The BEST Way To Connect A Generator To Your House - Interlock Kit With Power Inlet Box Install

hey y'all adam here and today i'm going to be installing a new 50 amp power inlet box with an interlock kit so that in the event of a power outage i'm able to power my entire house using my portable generator and an interlock kit with this installation is just simply a must not just from a code standpoint but from a safety standpoint as well and of course if you're planning on having one of these installed on your house and you don't feel comfortable around electricity or especially around that much electricity and there is absolutely no shame in giving a call to your local electrician and having them come out and install it for you that way you know it's done right and you know that you're also going to be safe so let's go ahead and jump into it so this is going to be mostly what i'm going to be installing today and also some of the tools i'm going to be using to do it so this is the power inlet box this is a 50 amp power inlet box and what i ended up doing is i went on amazon and was looking for one of the highest rated but also least expensive power inlet boxes that i could find so this one had some really good reviews and what i like about this one is that it's just bigger than most of the power inlet boxes or i should say at least it's wider than a lot of the power inlet boxes that you can buy and that's going to make it easier to then wire all of this up and then also it's going to create less strain on those wires as they just sit in there i've had one of the reliance boxes that are like this one and the really the only difference that i can really tell between this and that one is the lid is not spring loaded so this one you have to open and close manually and on this they've got this little green light that lights up when power is flowing through it i guess to let you know that power is flowing through it i think it's more of a gimmick but some people really seem to like it now one of the negatives or complaints that i found with this box and it seems like a lot of the boxes that look like this one is that these knockouts that are all around the box they're not actually knockouts you can't just bust these out like you normally would on a box these are actually going to have to be drilled so that is just one of the knocks if you will of not having actual knockouts on this but like i said this was a lot less expensive i believe it was at least half the price of one of the reliance boxes but since this is a 50 amp power inlet box i'm going to be going with number six or six gauge wire in order to be able to handle that amperage the wiring for a 50 amp power inlet box and say a 30 amp power analog box is pretty much going to be the exact same as far as how it's wired but the wiring size is going to differ so whatever is being installed make sure that you're getting the right size wiring for your particular installation and then i'm going to be using some three-quarter inch liquid tight to use as conduit i found with many of my installations that this works really really well and it's also easy to install and of course i'll have links down in the description down below where you can find all of this all right so let's get this thing installed now before i go out and shut off the power in order to install all of this i'm going to go ahead and again with this particular box the holes can't be punched so i'm going to drill it out with my drill press all right so now that i've got that hole cut in that box now i can get started with the wiring so the first thing i want to do is make sure that i've got the main breaker shut off and then after i've got the breaker shut off then i'm going to take a multimeter just to confirm that there is in fact no power flowing underneath of that main breaker so i'm just going to mount my power inlet box up onto the wall and when i'm doing this i always like to make sure that i'm putting at least one screw into a stud in this case since i already had a power inlet box here i know that there's a stud in my center hole so i'm just going to reuse that hole and then put my other two screws in as added support now i'm going to take my conduit fittings and i'm going to insert them into the knockouts this way with these in place i can get a more accurate measurement for how long i need my actual conduit to be now i'm going to take all of my wires and put them up together and then just take some electrical tape and tape them all together that way they all stay together as i try to feed it through everything and also it just makes it a little bit easier to feed it through everything and then i'm just going to take that taped end and shove it through the 90 and then after i get through that 90 everything's going to be super easy now i'm just going to take my little short piece of conduit and then run my wiring all the way through the conduit once the wiring is run all the way through then i'll just reconnect it to the connector coming out of the main panel so now i'm just going to run my wiring through this connector and into the power inlet box then after i've got all my wiring run through the power inlet box i'll just take my conduit and reattach it to the connector on the power inlet box all right so the first place i want to start working is on my power inlet box so i can go ahead and cut these wires down to the length that i need them at to be able to fit into this box comfortably so i'm going to start with my green ground wire now a lot of times when you're installing a ground wire it mounts directly to the device in this case with this power inlet box they've already got a green ground going into the plug itself it is already grounded to the front portion of the power inlet box and then they've got a green ground going from the front portion of the power inlet box then connecting to the rest of the power inlet box here that way the entire box is grounded so where i'm going to be connecting my green ground wire is going to be right here where this green ground wire coming from the plug is mounted in underneath of this piece of metal so i'm just going to unscrew it and then after it's loosened i'm just going to take my green ground that's coming from the main panel put it underneath of that piece of metal and then i'm going to re-tighten the screw and then clamp both of the green grounds down give it a pull and now this box is completely set up to be grounded all right so on this plug it's pretty dummy proof they've actually color coded everything to designate which wire goes where so i'm going to start with the white neutral wire and i'm going to put it into the white hole on the plug then after it's put into the hole there's this lug over here on the side i'm just going to tighten it all the way down as hard as i can and then after it's all tightened down then i'll give it a nice pull just to make sure it won't come out and then i'll try to tighten it down a little bit more all right so now my white wire is in place so i'm just going to take my red wire and put it in the red hole on the plug push it all the way in until it's seated and then tighten it down and then last but not least i'll take my black wire and put it into the hole that's marked black and then tighten it down all right so my power inlet box is now completely hooked up so now i can put it together now to move on to the main panel so while i'm getting that backup power all set up you can give this video some power yourself if you're liking the video or you're finding it be helpful and informative please do me a big favor and give it a thumbs up right down below it really does help the video out to spread out to more people and hopefully be able to help them out as well i really appreciate it let's get back into it so now i need to take all of my wires and some of them will get attached to the box itself and then the hot wires will get attached into this 50 amp double pole breaker now this 50 amp double pole breaker serves a couple of different purposes of course it's going to be my on off controlling whether or not power can go into the house from the generator or not and then of course in the event of a surge it's going to protect everything by tripping the breaker if it exceeds 50 amps and the reason i'm going to be using a 50 amp double pull breaker is because i've installed 50 amp power inlet box and my generator is capable of producing 50 amps so i want to be able to get the maximum amount of power possible from my generator now of course if someone was installing a 30 amp power inlet box you would want to go with a 30 amp double pole breaker just have to install what's needed for your particular installation so as always i'm going to start off with my green ground wire i'm going to attach it over here to this ground bus bar that's over here on the right side so then once i've got it into the ground bus bar then all i do is just tighten down that lug right on top of it as tight as it can go next i'm going to take my white neutral wire and it's going to go down here where this other white neutral wire is so always want to pay attention to the panels if you see neutrals on one side on a bus bar and you see the grounds on the other side then of course that's designated as to where they should go all right so now all i've got left is my black and my red wires so if you take the double pole breaker and you flip it to the bottom side you'll see these two holes here this is where the wires go up inside once they are seated all the way up then there are these lugs right in here that need to be tightened down that are going to clamp that wire into place so i'm going to take my red wire i'm going to insert it up into this hole here and it doesn't matter which one it goes into once it's fully seated then i'll just tighten down that lug until i can't tighten it down anymore give it a good pull all right so i'm just going to take my black wire and put it into this last remaining hole on the double pole breaker push it all the way up till it's nice and seated and then tighten it down all the way all right so now all the wiring is attached now i just need to install the breaker and it acts like a hinge you've got these two spots here on the bottom where the bottom of the circuit breaker makes contact with first and it goes in at an angle so i'm just going to go ahead and put the breaker on those bottom tabs there so then once i'm able to rock it on those two tabs then all i have to do is just push up on the circuit breaker and it'll snap into place up here at the top so now it is installed all right so now the power inlet box is completely hooked up and wired up to the main panel but i still need to install the interlock kit in order to make this installation complete turn all the power back on and test everything out so let's go ahead and install that now all right so now that we've got our panel cover in the garage we can now drill our holes and we're going to use an 11 64 drill bit in order to drill this and we're going to use these pre-drilled holes that were already in the back plate so at this point we're able to reattach the front plate to the back plate and we do this by using the binder screws that come in the kit and they'll insert in through the back part of this panel cover up through the holes in the back plate and then of course through the holes then in the front plate and then we'll tighten them down using the binder post or the nuts that come in the kit we'll tighten them down to where it's tight but and everything's together but this front plate is still able to slide back and forth all right so now that we've gotten everything tightened down and this front plate is still able to slide freely that's exactly how we want it to be now we'll go back out to the main panel and put the panel cover back up on there and test the interlock kit out on the circuit breakers all right so now we've got our panel cover back on we can test to make sure that this goes back and forth freely which it does so let's pretend like we're going to be running our generator we got this over to the left so now this main breaker it can't be turned on it won't allow me to turn it on but i am able to turn on the generator breaker let's pretend like our power has come back and we're turning off our generator so we'll turn off the generator breaker we'll turn this over to the right and so now i can't turn that generator breaker on anymore it's stuck but i can turn on the main breaker to the house you can also add stickers now to your panel these and for instance are the instructions in order to switch everything over to generator power what to do and then there's also stickers for each of the circuit breakers so in order to run my house using the generator the first thing i do is i start up my generator let it warm up then i will take the female end of the plug and plug it into the generator power inlet box that was just installed and then when it's pushed in and seated then i just twist it and then it locks into place then i go to the male end side of the cord and then i plug it into the generator itself once it's plugged in then i turn on the actual breaker and now power is being supplied to the cord and to the power inlet box and as you can see on this particular power inlet box this is that green light i was talking about letting us know that the power is coming into the box now it's blinking in this picture but that is just the camera it is actually a steady light and just like that my entire house or the breakers that i've selected in my sub panel are now all being powered and thanks to my larger generator and my soft start kit that's made by micro air i'm also able to power my larger 4 ton ac unit which is a really big plus being down in the south now if you don't know what a soft start kit is or you're wanting to run your ac unit i have a video on my channel that shows exactly what it does and also how i installed it i'll have a link down in the description and also one at the end of the video so i'm all set up now i'm able to use my generator to power my house in the event of a power outage and as you saw it was not too difficult to do now if you like electrical content or generator related videos i'm gonna post some videos and some playlists right over here that you can click on of some projects that i've done in the past i hope that you found this video be helpful if it was please let me know by giving the video a thumbs up and of course if you have any questions or comments at all you can leave those right down below and i'll catch you all in the next one see ya

Channel: How To Home

Views: 1,299,930

Keywords: 50 amp generator inlet box installation, generator, portable generator, power inlet box, how to hookup generator to house, how to connect generator to house power, how to wire a generator to an electrical panel, interlock kit for generator, how to install an interlock kit, generator interlock kit, generator power inlet box, generator transfer switch, power inlet box 30 amp, power inlet box 50 amp, generator interlock switch and power inlet box installation

Id: fB6uI7NPxRs

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022