3000W Chinese Gensets Info.
professor95 wrote: EDIT ADDED 45/5/2013- When this thread started in March of 2005, I never expected to see it survive this long or amass the quantity of information that has been shared here. In...
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It can get tricky if you are hooking to your home to power stuff during power outages. The main service likely has 2 independent 120V buses. You probably have 120V circuits on both buses that you want to use. How do ya run one hot wire to both buses without booby trapping something?
The reason I use a Reliance transfer switch is cuz it doesn't care which main service bus bar the circuits are on. Just pick the 120V circuits you want to use and wire them per directions. No 240V circuits allowed even though the transfer switch can do it. The switch also physically removes the circuits from the rest of the main panel when in use. You simply can not back feed the other 120V circuits or energize 240V circuits accidentally.
The thing ya have to deal with is the Reliance is also a split bus device, just like the main service. Ya still need to feed 120V to both buses and ya only have one hot leg from the RV circuit.
The transfer switch uses a 4 prong twist lock just like the 240V generator outlet. Somewhere between the generator RV plug and the Reliance bus bars you will have to split the single 120V hot leg to feed both bus bars. I chose to replace the female end of of the RV cable with a 4 prong plug that fits the transfer switch. I used a short #10 jumper wire to connect both hot terminals in the new plug. This routes the single hot leg from the RV plug to both hot legs of the 4 prong plug. When connected, it energizes both bus bars of the transfer switch.
This left the generator and transfer switch completely unmodified - no traps for future unsuspecting people. The RV to 4 prong cable is labeled with a warning. Should someone manage to hook the cable to something with an active 240V circuit, sparks will fly. As usual, there are other methods to get the job done.
The reason I use a Reliance transfer switch is cuz it doesn't care which main service bus bar the circuits are on. Just pick the 120V circuits you want to use and wire them per directions. No 240V circuits allowed even though the transfer switch can do it. The switch also physically removes the circuits from the rest of the main panel when in use. You simply can not back feed the other 120V circuits or energize 240V circuits accidentally.
The thing ya have to deal with is the Reliance is also a split bus device, just like the main service. Ya still need to feed 120V to both buses and ya only have one hot leg from the RV circuit.
The transfer switch uses a 4 prong twist lock just like the 240V generator outlet. Somewhere between the generator RV plug and the Reliance bus bars you will have to split the single 120V hot leg to feed both bus bars. I chose to replace the female end of of the RV cable with a 4 prong plug that fits the transfer switch. I used a short #10 jumper wire to connect both hot terminals in the new plug. This routes the single hot leg from the RV plug to both hot legs of the 4 prong plug. When connected, it energizes both bus bars of the transfer switch.
This left the generator and transfer switch completely unmodified - no traps for future unsuspecting people. The RV to 4 prong cable is labeled with a warning. Should someone manage to hook the cable to something with an active 240V circuit, sparks will fly. As usual, there are other methods to get the job done.
