Whole House Power Backup Solution | Generator Inlet Box Install

how's it going you guys it's Scott with everyday home repairs and I want to do a project today that I've been putting off for a little bit I want the ability to power the whole house with something other than the grid now this is most critical obviously in a power outage and I want to use either a gen set or a setup like portable power stations where I can get 240 volts going into my main panel and power my critical appliances and circuits now this type of project is approachable to most diy-ers that are comfortable doing electrical work but if you don't feel comfortable this is still going to give you a good idea of your options so you are a more educated consumer working with a licensed electrician in your area so let's jump into it and I'll show you both how to install the power Inlet box and also a critical component called an interlock so I'm going to start off by taking the cover off I remove the four screws here and then the top rope applying pressure removing the last one and then rocking the panel away from the surface now how do you know 30 amp or a 50 amp which one's going to actually power your home and get your critical appliances up and running so let's jump into that and show you how to actually test and see what's going to fit your home needs so if you do not feel comfortable doing this do not approach this project call in a professional at least you'll know the steps now that you should be going through with your professional to get the right setup for your home but what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my two conductors my main conductors coming in from my meter base on the right and left hand side here and then I'm just going to take my current clamp and set it to the 2 to 20 amp range at least to start off what I want to do is clamp that around that conductor and I see that I'm drawing about three amps from one phase and I have about 12 amps from the other phase so your phases can be unbalanced and what that is specifically in my instance is one of my critical appliances is running on one side on 120 volt circuit and that is my furnace so the furnace has taken about eight to nine amps on this side and that is not seen on the other side because it's just on one of those phases so what I want to do is I'm going to go inside turn on the lights power up a few appliances to the outlets make sure that furnace keeps running and then also I would want to see a buffer to run my sump pump so those are my critical appliances and circuits that I want to keep running so what I want to see is I don't exceed 30 amps now if you're going past 30 amps maybe you want to run your AC and you have a soft start system you might be able to go up to that 50 amp and that's going to be able to also power your AC if that's something that's important to you so lights are now on I'm powering up my laptop the furnace is running and I also have the small burner on our electric stove top running as well because that might be something we want in a storm where you can heat up some soup or boil some water so let's test our amperage again I have nine amps going through our right side phase that used to be three in about 17.5 amps going through the left hand side now all I would want to check is now what is my sump pump load I know my sump pump load is 8 amps to get water up and out of my home so right now I'm good I'm going to be able to power the sump pump power the furnace power up laptops and cell phones I have lights on and I also have a burner running inside the house so a 30 amp plug is going to work for me just now with the same current clamp you also can test individual circuits that are powering things like your furnace if you don't feel comfortable or don't want to test at the main conductors that are coming in your house now if you need a current clamp like this you can check down in the description and you'll see the link to our Amazon store which is where we keep all the recommended items like this which you'll find in the electrical section and we're now starting to spend out in 2023 to solar battery backup so you'll see that additional list out there which we'll start off with the Reliance 30 amp plug listed but will build out over time as we continue to do more projects around our own house so with that confirmation I am confident that the 30 amp is going to work for me so it's time to wire it up we'll start off by positioning the inlet box the stud buddy is marking the stud on the outside and I have a torpedo level just to make sure everything's leveled up marking the hole so I can do some drywall anchors and the center of the knockout so I can drill a hole that will allow the Romex and clamp through I'll set two of these easy anchors they're the metal ones those are my preferred type of drywall anchor in addition to toggle bolts I really like now I'll just easily cut this hole out not driving too far in and then that will allow me to pass not only the 10-3 Romex but also this clamp so I make sure everything's protected coming into the box now up at our load Center or the panel I'll go ahead and take out that knockout all the way on the edge and take a fiberglass fishing tape pushing it from the top down and using a little piece of wire here to go fishing and hook that so now I can connect up to 10-3 using the bare copper double back this isn't the prettiest one I've ever done but now I'm going to just tape that up with my 3M Super 33 electrical tape trying to reduce any of the bumps that might get caught as you try to pull that up through the wall cavity and into your electrical cabinet now one pro tip here is I'm gonna pre-install and tighten down this clamp without the Locking nut I have the exact amount of wire that I need so now when I pull it up through that's already mounted so we'll start pulling that just taking our time and then once we get up to the top now we'll start to be able to pull the 10 3 out and we'll see the thread start to poke out here after getting a little insulation off then once we get the threads I can just work that lock nut on and I've been starting to use these little wrenches to tighten down a pose of just using like a flathead screwdriver and my clients to tap that tight this makes them much tighter and I just think it's easier overall to tighten that up now going to mount the inlet box but first we want to make sure we have that connector or clamp on The Wire take off the sheathing cut that back and now we'll start to mount the box I'll just Loosely put the lock nut on but we'll not do the final tightening quite yet so this will be held with two screws top one's a drywall anchor left side one is also a drywall anchor and then I will sink one screw into the stud making sure everything is still Level and then that will easily securely hold this Inlet box on the wall now here is our overall connections we got the left and right which will be X and Y those are your two hot conductors so black and red and then W will go to White your neutral conductor first off best practice to get our grounds connected up so the one pigtail ground going to the actual plug and then the one going to our 10-3 Romex stripping off our three conductors I'll do the neutral first and I am using my Torx screwdriver there's a pretty cheap one for thirty dollars you'll see it on my Amazon store but I'm adjusting it to the 20 inch pounds of torque which is called out by the manufacturer now once those are all tightened up don't want to forget to do the final tightening here to hold the Romex in place and then we'll go ahead and Tuck all the wires and then slide the housing down tighten it up and now the 30 amp Inlet box on this side is completely wired up and now will make our connections Inside the Box we'll start off with the neutral in the ground and since it's the main electrical panel those will both land on the same bus bars if it was a sub panel we'd want to obviously keep those separate so go ahead and try to Route them around the perimeter out of the way and then once those are in place then we'll go to our two faces here red and black going into that 30 amp breaker which is used for input coming from the generator we'll tighten those down to 36 inch pounds and now the wiring is completed moving on to the interlock kit we'll remove this bolt and then place a retaining bracket on that 30 amp breaker tightening up the new bolt in place before moving on to modifications that need to be made for the cover starting off we'll just use this little template then drill three Thirty second pilot holes into the back side of the cover once those pilot holes are drilled then you'll take the template off and you can use a 3 16 inch bit to increase that diameter of those holes and that will be what three shoulder bolts go through to keep the actual interlock bracket in place placing those three bolts through then you'll put some locking nuts on the back side and start to tighten everything up once those are tightened up now we're ready to mount the cover back on our electrical panel now we'll put the panel back on and just a cloud there is a small label or sticker that gives additional instructions for the interlock that should be placed on your cover for anyone's reference in the future so the question is why the interlock well in this position now we have our main 200 amp feeding power from the grid to our load Center or our electrical panel right that's where the power is coming from so we would not want our 30 amp breaker on because now if you remember that Inlet box is more like a plug with exposed prongs so if the main was on and also your 30 amp for your generator in that was on those problems would be electrified and would be a safety hazard furthermore if we turn our main off now we can turn on our Inlet from our gen set and in that case so if we had power coming from a 10 000 watt generator through this 30 amp now if we also hit our main disconnect we could be back feeding power onto the grid and that would be an unsafe condition for the utility companies when they cut your power you could be back feeding a line and they don't know about that so obviously that could be an unsafe condition for them so that is the reason we have this interlock so only one of these can be on at any given time so that's it for this one everything's installed I'm ready to go I'm gonna be testing out some gen sets in the future and also looking at those power stations I do have my eyes on the ecoflow Delta Pro two of those units coming together to provide a 240 that I need but interest to hear your feedback if you guys have any feedback on what you're using at home and what has worked well I really appreciate down in the comments that you would let me know now if you want to see a really cost effective way if you have the real estate here next to your panel to get a 240 volt 50 amp Nema 1450 Outlet check out this video right here I'll walk you through the complete process which might not cost as much as you think so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on that next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 284,551

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Id: RmYwIt0RHnI

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2023