How To Hook Up a Generator To Your House Using a Breaker Interlock Kit & Power Inlet Box

hey my name is Ben thanks for stopping by so today we're going to be going over the process of how you hook a generator up to your house so I'm just using a little generator here this is a Duramax dual fuel generator so I'm actually running off of propane over there right now which is what I wanted because propane is a little bit less problematic than gasoline so with this one 240 volt plug we can power the entire property going through this one extension cord coming up right here behind my panel and you'll see it comes up right underneath right here and ultimately that in that box is connected and then from there we can pick and choose which different circuits we want to have powered so I'll show you how to get a generator interlock kit installed so that it is safe and will not back feed into the utility and I'll show you how to install your back fed breaker as well as the wiring going from there to your power Inlet box now typically this power Inlet box would be mounted on the house itself because most people have their first panel inside the actual house in my case I have it out here but it would be the exact same thing if it were mounted on the side of your house and then you can see right down here on the bottom of this this is where our power from our generator is connected to the building you can see all the prongs are sticking down from that and that is the other reason why you need that interlock breaker because these prongs would be live power or could be live power if you didn't have that interlocking kit set up and at the end of the video we'll go through the process of getting the generator itself started up and switching over the breakers and the correct order in which to do that now remember that working with this electrical stuff is very dangerous and you need to know what you're doing to do this successfully and to make sure that you are following all the laws and regulations that are in your area contact an electrician contact your local state inspector or the inspector having jurisdiction in your area and talk to them about it if you're thinking about doing this because if something gets goofed up it can be dangerous so make sure you order the correct kit this is actually the third kit that I've gotten the first time I ordered the wrong one the second time I ordered the correct one but they sent me the wrong one and the third time was the charm and I eventually got the correct kit so I'll link in the description to the different kits that you may need so right here is the panel that we're going to be installing this interlock kit on so we're going to start by just removing this cover now one thing to note is that this kit will only work in the upper right hand portion of where your breakers are installed so right here where this breaker is we're gonna actually have to move that down to this spot right here so I'll be doing that first so I'm just gonna remove the three screws that hold this panel cover in place here I also make sure you take off any jewelry that you may be wearing anytime you're working inside of a panel it's just an unnecessary hazard that is avoidable so I got my gloves and my safety glasses so before we open the panel and I'm gonna go ahead and just turn this to the off position just like so and that's not fully gonna remove all the power inside of this panel but it does at least de-energize the portion that is downstream of this breaker I'll show you here in just a second what you what still has power on it so here inside of the panel these top plugs up here are still gonna have power on them but everything that's down here there's no power on these legs coming down but you still want to treat everything as if it did have power so we know we knew this top position right here for our interlock two breaker so the first thing we're gonna do is I'm just going to unsnap this and move it down out of the way now we're going to work on the panel cover itself and on installing the generator interlock kit we know right away that we need to remove these two tabs here for that breaker that we had to move down and then these this top these top two slots right here are going to be where our new 30 amp breaker will be installed so here are the pieces that come with this kit it's really basic however I do think it's a good idea to go with an OEM kit because it's all been tested and approved and ul listed now the outdoor version is going to have a squared off corner like this instead of a rounded corner the funny thing is they actually don't even show the correct one on this picture here that's technically the indoor version but anyway no wonder it's confusing to get the correct one ordered I guess so bringing the panel over here we can see how this will work when it's like this our main breaker will be turned on and our standby breaker will be turned off and then when we slide it up right like that then that's going to require that our utility be turned off and it'll allow us to turn on our power in that box and consequently generator now in order to know where to drill these holes they've given us a little template piece over and these first holes will be drilling here are going to be three thirty-seconds of an inch now we'll just flip it over and kind of see if it looks like it's lining up correctly which it certainly looks like it does and this time we'll be using the 3/16 we'll just make sure we don't have any burrs so we're ready to install our sliding interlock plate here using the included shoulder screws and nuts that will go on the back side it's actually a very snug fit so I'm actually gonna have to just screw these into place here it's just exactly perfect though it's not difficult or anything to get them through they just don't slide through so with the cover on its side now we can install the included nuts and these are kind of a lock nut you can feel that they they do not just spin on freely so I'm gonna hold this on the back side there we go so there we have it so I'm counting the power in that box right about here I'm actually going to use this existing bolt to anchor the Box in place which would be kind of handy and then we're just gonna be coming straight in the back of the box right about here so I will be drilling a new hole right there so I'm gonna make up a little short piece of conduit that's gonna go in between I'm just using a little bit of 3/4 inch PVC to bring the wires into the back of my power in that box now on this inside part right here you just kind of want to use a utility knife to take the sharp edge off of this where it comes through initially into the box so that it doesn't Knick the wires while you're pulling the wires in and through I'm temporarily going to take this up plug out of here so that I have room for while I'm anchoring the box in place I sometimes like to just thread the screws back in so they don't end up going missing on you somehow someway so we'll be using this this rear knockout right here that will be running our 10 gauge wires through so we got that out so our connector will go right there [Music] looks good good okay so we need to talk about types of wire here really quickly for the majority of the time you're going to be using this 10 3 with ground now this is technically a romex cable that is designed to be used indoors and not in any sort of a damp environment so normally you'd be bringing this wire out straight through the side of the house and into your your power Inlet box just right through the wall now if you need to run the cable outside of the house at all you're not allowed to use this stuff even if it is inside of a conduit you need to use something that's rated to be used where there is moisture in my case I'm hooking up my power Inlet box outside here on my electrical meter area and so I'm just running a really short cable through from this box into my electrical panel but I still can't technically use this orange cable here so we have this piece right here this is a the same exact cable except for it's a UF cable our ufb underground feeder cable and this stuff is designed to be used in damp environments and you can use the individually stranded stuff like this as long as it's rated for thwn and as long as you run it inside of a conduit this technically doesn't have to be in conduit however you can put it in conduit if you want to if you can hear laughing in the background it's because the kids are jumping on the trampoline so I'm using this UF cable so I had to strip that back obviously it's kind of a difficult process I'll put a card right up above here you guys can look at my longer video I did about how to strip that you go back but in most cases you're gonna be using that orange stuff which is just the same as stripping any other regular romex cable now even though I have the main breaker shutoff we do have to be mindful that these top terminals here are always live so we have 120 volts on each one of these legs right here so I gotta be super careful and mindful of those and now we're just going to route our wires in an orderly fashion and as much as possible well gain them as far out of the way as possible and see how I'm using an insulated screwdriver to hopefully be as safe as possible if I were to slip and come in contact with one of those live lugs hopefully I'd survive okay so now we have our ground and our neutral wire landed on our neutral bus this also with our grounding bus because this is our first panel on the property so the grounds and the neutrals are not separated if however you had a separate grounding bar you would just land your bare ground wire on to that grounding bar and then your neutral wire on the neutral bus just like we see right here strip back about a half inch of insulation or so and then we'll just open up those terminals on our new breaker now question for you electricians out there how many of you guys use a torque screwdriver because all these connections have torque ratings in certain number of inch pounds and I don't know like I've never really seen somebody use them very much but is it something that you guys think is a good thing let me know in the comments okay so we've got our wire run-up right through here our cable is still fully enclosed there we can see that we have our ten three with ground cable coming up and then I ran my neutral and ground wire all the way up across the top over and tied them in on this side I could have cut them short and and put them right there but I like to have the additional flexibility so probably should have just trim them back and put them right there but they are pretty much out of the way though so I don't think that's a big concern and then obviously our our wires would have just came up here and terminated it straight into our new double pole breaker for our generator but we didn't do that because I ran them up and around and down and through my sense energy monitor clamps now there's gonna be no current going through those 99% of the time but when I do hook up my generator I'll be able to use my sense energy monitor to see how much power that I'm using on my generator and therefore be able to balance the load nicely inside of the house it'll just be kind of convenient but that's kind of an unnecessary added step so I just ran those down and through so normally the normally these clamps monitor the amperage coming through my mains here but when I'm running my generator it will actually be ultimate err the power coming through on those 10 gauge 30 amp wires if any of you are interested in getting a sense home energy monitor they have actually given us a discount for subscribers of this channel so you can hit that link right in the description where you can get a discount on your unit if you decide to purchase one they also make a fantastic gift for any tech savvy individuals that you may have in your family so that might be a good option coming up this Christmas so up next we're going to be installing the retaining bracket and we have to remove this screw right here underneath the main breaker in order to do that so it just slips right over the top of that breaker and you can then tighten it into position so there everything is nicely installed we have our double pull breaker that is going to be interlocked for our generator in that box so we're going to strip all of our wires back then we'll take our red wire nuts which are rated to be used with this size of conductor kind of pre twist our stranded wires a little bit and then we're going to start by connecting our ground wire first as always write it together tug on both connectors make sure that they feel good and secure which they do and then we'll do the neutral next now let's take our two hot legs one at a time technically wouldn't matter which color goes to which but I'm gonna just do the red to red and the black to black that seems to be somewhat logical you roll that one back there we go so right there is our inlet plug you can see why it's so important that that plug never be energized unless the the cord itself is plugged into it to supply power and that's what that interlock kit also does it doesn't allow us to turn this on unless we have our main breaker turned off so it's a very the interlock kit has many different reasons why it's necessary and now we can take our generator cord and plug it right in just like that so we just shut off our main breaker and then if we want to turn on our our generator box you just turn flip this over to on and now that is locked right there so this cannot flip back in the on into the on position because it is blocked right there so if we want to switch back over to grid power we simply turn off our in that box the interlock plate slides down and now we should be able to just push this over like so and now we are back on the grid so you can see how we can't turn this on right now because if we could turn it on then those prongs would be energized so fairly simple but very very very important so before you switch over to generator power you're going to want to make sure that you turn off any sensitive electronics that you have in the house so here inside of our our main panel in the house I'm going to turn off all of the circuit breakers because I only want select breakers to be turned on when we're actually running the generator everything is off inside of this panel so we'll go outside now we're getting close to being ready to switch over to generator power so normally right in there at that panel would be the most common spot where you're interlocked power in that box would be set up but in this case I actually have a main disconnect panel otherwise known as a feed through panel located right out here in the yard so right here is where my switchover is for when I switch over to generator power using this interlock kit we obviously have a few breakers here that we're going to be turning off so that one that one utility is still turned on right now so we're going to go ahead and shut off the main like so if we want to turn on our power in that box we could do that right here but I think I'm actually just going to leave that off for now while we get everything hooked up and then we'll come back in order to turn that on here in a minute so right here is our power Inlet box so we're gonna go ahead and hook our generator cord to this this is a 10 gauge cord so it can handle up to 30 amps so I'll open this up here and get it lined up just like so now we'll hook the other end of this up to our generator so right here on the side of the generator we have our 240 volt oh right right there so we can go ahead and plug our cord in just like so okay so this is all hooked up here now and part of why I like to hook this up first is this is going to ground the generator to the grounding system in my electrical panel there and that's going to make this safe to operate without hooking a separate ground up to it right here now if we wanted to we could hook up a separate ground but if you were operating this thing with extension cords only then it's a really good idea to ground this frame to a copper grounding rod in the ground somewhere because otherwise if something were to short out this frame could become energized and it could be a hazard so but in this case with this cord attached in fact let me just demonstrate to you that this is true I'm just in continuity mode on my electrical tester so whenever you touch the two terminals together it beeps just like that so if I put a one probe over here on the frame of the panel and one probe over here I get basically perfect continuity I'm getting point one ohms so the frame of this is grounded to this [Applause] so we can see right here that are running at exactly 250 volts which is what we want and everything looks to be hooked up correctly so I'm gonna go ahead and turn this on right here nothing should change and we are in 240 volt mode which is what we want okay so I just want I just want to test the voltage coming straight out of this outlet right here you can see if we test the first one we're getting 100 21 volt the top one we're getting 121 volts and if we go between the two the right hand narrower prongs on these two right here we're getting four bullets so everything looks really really good so now we can go over to our panel here and we're going to push up our interlock bracket and then turn this to the on position so we should have two hundred and fifty volts or so powering the property but everything is turned off on the individual breakers so we're gonna turn those on for the ones that we need to use so right here this is for the well pump I'm gonna go ahead and turn that on so if you guys are looking for a nice little duel fuel generator I'll link to this one in the description below okay so I have three main lighting circuits so I think I'm just going to go ahead and turn all three of those on right away well I think we're going to turn on the furnace and see if that works furnace seems to be coming on so that's good [Music] so we're just gonna see what kind of voltage we have here right now the refrigerator is running I can hear that I'm in 21 volts I wired this in such a way that I can still use the sense energy monitor which is super helpful because now I can see exactly how many watts we are using at any given moment and I know that I can only use about 3500 watts and we're only using four hundred and sixty watts right now so we can turn on some stuff so I want to make the will pump run so I'm gonna leave the water running here until it drops the pressure down to 30 psi we are getting really down there as far as our pressure goes if the well pump should be coming on any second starting to lose faith that it's ever gonna come on correct okay there it went just came on goes plus 552 watts when the well pump came on and so that will run for a good two minutes now before it shuts back off again now obviously the biggest and most important thing with running your generator is that you're you don't overload the generator and that's going to be something where the sense energy monitor really makes a big difference in helping you to manage and make sure that you don't overload it for example I can't even turn on my water heater because each one of those elements draws 4400 watts it alternates the elements so it's a maximum 4400 Watts that's too big for my generator to handle so I will never actually turn on my electric water heater as long as I have a generator that's this size so with the interlock kit and the way it's set up right now it's a 30 amp interlock and so I could go all the way up to like 7,200 watt generator on that same plug and in that if that's the case if I had that much power I could run my electric hot water heater I could run my air conditioner actually I think I might still be able to run my air conditioner just even with the 3500 watt generator that I have running right now so if you have multiple different things that you need to cycle through like if you're gonna run your air conditioner then you're gonna want to turn off most of the other breakers and only run the air conditioner for a little while and kind of cycle them through and turn on different breakers at different times Loreena try this turning our heat up here a little bit and here you can see that we're running our gas furnace just fine that also is a very important thing to be able to run properly and sometimes the newer furnaces if you're trying to like jerry-rigged accord and get it plugged in they don't really like that and if they're not grounded properly your furnace may not run at all so having an interlock system like this still maintains all the proper grounding and you shouldn't have too many problems with different appliances running correctly in your house so here we're going to turn on a few different appliances and just see how close to maxing out the generator we can get plugged in the griddle 2800 watts here let me think oh I'll just turn on a few more lights 3000 close to it yeah 3,100 dope it kicked out so he must have so we tripped it out at like 30 100 watts so that's kind of interesting but I don't know if something tried to come on I'm not sure what it would have been but if something else tried to come on and it was already maxed out then obviously they wouldn't be able to come on so powers off now so we'll go out there and and reset the breaker whatever breaker tripped I did turn off the things that were taking most of the power but that was fun test putting things to there minute all right we'll see what what tripped out here I'm guessing it's just the breaker on the generator itself that flipped off yep and that is correct so we can throw this back on here now there it goes but in any case I think I'm gonna switch it back over to the grid so we're gonna do over here first is turn off the power coming from the generator using our interlocked breaker so now there's no load on the generator anymore put this off and now we can switch back over to the grid so we're gonna go ahead and turn our breaker on for the grid there we go it's kind of heavy hard difficult and now we can restore power in the panel downstairs and get everything back to running normal now if you have a really a lot of really sensitive electronic equipment you may want to look into getting a 240 volt inverter generator those things are high-dollar though for me this is perfect I will link to all the different materials and supplies that you will be needing for this project in the description below so make sure you check that out I'll also link to the generator that I have and it's a really economical and inexpensive model to have around thanks so much for watching if you found this to be helpful please do me a favor hit that thumbs up button and subscribe down below for more videos just like this one make sure you hit that notification bell so that you actually get a notification when I upload a video because if you're just subscribed you may or may not even see the videos that I put out so make sure that you have clicked that Bell for notifications and I'll see you guys in the next video and really appreciate it if you guys take the time to share this video with anyone who might be considering or wanting to learn more about using a generator on their property and click on one of these videos or playlists here on the screen right now it also helps me out a whole bunch see you guys later

Channel: Benjamin Sahlstrom

Views: 760,829

Rating: 4.937664 out of 5

Keywords: Main Panel, Breaker Interlock Kit, Power Inlet Box, Generator, DuroMax Hybrid Elite XP4850EH, Dual Fuel, Guide, QO Square D

Id: Y26CBqpS2M0

Length: 27min 51sec (1671 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019