Insurance Policy

[H@rry]

A couple of week ago we has some severe wind one evening for about 3 minutes. A tree in the front yard on the house across the street split in two and the half that fell hit the electrical drop going to his house and jerked it off and in the process jerked one leg of the drop to our house (we're on the same transformer). None of our 240 appliances worked and half of the 120 circuits didn't work. On top of that some of the ones that worked weren't at full voltage.

This was about 6:00 pm. None of the return pumps for the tanks were pumping. After I realized that the power would be out for a while I got the return pump for the 3 tank system on a circuit that was still working. The 190 was still dead but I figured Huntsville Utilities would get it working some time during the night. Well, about daylight the next morning we were still in the dark. I shined a flashlight in the 190 and my 2 spot hogfish was laying on the bottom panting. My Dispar Anthias was belly up. I got an extension cord rigged up and got circulation restored to the tank. It was after noon before we got power back.

We only lost one fish. If we had lost power completely I don't know how much we would have lost. Yesterday I bought an insurance policy. Powered it up and tested it today.

Thanx to Jason for taking my to Home Depot in his pickup and hauling it for me.

 

[beaslbob]

interesting. I may have to do that some time.

How big is that thing? That Jason had to use his pick um up. I would have thought you would have pushed it home to save gas?






Naaaaa I'de get a friend too.

 

[H@rry]

It's a little too big to fit in the trunk of my car. But then Jason was very kind to come up and haul it for me.

BTW, if any of you have not been to Tammy and Jason's place you need to take the time to find them. They are a little off the beaten path but they have some deals on frags and fish!

Like somebody said: "If you build a better mousetrap, they will beat a path to your door."

Hmm, who said that? Was it Harry Truman or Michael Jackson? :misdoubt:

 

[BHAMR6]

Harry ,

That generator will pay for itself 10x over we use one when the power is out we run the refrig, my tank and some lights with no problem.
Also you might already know how to do this but my father and law has a cable hooked to his breaker box that plugs into generator and he can go in there and just cut switches on to run what he wants during power outage

 

[H@rry]

Harry ,

That generator will pay for itself 10x over we use one when the power is out we run the refrig, my tank and some lights with no problem.
Also you might already know how to do this but my father and law has a cable hooked to his breaker box that plugs into generator and he can go in there and just cut switches on to run what he wants during power outage

Yeah, Jason was telling me that he has a similar setup. I'd like to do that but I don't want to have to tear into the breaker box. I'm just going to run extension cords to the tanks, refrigerator, modem & router, and computers.

What I was wondering was what if:: for a room on a circuit, if I flipped the breaker for that circuit off, and then had an extension cord with two male ends, and connected it to the generator and a wall outlet; would that energize that whole circuit. Maybe somebody who knows how to do it will chime in.

 

[Sikryd]

What I was wondering was what if:: for a room on a circuit, if I flipped the breaker for that circuit off, and then had an extension cord with two male ends, and connected it to the generator and a wall outlet; would that energize that whole circuit. Maybe somebody who knows how to do it will chime in.

That is what I do.

When the power comes back on, I just turn off the generator, unplug everything, and flip the breaker back on.

I made a male to male extension cord to solve the plug in issue too.

Good luck - best piece of equiptment I have ever bought. It paid for itself in the first 2 weeks - saved $1200 worth of fish in QT.
(That doesn't include anything from my main tank - which it would have been 10x that if things went south)

 

[beaslbob]

...

Like somebody said: "If you build a better mousetrap, they will beat a path to your door."

Hmm, who said that? Was it Harry Truman or Michael Jackson? :misdoubt:

Mr. Cooper















(my 6th grade teacher)

 

[dparson]

If you hook the hot to the breaker and turn off the breaker itself then it will power the whole circuit. It would probably be better if you unhook the neutral and ground from the lugs in order to keep the circuit clean and so that when the power comes back on there wouldnt be a chance of the power back feeding to the generator. since the other breakers would have power when the power comes back on then all the neutral lines would be energized with "dirty" power. These are the teachings from my grandfather(BSEE). We used to build churches around Huntsville and used generators and power feeds from other buildings.

 

[H@rry]

What if I turned off the main breaker in addition to the breaker for the room I want to power? That way it wouldn't know the Huntsville Utilities power was restored would it?

 

[Sikryd]

I'm not an electrician, so I'll have to check with my buddy that is.

I thought if you shut off the break, it disconnects that circuit from the nuetral and hot. It should at least. It would be just like pulling the breaker out.

When the power came back on, it didn't hurt the generator.

I am going to double check for sure though. Its nice to know so you don't have to worry about a fire or anything.

 

[KingRicky]

You just need to be sure that the room breaker is off, not only would it mess up the generator when the power comes back on but could potentially be life threatning to the power company worker by backfeeding the lines.

There were several casses of linemen getting shocked after Katrina came through on the coast because of people hooking their generators into the breaker box to run their houses while the power was out. They didn't realize that there is nothing to stop their genrator power from going out into the transmition lines.

 

[H@rry]

I'm not an electrician, so I'll have to check with my buddy that is.

I thought if you shut off the break, it disconnects that circuit from the nuetral and hot. It should at least. It would be just like pulling the breaker out.

When the power came back on, it didn't hurt the generator.

I am going to double check for sure though. Its nice to know so you don't have to worry about a fire or anything.

The breaker just closes/opens the hot leg. The ground (or neutral) leg is hard wired to the ground buss in the breaker box. I can see how that could theoretically pose a problem when the power is restored even if the breaker is off. I'm not sure whether turning off the main switch would open the ground or not. The more I think about it I think you'd have to actually pull the meter to break the ground.

I'd appreciate it if you could run that by somebody who knows one way or the other.

 

[dparson]

I spoke to an electrician at work and he said that you can buy an add on switch that will let you switch back and forth from the generator and city util. You could add this switch for the whole house (which his is) but could also put the switch on just that circuit. But did state that if the neutral or ground is still in contact with the return line that you could potentially shock the lineman and that would open up all kinds of legal problems.

On top of that some of the ones that worked weren't at full voltage.

Now on to this. This seems like a wiring problem because you are more than likely backfeeding electricity to that receptacle.
My grandfathers house had a similar problem/ When you would turn on the light in the attic the light in his bedroom comes on but it was very dim. This is an example of what he calles a "phantom circuit". If you unscrew the lightbulbs in his room the attic light would have an open circuit and turn off.

 

[Sikryd]

The breaker just closes/opens the hot leg. The ground (or neutral) leg is hard wired to the ground buss in the breaker box. I can see how that could theoretically pose a problem when the power is restored even if the breaker is off. I'm not sure whether turning off the main switch would open the ground or not. The more I think about it I think you'd have to actually pull the meter to break the ground.

I'd appreciate it if you could run that by somebody who knows one way or the other.

I'll ask and also test it out to see if I get any line voltage on the other side.
I KNOW it didn't feed into the generator when the power came back on - so I don't see how it could be connected to the circuit. But I am going to check with my buddy that wired my work to the box.
If you want to be 100%, you could always just add in a light switch to the circuit on the bus side and just flip it off when you use the generator I guess.
The boxes that turn on and off a house circuit are ~$500+ if I am not mistaken.

If a lineman gets shocked by a generator - he needs to get a new job. They dress for the occasion and treat all lines like they are hot. It still wouldn't be good though :squigglemouth:

 

[Cuda]

Might be easy to just run a couple extra cords for short term use as needed.

 

[Sikryd]

Might be easy to just run a couple extra cords for short term use as needed.

Thats what we are doing. But once you hook it into the circuit, the whole circuit gets energized up to the breaker.

 

[H@rry]

I'm thinking that I'm probably trying to make this harder than it needs to be. I can always just string out extension cords all over the floor. I just though that maybe one cord to quickly energize a whole circuit would be pretty simple. If it happened once a week it would probably be worth having a transfer switch installed. I figure this will be a very infrequent occurrence so I'll just go get some more extension cords.

We simply need to keep the return pumps pumping, the modem/router routing, the computers computing, the refrigerator cooling, and a TV lit up. If it's in the cold weather we've got a couple of electric heaters.

 

[brandon2432]

If you turn off the main breaker all power would be killed to the lines. The ground in the breakerbox should be grounded outside through a copper grounding rod. The double male extention cord works. I would turn off the main and the breakers to the circuit you are pluging into.

 

[JimW]

Frags are acclimating, so I did some surfing on the generator question. This might help and has a good basic schematic at the bottom of the page. Hope it helps.

http://www.smps.us/transferswitch.html



Jim