re: Hooking Up Generator to House

Did you try to flip the other panel? Need to try both to make sure neither is feed thru.

diat150, yes each are separate. The opposite side of the house stays powered when I flip one of the mains off. So they are each powered separately and no pass thru.

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he opposite side of the house stays powered when I flip one of the mains off. So they are each powered separately and no pass thru.

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You may be saying you did this, but it's not easy to clearly confirm through typing on a message board. You have tried turning one off and leaving one on, but doing it both ways.... i.e. panel 1 off/panel 2 on, and panel 1 on/panel 2 off?

I talked with another electrician today, well we were texting.

He suggested installing 2x interlock kits, parallel the new 50A breakers connected to the interlock kits to a junction box with a single 50A plug in.

This will require me juggling some of the higher amp circuits like well pump, pool pump, etc. Waiting to see how his quote for this compares to the other quote for 2 interlocks and 2 50A plugs.

Thanks for the info JustinTI. I have not seen any generators with 2x 50A before. Thanks for the link to the Westinghouse. $4000 is more than double their 13000w with a single 50A. But if I spent $4k then $2k for the plugs/interlocks. I might would just hang on to this for a long while and maybe not get a standby. I'm getting standby quotes of $14k to $18k for 24kw.

I'd estimate that you'd be looking at $500 in materials for a 2 plug setup (2x plug receptacles, 2x interlock, 2x 50 amp breakers, wiring). The install should be really easy if getting the wires to you panel is not that hard. If you are comfortable with electric work, you could potentially do it yourself. I would think you'd save $10k at a minimum compared to a whole house standby setup. The motor on the Westinghouse is the same as what comes on the 24kw air cooled generac. Trade off is convenience.

Full disclosure, I own that Westinghouse...bought it for $3500 from home depot. I did the wiring myself and tested it out a couple weeks back. Thing is an absolute beast. Ran my whole house with a pool pump, two ACs, and an electric dryer actively running and didn't seem to break a sweat. Plan to do a tri-fuel conversion when the kits are available.

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An electrician stopped by and told me that the service power feeds each of my panels

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This doesn’t sound right. Do you have two meters. If not then they are tied together somewhere. A picture of your incoming service would be helpful determining what the hell he was talking about

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this doesnt sound right, you should have one, and only one, main service disconnect breaker to trip to kill all power coming into the house going to everything.

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Not required by electrical code for a private residence. You can have up to 6 breakers or disconnect devices to remove power, commonly known as the “6 operator or 6 throw rule”. My house requires turning of 3 breakers to totally remove power. In the OPs case it should be possible to add generator transfer switch between the meter service entrance and the breaker panels.

install an inlet and interlock on each panel

buy a NEMA SS2-50R splitter like this to connect a single 50A generator outlet to 2 50A inlets



if the generator you have has an 14-50R outlet (dryer outlet) on it, you can buy a an adapter to convert it to SS2-50R like this

DVinBR,
I've never seen these splitters before. I definitely could used that if I could only find genny with 1 50A plug up.

Definitely better than swapping plugs from one panel to the other, when I need to power the well or pool pump on separate panels. Thanks for the info.