ransley wrote in
:

On May 26, 11:39*pm, Red Green wrote:
Joe wrote in news:7ae01607-64b1-4759-81b9-
:

I had a 90 minute power loss last week and I noticed that my Weil
McLain oil fired boiler did not going on for the entire period. Up
until then I was under the foolish assumption that if there was a
blackout in the middle of winter my hot water boiler would continue
to heat the house. How can I protect against an extended power
outage in the middle of winter leaving me without power. Even if I
had a portable generator my electric oil pump is hard wired so
there is nothing to plug in. What do other people do in this
situation?

Assuming you need 120v to run your furnace?...

You feed power from the generator outlet into your house by plugging
it into an house outlet. That outlet will feed the breakers through
the panel box. Make a 20A cord with two male ends.

IMPORTANT and LEGALLY REQUIRED. ALSO MORALLY SANE. You are required
to have a "TRANSFER SWITCH". This disconnects your panel box from the
meter while your generator is running. Besides the generator feeding
your house, it will feed power back to the "pole" or wherever. If
someone is working on the line trying to restore power and thinks the
line is dead, your generator could hurt/kill them. You would be
liable. And even if the lineman scenario didn't happen, I think
things would get nasty when the power came back on and the generator
was running too.

For 120v, the generator must be plugged into an outlet that is on the
same side of the panel box bus (not physical side of breakers) as the
furnace. Power will be supplied to all house outlets/hardwired things
on that side of the bus. Make sure everything is turned off so it
doesn't bog down the generator. Someone running like a hair dryer
will bog it down and maybe trip generator breaker.

No personal experience but I've heard you can't plug the generator
into a house GFCI outlet like say in a garage.

DO NOT have anything on in the house that is 220v. It will only get
120 and burn stuff up.

I've never done this part but if you do this with a generator that
has 220 output and can plug into a 220 house outlet, you should get
power to both sides of the panel box and all house outlets.

Hopefully some more savy electrical people in this group will shoot
holes or add good info to this post. This is welcomed from my POV so
no one gets hurt and you don't cause any damage on your end.

You dont plug it into a house outlet-backfeed a house, a transfer
panel has its own exterior box and plug. My 7500w uses 4 prong, 8ga
wire, weatherproof box, Look at a Generac Transfer Panel kit, its all
included at about 2-300. But if you want real cheap put the boiler on
a plug in outlet and unplug the boiler and gop to the generator with
an extension cord. Backfeeding a house is dumb and probably illegal

Illegal? Not where I was anyway. Power company said as long as I was
disconnected from the meter it was not illegal. I was in northern VT just
south of Montreal in the January 1998 ice storm. No power for 5 days. Few
miles north and they were out for weeks. Montreal had huge transmission
towers dropping.

I had limited power backfeeding. Enough to keep furnace running, some
lights, frig, microwave, etc. Dumb? Maybe, maybe not. You try no power
for a week in the middle of winter in that location.