OldHillcrestGuy said:
The spouse was out the door quickly yesterday morning when our power went out, was in Waldorf by 7am, to Lowes, Home Depot, and Tractor Supply came home with a Generator and Kerosene heater.
Power was back on by 7am. only out about 3 hours.
We have talked about a portable generator ever since Isabelle came thru and we were without power for 3 days or so. My question does anyone know about what it cost for a electrician to hard wire the breaker box?
There are a couple of ways to approach this.
You add a new smaller panel and choose the circuits that are most critical to you and your family.
The size of your new generator will determine how many circuits you can have.
What is the kw on your generator?
Then you may not want to go through the extravagant expense of a new "emergency panel" if you have a small generator. Generally, the Home Depot variety will only give you 30amps. Hopefully you don't have a heat pump.
If this be the case, the heat pump draws more than the average portable generator. There are significant advances in generators because they have become a househould commodity as of late. Yours may be capable of 50amps.
There are "whole house" generators available for a few grand. But they mount on pads and are stationary. Actually, because of advances, they are not much more than a high end portable.
I have a cheap $495 generator for doing jobs. My $1300 dollar generator is for back up power (it will handle the central air and fridge and a few lights and tv of course).
For $2500 you can get a nice generator that will handle most any thing you throw at it and it comes with all the hardware needed and a panel kit.
You can buy panel kits that will allow you to safely transfer to back up power and then when normal power is restored you reverse the breaker and it will safely take your generator "off-line" so that you don't accidently "back feed" SMECo.
These can range from 150 to 500 + in material costs then you should get THREE estimates. (get the estimates, you would be amazed!)
If the contractor can't make it to give you an estimate.....chances are they cannot make it to do the job. Estimates are FREE. If the are not free you should not do business with that contractor.
There is another way to hook it up to your existing panel. It does not cost much for material (under $100 usually) However, you must be of "mind" to turn off your main switch. You, infact, take the place of the safety mechinisms that would have been incorprated by a transfer switch that is included in the more expensive kit.
There you have it.
Just remember, It is important that you size your "load" to not exceed the capabilities of you generator.
We just got a generator but don't have it wired yet. There's a kit to do it correctly..costs about $200 for that..not sure what the labor would cost but I can ask.
