RV to power home temp

way2roll wrote:
Is an RV genset big enough to run a home furnace? When we lived in MD I needed a 16kw house generator and 8k of that was to run the furnace - in extreme cold as you mention - below 20 degrees a heat pump won't do it, you need resistance heat and that's a huge amp draw. I doubt an RV genset would run that and even if it could no way you could do it without hard wiring romex. Also I doubt you could run anything else. But hey, at least the food won't spoil. I would guess that if you are in a climate that cold with outages longer than 48 hours, you would invest in a real whole house generator instead of trying to limp along on your RV's power supply. To the op - sure you can run an extension cord to run small items and a fridge.

I have 2 natural gas, forced-air furnaces and they'll run simultaneously off of my 10,000 watt generator (8k running watts) with plenty of headroom. The 6,500 watt generator in my motorhome could run them both easily, too.

I've never tried it, but I'd bet I can run at least one furnace off of the exterior outlet on the RV. It's a 15A circuit so it would be fine as long as the extension cord isn't too long. And like you said, probably the fridge and some other stuff (but not all at once).

It depends on how "temporary" temp is. Installing a transfer switch is a lot of work for something I only use once or twice a year but it's great to have at those times. Previously I was snaking extension cords throughout the house and had the downstairs furnace rigged up with a suicide cord.