"Blattus Slafaly 0/00 ? ? ?" wrote in
message ...
Rich wrote:
I'm in the market for a portable generator and just need it to run the
fridge the furnace and just small things after that. I went on a few web
sites and they seem to be geared to running your whole house instead of
just a few things to get past the storm or what ever. I live SW of
Chicago and the longest I've been without power was 3 days when a tornado
came through. I would like to buy one that would get me by for a day or
two at the most and only run the basics. What I'm having trouble with is
sizing the unit to my needs. Sump pump, furnace, fridge and some lighting
but I have all compact fluorescents.
Thanks for any advice, especially from someone that has this basic setup,
Rich
How do you expect to connect into the circuits of these few things?
The easiest way is to plug into your dryer outlet and back feed to your
electrical box (with the mains off of course). That way everything will
run normally as always. A 5000 watt generator should do you. None of them
will run for 2 or 3 days without refueling. You'll have to gas it up every
day if you don't run it all night. Now you can get a small diesel
generator and hook it up to your oil tank and it would run until the tank
is empty. That will cost you much more. 5kw will give you about 30 amps,
the rating of your dryer cable and breaker. In the US anyway.
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Blattus Slafaly ? 3 
7/8
Thanks I didn't mean to run 2-3 days without refueling I meant the longest
outage I've seen is that and prepare for that. The online guides I saw
seemed to be geared toward bigger switch over units. I planned on making an
extension cord with male on both ends and back feeding the system but as you
pointed out doing this at 220 would make more sense as I don't have to make
sure or put everything I want to power on one leg of the 110, 220 would do
this for me.
5K or more it is then and I think I'll run that 220 line to the garage after
all and back feed with the main off to the whole house. I have all my
expensive electronic devices on UPS's already so they should be OK with the
transition I just have to see how it all works when needed.
Thanks for the help, Rich