Using RV generator as a backup generator for the house?

I do it all the time here at my house on a small scale where I get to store my OFF-ROAD POPUP trailer. I will run a couple of 120VAC extension cords from my off-road POPUP setup into the house to run a few things from the 600WATT PSW INVERTER setup in the trailer.

This is the easy way of doing it and not have to wire anything into the house Power Panel...

We run the home entertainment center, some lights, fans, and chargers for the cell phone and computers. In the winter I have a fireplace to heat the house with but will need 120VAC to run the fireplace internal fan.

When I run my trailer batteries down to around 12.0VDC I will then connect my shore power cable of the trailer directly to my 2KW Honda portable generator and re-charge my trailer batteries in around three hours of generator run time.

During the generator run time I will make my coffee for the day and plug in the fridge to give it a couple hours of running to keep the frozen meat safe.

Using the batteries from the trailer gives us all night to run the few things we have connected and only uses the generator just three hours aday to re-charge the batteries. My generator only has around 7 hours of run time on one tank of gas so this saves us big if we in for a long time without house power. Sometimes finding gasoline in the county is a problem as the local gas stations may be without power as well and can't pump gas...

This is my PLAN B when the power goes out here at our house...

Roy Ken

You are not crazy and are actually on the right track. we will be doing the same thing with our RV. Our house is wired for an external genset as well. I believe it is the amperage draw at the auxiliary panel that you should be concerned with. Household electric panels are rated in Amps, ie 100 amp service, 200 amp service etc. If your generator does not produce enough amp output to meet the well pump amperage draw requirement it will not kick on and the generator will fault into over load. This will cause a high heat situation in your panel as well until the either a breaker trips or the gen goes into overload fault. either way, not a good situation. Check amp draw on the well pump vs amp output of your generator on the rv. Keep in mind, lights, refrigerator, furnace blower will draw amps as well. Hope this helps

The genset set is 120 volts. It is only rated to 3600 watts.
It would not do much for a house. I would live in MH while power is out or run a couple heavy extension cords for specific items like refer or microwave.
Generac Quietpak 40G

I have a much smaller generator for our camper. It's not fixed in the camper, it's portable enough to move around. We use the generator for power outages at our house every time there's an outage. Unfortunately, the output is only 110, so our well (220) is not functional. We do not tap into the house wiring, we just simply run 100 foot extension cords all over the house. We run one line for the freezer and refrigerator. We switch the line back and forth about ever hour on these two appliances. We run another line to keep the television, satellite, and internet going, which works OK provided the cell tower "down the way" has power as our internet is a line-of-site system, and not a cable or dial-up system. We run one line for the blower on the fireplace, and we run one line to keep a coffee-pot, or flat griddle working for cooking.

I've considered putting in a whole house generator, but the cost does not justify the few number of times we have power outages. Also, we have relatives in two different directions (5 miles one way, 10 miles the other way), we can always descend on in the event of emergency. And they can descend on us if they have emergencies too.

Of course, we also have the travel trailer we can use for heat, television, and sleeping if we want to. But we still need to keep the refrigerator and freezer going in the house too.

Your idea is not so far fetched. It's actually very reasonable. Work out the logistics and I'm sure you'll be most happy!