Excellent comments posted regarding transfer switches, etc. But let's
back up to the overall strategy:

1. All year long, you need refrigeration for food. During freezing
weather, it can be placed in the garage in a cooler.
2. In the winter, you need heat. If your heat is electric, you may not
have sufficient power for it. If it's gas-fired, it won't take much
power to run the fan and thermostat.
3. In summer, you may want A/C, but you may not have sufficient power
to run more than some fans.
4. The pump may be needed, depending on the season and weather.

A 9000 watt generator fueled by gasoline is fairly thirsty. Something
like 3500-5500 watts with at least 6-10 hours runtime is probably a
better choice. If you are iced in, you are not likely to be able to
obtain more fuel except to siphon from vehicles. You may need 5-6
gallons of fuel every 8 hours (for example) for the outage duration.
That's 18 gallons per day. Flammable fuel storage will be an issue.

Consider supplementing your electrically powered items with things
like coolers, camp stoves, fish cookers, gas grills, camping lanterns
and battery-powered fans. Creating total dependency on a single
generator and its fuel supply does not allow a backup plan.

Determine what the longest power outage has been in the past 5-10
years and plan accordingly. You will also need to perform periodic
maintenance and fuel replacement for whatever solution is implemented.
It cannot just sit on the floor or shelf until the instant of need.

On 13 Jul 2006 06:36:07 -0700, "sparty" wrote:

I recently moved into a new house in Michigan, that does not currently
have a Generator hook up.