How I Installed the Generac Generator Transfer Switch | Full Install | Home Link

all right everybody here we are at the bench and what we're gonna be looking at here some of the things you're going to need to install this Generac transfer switch and I will get right down to it the first thing you're going to need that does not come in the kit is this this is a 50 amp breaker and this is going to go in your panel this is actually what's going to supply the initial electrical current over to the transfer switch itself so pick up one of these this is a squared B typical 50 amp check your box and make sure that the 50 amp you're getting is compatible with that so let's go ahead and drop this in first and I'll kind of show you where we're working here in here that's where the breaker is gonna go this is where you'll be able to turn it on and off okay so the two wires that you want to pay attention to first are these black and red wires these are your two hots create the 220 circuit okay so with these wires you're gonna want to run them to your panel to make sure that you have adequate room here so what I'm doing is I'm mocking up the run length I'm going to need so I want to keep this a pretty clean wiring job so do them as much as I can at asan camera here there's our two mains coming down they go through the wall and they go right up into there so trace them down through up and right into your new 50 amp okay so we're going to use these zip ties here and have a shear and you're going to zip tie along and try to clean that line up and surround the zip ties careful not to cut any wires now you can see a nice clean wiring job in down comes through goes into the main okay the next wire you're going to connect into the panel is the green wire so take the green okay the next wire and this is going to be the neutral here so you just connected your ground here's neutrals your white wire this is going to come through your wall you're gonna go ahead and you just connected your green over here on the ground side okay take your neutral and don't run it down past those lugs run it up so you want to kind of come up here down and you're going to bring it down into this neutral bar right there okay let me recap here so what we've done so far is we've connected the black the red the white and the green wires from the main Generac transfer switch into the main panel so what we've done is we have the red and black wires that run out of the Generac are here red and black we have the green wire they came out of the Generac here we have the white wire that came out of the Generac right here in this bus bar okay the first circuit I want to connect here in the new Generac is going to be the refrigerator so I know that from my existing panel that's this circuit here so what what I'm gonna do is show you all you can't see what I just pointed to so what I'm gonna do is connect this actually I'm gonna do this 15 here cuz that's a 15 amp on the breaker side this 15 is going to power my refrigerator so if we trace this wire back here this is going into a 15 amp breaker here this and these see you know so I'll take away all the mystery these are nothing more than just circuit breakers inside of a sub panel so this this breaker won't focus but this is just your typical breaker and it pops into here so that'll take away the mystery behind what these are and it's really just pre-wired and they just use different colors for different wires so what you're going to do is you're going to route this back through the wall here you're gonna come up same kind of thing neat wiring job right into where your old existing breaker is but instead of connecting it to that breaker you're going to wire the two hot wires together with a wire nut and then you're going to instead of using the housebreaker you're going to end up using the Generac breaker okay this we know goes to our fridge this wire right here powers the refrigerator I'll blow their circuits on that line we're going to do is we want to wire these off and its strategic I want to kind of make an inline system here so come in go ahead and cut this wire approximately here and then send it that bears out so you're gonna wire tie these two wires together just like this nice and tight like that tuck that up and I want all my wire ties pointing upward just like that so there's the first wire in and you've now bypass this breaker so technically speaking this breaker could come out you don't need it it's not gonna be used anymore now since I'm going to be using all of these circuits here and my Generac I am going to to connect if you look here all of these white wires separate them off all of these white wires here these are nothing more than just sitting on to this neutral bar so what we're going to do since we already connected the main neutral wire what we're going to do is run all these neutrals right here we're going to run them over and we're going to run them right into the main neutral side of the panel we're going to run them underneath the main lugs there so be careful from your power line and we're going to run them up nice and neat and we're going to run them in so all of them are grounded and then all we have to do is focus on our hot wires [Music] [Music] so just to recap here we have the new neutral wires coming in here so they run from the main Generac transfer switch through the wall gonna come down they're gonna come up and then right into the bar on that side so now you have all your neutrals so all that's left to do is connect up your breakers so you're basically doing a breaker replacement so let's get into that now okay have yourself one of these handy and I'm gonna start making some labels here so let's do the kitchen circuit first start putting labels on this stuff okay so here's how we're gonna kind of do our labels here I have this here showing that was the kitchen fridge and that was breaker 30 so that's how I'm gonna mark off these wires in here all right so here we go this is the completed wiring of this Generac for the circuits so let's just take a look and recap what we did here I went on ahead and zip tied everything together I still got a little more a zip tie work I want to do here at the bottom but I labeled everything well beside branch circuits here for various areas on the house mainly the kitchen and the bathrooms just like a power fan as well on the bedrooms here they are here so they come through they go up here and this is where they start to wire nut together so you're gonna wire nut your circuits together and if I pass is the current circuit that's in the panel and then the same on that side so everything should look nice and neat and tidy like mine does and I'm gonna go ahead and put this stuff together and do a base test to make sure everything is functional okay here we are on the outside of the house and I just pulled my wire here for the connection to the generator so this is the other part in the kit that it doesn't come with I'm using I believe this is ten to romex and basically what we've done here is pulled it through the house block wall and now I'm going to connect it to the plug that the kit comes with so the kit comes with this outside receptacle which is basically this here it's this plug in that the generator itself actually plugs into I mean it's this piece here [Music] so you need to make your connections here on the back of it and I will show you what those connections are so we're gonna wire this up and on the back of this generator plug it's got some markings it's got Y at W and an X so it's kind of hard to orientate you here through here but you want to do is connect your your ex to the black your W is obviously the white and the Y is the red so your white just going to go up top here your black is going to go on the left and your red is gonna go here on the right so let's do that okay once you have this securely screwed back into place the only thing left to do is to put on your cover just like that and it came with a screw and the kit just attaches the bottom plate here on to the front of the box played on to the front of the box here okay here we are back at the panel so let's do a little recap and show you what you didn't see all I did for the sake of saving a lot of time on the memory card is run the you'll see the orange wire coming out here that's basically going out to my outside box so I have a couple more connections to do on this conduit pipe but this comes through down attach this here comes through up and then through my block wall so that is the wire that feeds the actual transfer switch from generator power so what they don't give you in the kit that you need to pay attention to is you need to pick yourself up a roll of that that's tend to romex that's going to power your 220 connection at the house that will plug into your generator so that's actually what the kit does come with a plug that looks like this this is the actual plug that plugs into the box they supply but that orange wire that you see is actually what supplies power from the box or from this to the box so you need to get that so two things that they don't tell you when you get the kit is that you need your own breaker well it is in the instructions from the fine print but you need your own breaker need your own 10 to wire and obviously any conduit pipe then you want to put on your wall to protect the wire itself so without further ado I will show you how to connect the last piece in this transfer switch and then we will test it so that's basically making the connection of this ten to into this panel here which goes along that bus right there so let's get let's get going on it okay the first thing you want to do is cut this back this is the 10/2 coming from the generator switch to the Generac transfer switch so what we're going to do is cut this we need to be connecting in to this section right here one two three those three legs so we want to have ample amount of circuits so let's go ahead and cut the Generac transfer switch with where you're going to go black red white and then we have this little brown neutral bus going into this bus bar right here so let's get started on that okay next we're going to do the red wire red wires in the middle many wires here it's gotta go up in there like that pretty straightforward okay here is a completed Generac generator transfer switch for your home and I'm going to show you here where the wires go one more time so you know the main red white and black wires along with the main green wire come out of here they come down through the wall they go up and the red and black go into a new breaker that you have to install on your panel right there the next is the green wire and the white wire white wire is right here it goes on to the right side of your bus bar green wire goes here onto the left side of your bus bar the white wires that are coming out of this main bus back here I'll run through the wall they come up and they all find a home into the right white bus bar I'm seeing colors on purpose so you guys know then the multi colored wires that are coming off of these branch circuits I'll run up whatever circuit you decide to power with your transfer switch circuit you're going to pull out of your breaker which will render these breakers completely useless and you will wire nut them together here in the panel and you will label them so you know what they are in case you want to reverse this so that's the overview of the wireless transfer switch now let's put it all together and see if it works okay now your panel covers are back on what it should look like for the most part all set [Applause] okay I've applied the touch-up paint to the wall I have the Generac ready to go go in on ahead and brought the generator out I have the generator cord plugged in to the wall socket here over there and now we can begin to test this so what I'm going to do is go over here to the breaker and I'm going to go ahead and shut off all of these circuits to simulate a power outage here and a startup procedure so all these breakers are off and now we're going to go over to the main and we're going to go ahead and simulate a power outage by disconnecting from the main line so now all the power is it's out on the house so now what I'm going to do is start up a generator and you'll observe that there's no power in the house right now and both lights on the home link are currently off so let me show you now start this up and now we have the generator power ready to go so I'm going to switch the panel into generator power now the house is ready for generator power so I'm going to go ahead and try out the family room circuit and we'll go test to see if actually let's go ahead and test the kitchen one and - let's go see if we have power in the kitchen okay here we are in the kitchen I turned on the two circuits here in the kitchen so let's go ahead and test these now and these are running on gas all right babe so now I have all my circuits here in the kitchen currently running on the gas generator and now let's go see if the well works okay I'm gonna shut off these I might turn on the well and now let's go see if we can run the well pump well pumps located out here so what I'm going to do is cycle my well [Applause] looks like the well is about ready to turn on let's just let's see if we can kick this thing on here [Music] boom just came on I just heard the generator go under load and I want pumping water with gas this is an awesome awesome thing so this transfer switch allows you to pump water out of the ground right with your gas generator and this is a submersible pump that I'm running here this is a 220 pump and a little generator I have is a 3500 ok now testing is complete I'm gonna shut off the generator now that the generator is off I'm gonna go into the panel and I'm gonna go ahead and bring shut that off for now let's go ahead and bring power back into the house just like that and now that I've turned that on you can see the home link now lights up utility is ready so what this basically means is that once I hit this switch back over to here it'll bring everything that was on generator power back over to line power so let me go ahead and turn these back on and go ahead and give it the utility hit and you'll hear it click and boom everything's back on utility so if you guys are thinking about getting one of these I'd highly recommend it the installation is pretty simple taking a little bit of time and you'll be able to power your house up to six circuits with one of these cheap 3500 what is that yeah that's a 3500 right yeah 3500 rated watt generator and the only the only drawback I see with this is you're not going to be able to especially on this generator you're not going to be able to run all of the circuits at the same time so in a vent of a power outage you just want to be strategic so if you need well if you need the well to pump up a good amount of water and hold a hold pressure power your well up turn it off with the switch if you need to run your fridge up to temperature run your fridge for a while turn that back off shut the generator off if you need to run an AC or a portable AC unit inside the house on one of the outlets power up a family room or power up a side circuit and run that for a little while until your cool off or can keep that one running all the time so this is just a little overview I hope this video helps you guys out and if you have any questions pipe them in the comments thanks guys

Channel: Fix It Now

Views: 874,218

Keywords: generator, how to wire a transfer switch, gas generator, power your home on a generator, wire a generator, how to run a generator, home depot switch, lowes switch

Id: 1p8qZzwgwF0

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2017