect switch between the meter and panel so that the generator will not feed the power lines.
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Yeh, that's the way it's supposed to be done but a lot of people just plug the generator into a 220 outlet and basically back feed power into their panel. Most people don't understand electricity well enough to realized that also sends power out your lines away from your house unless you shut off the panel's main disconnect. If you think about it, the time when most people need a generator, they're thinking of plenty of other things and could easily forget that step. The right way to do it is with an interface panel made specifically for hooking a generator into a house panel. Those automatically isolate your generator power and take the human error out of the equation.
Of course keeping the power completely separate from your house wiring like Woodsrider is doing is the safest way.
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Even better would be to place a disconnect switch between the meter and panel so that the generator will not feed the power lines.
[/ QUOTE ]1. If you don't isolate...
2. You feed back 220 AC and...
3. That gets stepped up to about 7800 volts,
4. When fed into the grid...
5. It's enough to kill a kid, or
6. Any kind PUD employee,
7. Trying to fix the reason you lost electricity.
8. Do yourself a favor...
9. Call your local PUD and,
10. Find out how THEY want the generator installed!
11. This is a matter of life and death.
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O/T ? grounding a small generator 
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