RV to power home temp

camperdave wrote:
I run an extension cord from the RV to the house, under the door, and plug in the refrigerator. Easy cheap and safe.

We tried this when we had an emergency.

pianotuna wrote:
Hi,

I added a manual transfer switch that had six circuits. By choosing carefully, I had almost full functionality in the house. I was amazed at how much I could power from a Kipor 2800 Ti. I never came close to overloading the genny.

I got the same setup Piano. I have a 6 circuit Gentran transfer switch with the same Kipor as you. For the average house, 6 circuits is fine, but you need to know if the furnace fan is 220 or 120. Over the yeaars I've loaned out the Kipor mor than I've needed it myself. I got friends in the mountains that seems like they get nailed every year with extended outage. Don

wvabeer wrote:
I was hoping to back feed my house thru the shore power cord by killing the main power flip a switch in the motor home

Never EVER use a cord to "Backfeed" Never put power to a MALE plug. only to a female outlet... Never Backfeed

use a proper generator transfer switch. put a proper heavy duty outlet on a breaker all its own in the RV and use a custom made extension cord to connect the OUTLET on the RV to the INLET on the house. NEVER BACKFEED never put power to a plug

Imagine the RV is set in backfeed mode and someone picks up the plug with bare hands and... BY By victim. HELLO LAWYERS.

AllegroD wrote:
We lose electricity every year for 2 - 14 days.

We have an Onan 7kw. If you have a gas furnace, see if a local Home center or radio shack has a Leviton Male Outlet.

We put one of these on the outside of my garage connected to a female receptacle inside and then put another one on the wall between the garage and house wall, again to a standard female receptacle. This allowed us to run standard (not suicide/dead man cord) electric cords from MH genny to garage. In the garage We have the gas furnace wired to a standard socket so We can pull the plug and connect the blower to the genny and route another standard orange electric extension cable to the house for lights. Definitely keeps the pipes from freezing.

We winterize the MH so do not live in it during power outages. We also have gas WH and range, so we can live comfortably in the house.

We have been told that there is a grounding issue that could put your furnace control board in lock out. I talked to the salesman and install technician about how we wanted to use our MH genny. The install technician said some of the above, looked at my genny and said it would work fine. The install technician did all of the wiring to the furnace electrical. Many years later, we are still using that very setup, every winter.

I've been doing the same thing for years but I had to create a bonding plug (connects neutral & ground togther) or the new furnace wont run. The plug simply plugs into one of the outlets on the gen. Any furnace made in the last 10 years (roughly) will require this of any portable gen.
BTW, the the connector you speak of is referred to as an inlet.

We lose electricity every year for 2 - 14 days.

We have an Onan 7kw. If you have a gas furnace, see if a local Home center or radio shack has a Leviton Male Outlet.

We put one of these on the outside of my garage connected to a female receptacle inside and then put another one on the wall between the garage and house wall, again to a standard female receptacle. This allowed us to run standard (not suicide/dead man cord) electric cords from MH genny to garage. In the garage We have the gas furnace wired to a standard socket so We can pull the plug and connect the blower to the genny and route another standard orange electric extension cable to the house for lights. Definitely keeps the pipes from freezing.

We winterize the MH so do not live in it during power outages. We also have gas WH and range, so we can live comfortably in the house.

We have been told that there is a grounding issue that could put your furnace control board in lock out. I talked to the salesman and install technician about how we wanted to use our MH genny. The install technician said some of the above, looked at my genny and said it would work fine. The install technician did all of the wiring to the furnace electrical. Many years later, we are still using that very setup, every winter.

Please don't go cheap and jerry rig a hookup. Lives can be lost by backfeeding the power into the power grid.
I was using an extension cord to run my refrigerator, freezers, and furnace from my generator. The furnace was converted to be plugged into an outlet instead of being hard wired. I had someone tell me that it was a mistake to do this, but, how many times have you seen a plug jump out of a wall outlet.
I will soon be getting a transfer switch installed to do make running much of the house from my generator.

I've run extension cords from the RV into the house during power outages, but not into my home's electrical wiring. I have a couple of those multi-receptacle, heavy-duty cords that I'd plug the fridge and other stuff into.

More recently I installed a 10-circuit manual transfer switch with a twist-lock connector mounted in a box on the side of my house. The motorhome has a 6,500 watt generator which would be plenty for the bare necessities in the house but I don't have a way of connecting it to the transfer switch. It would be fairly straightforward to put a twist-lock receptacle in the genny compartment but I haven't gotten around to it. In the meantime I have a relatively inexpensive portable 10,000 watt generator that I've used a couple of times when the power went out. In my opinion it's much easier than modifying the RV's generator to connect to my transfer switch.

The one big plus of the RV generator is that it's in a housing and protected from the weather. When I run my portable generator I need to protect it from the elements (usually saw horses and a sheet of plastic).

Gundog wrote:

wvabeer wrote:
I was hoping to back feed my house thru the shore power cord by killing the main power flip a switch in the motor home (separate transfer switch) and run a few items till power is restored. Maybe ad a twist lock at two points within the transfer switch, one at incoming power and other main gen power connecting to the cord depending which mode I'll be in.

Please don't. Use a transfer switch designed for this application do not trust your main breaker as a disconnect to the utility. I am a retired journeyman lineman and this can kill utility workers. I can't tell you how many failed main breakers I have seen.

If you back feed into the utility the 120/240 volt service feeding your house comes from a transformer that converts primary high voltage at the transformer to the 120/240 volts for your house. If you back feed into the transformer you create primary high voltage through the transformer. The transformer is a simple device feed high voltage in the top it makes secondary voltage out the bottom feeding your house feed secondary voltage into the transformer and it makes high primary voltage out.

Not just utility workers are at risk lets say you have a wire down on your street or 2 streets over and you back feed through your service and the neighbor kid moves the wire so he can play and dies or is maimed guess who is at fault or maybe the downed line starts a house fire etc. I know of one lineman personally that got killed by an illegal hooked up generator in Mariposa, CA and their have been more many more.

It doe not matter if your home is fed underground or overhead the threat is the same.

Best case scenario is the utility worker grounds the primary line and smokes your generator. Do NOT TRUST YOUR MAIN BREAKER TO BE A DISCONNECT TO THE UTILITY. A proper transfer switch is a break before make device that gives a physical separation to the utility service.

Thanks for the heads up. I would have thought it would pop the gen breaker because of the load. I will do more research. Thanks

wvabeer wrote:
I was hoping to back feed my house thru the shore power cord by killing the main power flip a switch in the motor home (separate transfer switch) and run a few items till power is restored. Maybe ad a twist lock at two points within the transfer switch, one at incoming power and other main gen power connecting to the cord depending which mode I'll be in.

Please don't. Use a transfer switch designed for this application do not trust your main breaker as a disconnect to the utility. I am a retired journeyman lineman and this can kill utility workers. I can't tell you how many failed main breakers I have seen.

If you back feed into the utility the 120/240 volt service feeding your house comes from a transformer that converts primary high voltage at the transformer to the 120/240 volts for your house. If you back feed into the transformer you create primary high voltage through the transformer. The transformer is a simple device feed high voltage in the top it makes secondary voltage out the bottom feeding your house feed secondary voltage into the transformer and it makes high primary voltage out.

Not just utility workers are at risk lets say you have a wire down on your street or 2 streets over and you back feed through your service and the neighbor kid moves the wire so he can play and dies or is maimed guess who is at fault or maybe the downed line starts a house fire etc. I know of one lineman personally that got killed by an illegal hooked up generator in Mariposa, CA and their have been more many more.

It doe not matter if your home is fed underground or overhead the threat is the same.

Best case scenario is the utility worker grounds the primary line and smokes your generator. Do NOT TRUST YOUR MAIN BREAKER TO BE A DISCONNECT TO THE UTILITY. A proper transfer switch is a break before make device that gives a physical separation to the utility service.

I was hoping to back feed my house thru the shore power cord by killing the main power flip a switch in the motor home (separate transfer switch) and run a few items till power is restored. Maybe ad a twist lock at two points within the transfer switch, one at incoming power and other main gen power connecting to the cord depending which mode I'll be in.