Setting up your house to run off your RV generator?

:) Hi, I have a manual 6 circuit transfer switch in my garage. I have an RV inlet box outside of my garage, by my trailer. And I use my Yamaha 2400 portable generator to power my house. This is enough to power two refrigerators, my garage door opener, wall sockets for my TV and computer, gas fireplace, and all ceiling lights.

Works great for me; We get too many power outages in my neighborhood.

Considering your gen likely doesn't have 120/240V output a house transfer switch for individual 120V circuits is a good option. 7KW limits what you can power in the house.

All you need is a cord to connect the generator output to the house inlet.

How long will the gen power your house before refil needed and a trip to an electric powered gas pump??? Just curious.

NamMedevac 70 wrote:
How long will the gen power your house before refil needed and a trip to an electric powered gas pump??? Just curious.

My Onan 4000 was rated at about half a gallon per hour at 1/2 load, and the RV had a 45 gallon tank (only usable to 1/4 tank, so around 30 gallons usable, so I'd get around 60 hours if I ran it 24/7, or about 2.5 days.

Though in a power failure, I'd really only need to run it around 6 hours a day or less (enough to run the `fridge and furnace once every 4 hours), so I'd get around 10 days of use before I had to refuel.

The Onan 7000 is rated at 0.7 gph at half load, or 0.4 gph at no load. I don't know what RV he has, but the Tiffin Allegro Open Road comes with the Onan 7000 and has an 80 gallon fuel tank, so he'd get somewhere between 80 - 150 hours of runtime.

I've only had one extended power failure so far and it only lasted about a day and it was in warm weather, so I only had to power the 'fridge.

NamMedevac 70 wrote:
How long will the gen power your house before refil needed and a trip to an electric powered gas pump??? Just curious.

:) Hi, my Yamaha will run my house for about eight hours per tank and it holds a 1.59 gallons of gas. I have about ten extra gallons of gas for it. Our longest power outage so far was for 3 1/2 days.

NamMedevac 70 wrote:
How long will the gen power your house before refil needed and a trip to an electric powered gas pump??? Just curious.

We got caught in the big Texas storm last year down in the RGV.

We were without power for 3 days (they kept saying it would be a rolling blackout) before we bugged out.

There were stations 2-3 miles over with power and even a few operating off generators. We were able to fill the 5 gal jug and keep the 2400w generator running (get around 7-8hr/gal). I'm sure we could have kept doing it...just a pain.

Short of a hurricane (usually predicted well in advance), you will typically be able to drive out of the power outage area to fuel up.

We just installed a Reliance Protran manual transfer switch. It is all of 6 circuits and only uses 120 volts. It is rated for up to 7000 watts. We use our Honda eu3000i to power the switch. We have two bedrooms, kitchen, heating system, and office/freezer running off the circuits. The particular items powered are Dish tv system, freezer, refrigerator, security system, heating system, lights, computer system, kitchen wall plugs. We also have two small window AC units we can install as needed. We don't run every thing a once. The transfer switch has two meters that indicate wattage being used. The generator has a 3 gallon tank and it lasts about 20-24 hours.

Hi Gundog,

I also installed a 6 circuit transfer switch which isolates the power line. I used a Yamaha 3000. The power was never out for very long--but it was useful and fun. I was surprized just how much I could run on the 23.3 amps the generator provided.

My stove was natural gas, so there was no problem running the burners.

I chose to power the furnace--even though I did have a millivolt igniter and thermostat system on a natural gas fireplace.

CA Traveler wrote:
Considering your gen likely doesn't have 120/240V output a house transfer switch for individual 120V circuits is a good option. 7KW limits what you can power in the house.

Since you drive a DP, and it has 240/120 available, you should recognize that the OP also has a DP, and thus will have 240/120 available also.