In ,
TomR typed:
In ,
TomR typed:
I live in New Jersey but this is for a friend of mine who lives in
Virginia in the suburbs near Richmond.

She lives in a 4 BR single family home in a development which (in
case it matters) is governed by a homeowners association. She seems
to have at least one or two major power outages a year due to summer
storm damage, as well as winter snow storm damage. . . . ,

Thanks again to everyone for all of the continued responses, ideas, and
comments.

One of the topic themes that came up a few times had to do with
complications about how to do the shut-downs, putting in some kind of
valves, etc. -- I think mostly related to gasoline powered generators. All
of that would be way beyond the skill level of my friend, which is one of
the reasons why I think that a gasoline powered generator wouldn't be a good
idea for her.

It looks to me like the plan will most likely end up being for her to get a
not-too-large propane powered generator and use it to power only a few
things -- such as lighting, the fridge, an electric space heater or window
A/C as needed etc. -- and skip the idea of trying to power the central A/C,
the water heater, etc. Her home is a split-level style with a back door to
goes out to the ground level in the back of the house. So, I am assuming
that she could store the propane generator inside and wheel it out the back
door when needed.

I think she would just have to deal with having smaller propane tanks on
hand and she would only be able to use the generator off and on part of the
time during an outage as needed for some lighting, a little heat, etc. In
the summer, she could probably get out to get replacement propane tanks as
needed. In the winter, during a snowstorm, not so much.

She would need a cross-over switch in the main panel to switch to generator
power. I do have a question about that. Can the cross-over switches set up
to only activate certain circuit breakers in the panel and not activate the
others? By that, I mean, could it be set up to NOT power the water heater,
maybe the central A/C, etc., but still power the lighting circuits, the
fridge circuit, etc?

Also, I assume that the propane generators come with some type of battery
powered automatic starter. Is that correct?