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.

It depends on the kind of heating system. An electric furnace (or electric heating in general) needs far more power than a gas, oil, or wood pellet furnace or boiler. The latter generally could be powered by an RV generator without much trouble provided the appropriate connections and transfer switching arrangements and so forth have been made, unless the blower motor or something is 240V and the RV generator (like most) only puts out 120V power. Many furnaces are wired for 120V power, though.

In my case, I believe my oil furnace is powered with a single 120V 15A or 20A circuit...and, of course, heating oil from the big tank in the basement. I can't double-check right at the moment.

For long power outages, I currently rely on a non-electric kerosene heater to keep things above freezing. "Above freezing" and "comfortable" are two quite different things! Luckily extended power outages are quite rare for me, though fairly brief ones are not too uncommon.