THE WHOLE HOUSE GENERATOR
After going year after year having to pull a cord on any of our generators whenever the power goes out, and having to pull a lot when the generator's engine wants to give us grief, we finally decided to take the plunge and get us a whole house generator. These generators are either natural gas or propane powered, and in our case, we got the propane version since there is no natural gas line out in the country. We'll have to have a propane tank and plumbing set up on site to fuel the genny, which is no big deal. Now in the meantime we had to wait because the genny we selected was on backorder, for whatever reason so in the meantime we got started on a slab. We ended up going with a Generac brand 7500w propane powered generator.
The slab is of course a simple deal where I nailed together a frame with some 2x4's pulled from our scrap wood rack. Afterward I laid a thin layer of paver gravel through the frame. From there with the aid of the cement mixer, I mixed up one bag of concrete at a time and poured it into the slab. I did one bag since at 80lbs, mixing more than one bag would be taxing on both me and the cement mixer. As I poured the concrete I spread it out throughout the frame, doing more concrete until I got enough to get the whole frame filled. From there I used another 2x4 to level off the concrete and rake off the water that came to the surface of the poured concrete.
With the slab poured I let it sit for a couple of days, to ensure that it would be cured all the way through before putting the genny on top. By this time we had finally brought home the machine, on a pallet on our utility trailer. We got the slab done just in time as the genny was sitting on site, awaiting opening.
With the slab done we broke open the generator from its box to check things out. The unit came with a transfer switch, which had eight circuit breakers in it. After checking things out and reading the instructions, to use this transfer switch I would have to install it in the house next to the main breaker box. From there I would have to transfer the wires from the breakers to be powered and move them over to the transfer switch breakers, rendering the main breaker box essentially useless since most of the breakers currently used in the main box will be without circuits due to their being transferred over to the transfer switch. Now because of this little fact, I plan on looking into a transfer switch that can be set up outside and hooked up to the main power feed at the meter where the whole house can be shut down. This is the point where power would be completely shut off to the house and anything associated with the house. This would actually be easier and in essence, no different than using the included breaker box since I would be powering the same number of breakers anyway. I'll just have to see. It's not that we can't hook this indoor transfer switch up, it would just require a little extra work in the form of hanging the box in the wall (which is open anyway after doing an expansion of the closer to a double accordion door setup), adding large conduit between the breaker boxes and routing the wires over to the transfer switch (again no problem), then the hardest part, going under the house after drilling a hole in the floor for the main conduit that would bring power from the genny up to the breaker box. We'll see what happens, but either way, things will get done.
With the genny opened up I just did a visual on the layout of the machine, it has an access panel on the side and a top that is removed via four hex bolts. It will need a battery, which appears to be a smaller motorcycle battery due to the smaller engine size. All in all things don't really look like they'd be so bad to hook up. I just need to get it done. With the slab cured for a couple of days, we muscled the genny off the pallet and across and onto the slab, reorienting the unit so the access panel was facing away from the house and outside to make maintenance easier and also put the conduit ports on the side facing the power pole.