aemeijers wrote:
On 4/23/2011 10:59 PM, HeyBub wrote:
RonB wrote:

Anyone else done something similar - or better? I do want to keep
cost down and keep it safe. But it is a solution that MIGHT get
used once every year or so.


A couple of people have mentioned interlock kits. Here's how and why
they work:

You add two breakers to your box. These breakers are connected to a
220v male plug into which you connect the output of your generator.

Under normal conditions, these two new breakers are OFF. When the
power fails, you plug the extension cord from your generator into
the male plug attached to the two new breakers. You switch the MAIN
to off and the two new breakers to ON.

What an interlock switch does is guarantee that when the MAIN is ON,
these two new breakers must be OFF. When the two new breakers are
ON, the MAIN must be OFF.

All this is done to prevent your generator from backfeeding the
distribution system and presenting a safety hazard to the linemen.

You may dispense with the interlock switch is you're careful.

Uh, NO! You aren't wiring for you, you are wiring for the next owner,
or the helpful neighbor that comes over to help while you are in the
hospital because of the tree limb that fell on you. Safety-critical
stuff has to fail safe, and be idiot proof, or as close as we humans
can get.

* Removing the contraption before selling the home will satisfy your concern
about the next owner.

* If a neighbor meddles with something on my house without knowing - or
figuring out - what's up, he owns the problem, not me.

The neighbor on one side of me is a granny-lady who can't figure out how to
open her mailbox. The dude on the other side keeps coming in my yard and
trimming my bushes (so he can see traffic when exiting his driveway). I've
already told him that if he comes in my yard one more time with the intent
to practice malicious mischief in the nighttime by destroying my property,
I'm gonna shoot him in his ****in' head !

In my case, instructions are written inside the panel door and the panel
door has a lock on it. I WOULD install an interlock if the flat piece of
six-inch square metal cost in the neighborhood of ten bucks.

But for $140? Forget it.

As for "fail safe" systems, I refer you to a quote from the book
"Systemantics": "Fail safe systems always fail by failing to fail safe."