On Saturday, January 25, 2014 4:18:38 PM UTC-5, mike wrote:
On 1/25/2014 7:19 AM, Stormin Mormon wrote:

On 1/25/2014 7:42 AM, Terry Coombs wrote:

wrote:

On Thursday, October 27, 2005 11:49:15 AM UTC-5,

Yes, it can and has been done (by me) in an emergency. Whether you

feed the 240V back thru the dryer cord outlet or directly tap in at

the breaker box, either way you must open the main circuit breaker to

disconnect your house from the mains to avoid electrocuting a worker,

or heavily overloading your generator trying to feed your entire

neighborhood.



When finished my wiring will have a breaker in the panel for just

this

purpose . Out here in the woods we can be left without power for days

if we

get another bad ice storm . Also part of the reason we heat with wood ...



I've seen some thing called an Interlockkit. Put two breakers across

from each other (one from grid, one from generator). the slider bar

helps remember to shut off the mains when turning on the generator.



http://www.interlockkit.com/



This stuff works IF your breaker box allows it.

My house was built in 1970. Has several main breakers that get

fed to secondary breakers that feed the house outlets.

No way to get juice from the dryer outlet to the rest of the house

without backfeeding the grid.

This brings up an intereting point. Let's say a house has
two 150 amp panels side by side. You have a 30 amp portable
generator. Is there any reason you can't put a double pole breaker in
each panel, together with Intelockit kit or similar from the panel
manufacturer, and wire those two breakers in parallel to an
inlet that you would then connect the generator to? It would be
a bit odd, because if you only opened the main breaker on one panel,
you could have the circuits in one panel being fed
by the generator, while those in the other panel are still
connected to the grid.

And if you can do it with two, you could do it with the
several panels that you apparently have. If you can't do
it then you'd be limited to the generator only being able
to supply the circuits in one panel.




Not code compliant today, but many homes exist with that configuration.


Not sure why it would not be code compliant. AFAIK, there isn't
anything that says you can't have more than one panel, add a sub-panel,
etc. It would be strange to do it if there is no logical reason,
and the inspector might look at you like you were nuts,
but that doesn't make it a code violation.

There is always going to be some exceptional case that complicates
things. But at least around here, all the single family homes
that I've seen and lived in have had one main panel and
perhaps a subpanel for some expansion. Makes sense too,
because it's easy, straightforward and less complicated. The places
I've seen some of what you describe are older houses that were
added onto piece meal, multi-family, major new addition, etc.
It's not typical for a single family house built in the 70s.
I am seeing two panels here more recently on large homes because they
have more circuits than can fit in a single panel. But those are straightforward, side-by-side.

A bigger problem with the Interlockit approach I would think
would be that the appropriate lockout may not be available
for all panels, especially older ones.




Make darn sure you don't lose the common. Can make a lot of smoke on

your 120V devices.