I did this in my previous house before interlock kits were available. It
was not hard and worked very well. After checking the cost of the kits
(ridiculous!) I plan to do it again, esp. since I have two 200 Amp panels,
the kits would cost $300 to $400 depending on where you bought them.

In my situation, I do not want a gen large enough to power the whole house
so I won't use autostart anyway. I will manually turn off the HVAC brakers
before starting the gen. Then everything else in my house will have power
available, even if I cannot run it all at the same time.

I had a 6KW gen hooked up this way before. Had a 21 day power outage and
another 10+ day power outage and never a moment's trouble and no overloads
of tripped breakers occurred. Saved a lot of $$$ on fuel by not having a
huge generator.

On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:38:11 -0500, Caesar Romano wrote:

On Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:02:09 -0400, wrote Re Code
question on generator grounding:

Some of the panel makers make them. Square D makes them for their Q0
panels and I think they now have them for their Homeline panels. Others
also have them.

Google "generator interlock kit" or see http://www.interlockkit.com/

Thanks!

It looks like it can be an interesting "home-made" project:

1) Make a template out of cardboard

2) Use the cardboard template to fabricate a working interlock from
1/8" aluminum plate.