Most of you may find this post a little boring, so just pretend you find it interesting and read on.

I‘ve always love working with electrical and mechanical gadgets, so when I acquired my Dad’s old generator, I was delighted to get it hooked up. I changed out the oil, gassed it up and replaced the fuel filter. Living in this part of the country, there is always a possibility to lose power for possibly a week or more. With the hurricane Beryl heading to the Gulf Coast, I quickly completed the setup, but Beryl meandered off towards Houston.

But it is completed and ready for any situation, other than nuclear war.

A couple of years ago, I upgraded the electrical service on the house and replaced the electrical panel in the garage that feeds all the single circuits in the house. I installed a separate breaker in the panel to use as the generator feed, and added a receptacle in the garage for the generator to connect to.

And since I like cool gadgets found on eBay that are cheap, I added a panel with instruments in it so I can monitor the generator output while in use.

Next step was to add markers in the panel to show which breakers to turn off during the generator use. The pretty pink (or whatever color they are) are the breakers to be on during use.

If you look at the image above, there is a metal thing that must be in the up position for the generator to feed the panel. It also forces the main breaker into the `off’ position so the generator will not back-feed in to the incoming service.

The breakers with the pretty dots feed my kitchen refrigerator, microwave, the garage circuit and a small lighting circuit. Once the system is in use, I will run the generator intermittently for about an hour or so. It will actually depend on the refrigerator. I have WIFI thermometers in both sides of the unit and when the freezer section gets too warm, I will crank the generator up until it reaches a satisfactory temperature.

Once the generator is running, I will open the garage door, back out the vehicle and open an additional window with a fan in it, to remove the exhaust.

Now, all that is left is sit with whiskey and wait for power to drop out, and hope it’s not nuclear war.