re: Recommendations for whole home generator?

That's what I wanted to do originally. If you are confident in your ability to deal with electrical and plumbing issues, generators are not a big deal. I suspect, however, that OP will run into the same issue I did: he lives in BR. That being the case, if you have to upgrade your gas service or pull your meter, you are going to have to involve the gas company (and somewhat less critically) Entergy. The upgraded gas meter will not get installed absent a sign off from the permit office. Apparently, BR has really tightened the regulations on setoff requirements for generators in the last few years. Accordingly, I ultimately decided that I was willing to pay for someone else to deal with that because I did not want to be in a situation where I paid for all this equipment and labor and have the permit office deny me based on where I sited the unit.