Thanks for walking us through the basics of emergency rigging a jenny.We managed to keep the lights on despi 27 below and rolling blackouts but I realized how vulnerable we are. It was tempting to buy a harbor freight special but I'm sold on the Honda!
Dude this video literally just saved my wife and I, we live in Michigan and consumers energy sent out a notice saying they would be shutting the power off to work on the lines in our area and it's only 36 degrees outside. As soon as I seen the Male end of the extension cord bridged to the plug I knew what I had to do! Thank you man! This is great life saving knowledge everyone should know!
Great hack... Basically.. A simplified Generator Transfer Switch. Cool. When we bought our old farm house up here in Michigan I installed a GTS that can handle several circuits (lights, furnace, water pump) just in case the power goes out. Now we have a small back-up solar/wind system that we sometimes switch over to just to help cut the light bill a little. Again, great hack.
This is great I already have a generator hook up on the house but what a lot of people don't realize is most generator are only designed to run 8-10 hrs and then need a break I was trying to think of a way to run the furnace off a few 12v SLA or Optima batteries and a inverter hooked to a solar source to trickle charge the batteries and of course a way for the generator to charge the batteries as well while it's run so your not totally dependent on sunlight. Now I just have to figure out how to do it safely lol
In 1991, Rochester, NY had a big ice storm that knocked out power to a huge number of customers. The thing about an ice storm is that tree branches get weighed down by the thick ice buildup, and they fall and knock down many individual power lines going to houses, so it takes a long time to repair all the damage. My power line was down (for 10 days), but the next-door neighbor had power, so we ran an extension cord between houses. I modified the wire on my gas furnace so that my house's furnace circuit just fed a single receptacle, and the furnace had a 2-conductor line cord. To use normal power, you'd just plug them together. I kept the furnace permanently grounded to my house, not the neighbor's. This method also keeps the neutrals separate between my house and the neighbor's, which wouldn't matter for a generator, but would be very important for an extension cord between houses.
Never occurred to me to put the kil-o-watt on the generator itself when it's being used! I had pre-measured the draw on things I wanted to run when the power goes out but never thought to put it inline on the generator, Good Tip!
I bought a product called ez generator switch and never never looked back. Makes it so easy to hook furnace up to a generator, or a power pack like a jackery or goal zero.
Great job 👍. Everyone always keeps some extra gas on hand but one thing I’ve noticed is no one says to keep some extra motor oil on hand for the generator. Need the gas and don’t forget to keep a couple of extra quarts of oil just in case the motor runs a little low.
The correct way to do it would be with an outlet on that switch. This works and is safe if done correctly but with an outlet if something happens to the cord its super easy to swap out.
Another thing you should also consider is learn how to ground your generator since most of them are neutral floating. Most electrical appliances like the furnace (at least in Canada) have power surge protection and won't kick in if you don't ground your generator
I don’t understand how the power surge protection relates to grounding the generator. How does it know if it’s grounded? Also do generators come with a port or something for grounding?
I'm not a "preppper" but this is part of my readiness plan. I have a twelve volt truck battery and a small inverter, I think it's about 500 watts, dedicated to the furnace. I also have a three way switch where up is grid power only, center is no power, and down is backup, inverter power only. This switch must be in place and must function to isolate each line and guarantee they never come into contact, to meet codes here, and in most places I would think. Good stuff bro! I'm sure your family went from, "Dad likes to tinker with lots of stuff" to "Thank God Dad knows WTH he's doing!" Haha! As a father, there's no better feeling knowing they're taken care of no matter what.
You could also get a manual transfer switch installed by a licensed electrician and wire the furnace into that. That way you don’t have to worry about running extension cords to the generator. I’m considering doing that down the road to my house here in FL.
This may not work on many furnaces for several reasons. Glad it works on yours. My Lennox furnace computer board is very sensitive to input power harmonics. Even a high-quality portable generator is too electrically "noisy" and the board faults out. Many people have this problem, especially with newer furnaces.
just a little info. to pass on...I have a newer Bryant gas furnace..my company I have service the unit, is a dealer...two different techs have told me a standard generator will probably not run a newer furnace, because they put out a dirty sine wave and trip the computer board...inverter generators put out a clean wave and work. I recently purchased the inverter and my furnace worked fine.
Very good video and smart man, I also have gas here in Fort Worth and before I installed a backup generator with transfer switch I used to do the exact same as you did. My unit has a normal plug in the wall, so I would just run the extension card to that and power the fan for my gas furnace. But now I have everything at the panel with a transfer switch, but I was lucky and did not loose power. Also sorry about your troubles with the water break, hope you will get everything straightened out. I is good that you were here in town to take care of everything, but we all know you would have rather been in Vegas.
I'm curious how old your furnace is. I had to replace mine in 2021. My old furnace worked fine on my old Generac, but not the new one. I borrowed a Honda like yours, but was stunned when I measured the no-load voltage at about 128 volts. Put a heater on it which dropped it to 122 volts. My Generac voltage drops down to about 110 volts under load. I'm a journeyman electrician, but about the only generators I work on are my personal one, or big Cat diesel generators, on rare occasions.
Bob teaching the masses simple life saving tips. Hears one I found out recently a lot of people have been ordering the Nissan Leaf car it too can br used with some leads ordered so I have been told to supply your house with electricity in an emergency. I was told this by someone who delivers cars and it was someone who lives in the middle of nowhere who said they can get too and from work with ease and work has charging points but if the power is out at home they can run the house off the car and then go to work charge it up and run the house between work visits.
IMO, ALL gas furnaces should be set up to run on backup power. Not sure why furnace mfr's insist on making things unnecessarily complicated. If it's a so-called "safety" thing, they need to consider that in an emergency situation like the TX deep freeze of '21, they are indirectly forcing people to take much more inherently dangerous measures to keep warm like burning a charcoal or wood grill in the house.
If you have natural gas like me, install a natural gas carburetor on the generator and never worry about running out of gas. I was able to buy one for $30 for my Harbor Freight 9000 generator
Hi Bob , just wondering if you grounded the generator outside with a ground rod or something else. I was reading that the control board was very sensitive inside the furnace and could be damaged during this temporary use. It appears that your furnace did ok so I was just checking to see if you grounded. thanks Roger
Thanks for sharing! That extension cord looks pretty thin, is that gauge adequate? Looks like an inverter gen, is that required for running direct to the furnace? Everything has electronics now days.
Generators are so fucking handy! I wired my Honda eb5000x through the dryer breaker. Just make sure to flip the utility main or the genie comes out of things when utilities come back.
in short - NO. there is no such thing as a *solar* 'generator' They don't generate anything.. It's essentially nothing more than a bank of batteries connected to an inverter. Then you recharge your batteries using the sun. It's the solar panels that 'generate' (if you want to call it that) / generate power to recharge those batteries. Oh. but yes. you could use it---for about 20 minutes.
All thermostats are wired to the furnace to send signals. Some thermostats use batteries more modern ones use an additional wire that has the furnace also send power to the thermostat.
My Powermate 3400W generator won't turn on my NEW gas furnace! It did run the old oil furnace. When utility power to house came back on, the furnace started. The generator sockets have 3rd ground hole The ground is already connected to neutral side. The power out at end of 3 prong extension cord was 60cycle AC 117volts. The cord was checked for ground at both ends. What's wrong? The male plug on furnace side has poor ground. The socket on furnace has loose connection for plug. Is the new gas furnace in lockout mode? Service sheet says no power. No red light on board. Door switch has power. Does the new Airtemp gas furnace have a timed off period before allowing main circuit board to turn on? No response from contractor. He has the plague............
Mine is doing the same thing. Not sure if it's the generator or the furnace. It's a Predator Generator and American Standard furnace. What do you have?
@@risingabove1096 I have the predator 9000 and a Goodman furnace. From what I’ve read it has something to do with the “ dirty” energy being produced by the generator. The newer units are more sensitive and susceptible to this. I’m not an engineer though so take it with a grain of salt
Generator probably cannot supply the in rush surge current to start fan motor so the generator trips off. Try installing a surge capacitor in series like what is used on air conditioners to overcome the in rush surge of the giant AC heat exchanger fan motor. Or get a larger power output pure Sine wave generator. I use a 3 kWh pure AC inverter powered off my parked prius 12 volt battery which my prius kindly keeps fully charged automatically.
@@SlowRiderDucati so you think that the inrush of the fan motor is pushing it above 9000 watts? It’s not a big supply fan in my furnace, I need to get a reading on the amp draw to make sure, Thank you for the input
I would disconnect the GFCI to start. I believe that the neutral wire is connected to the ground on GFCI generators. Might need to swap it to a floating neutral. On my champion, they tell you to just take the panel off, find the white wire (neutral), remove it off the ground post, and tape up the white wire with electrical tape. Now you have a floating neutral (which is how most generators are wired up) and the GFCI wont trip. Outlets work like a standard outlet.
@Videobob Moseley I had a cord and plug installed on my gas furnace so that I could run it off of our portable generator during an outage. I'm still not sure how it will work with our Nest thermostat. House came with the Nest, not fan of it. When the power is out the Nest is usually dead & useless, will it stop the furnace from kicking on? Or will it pull power from the portable generator?
You might want to inform people that if this is done incorrectly the generator can backfeed the distribution power lines running to their houses. Which would create a problem if there were down lines or lineman working on those lines.
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You'd need to power the thermostat also. Some are powered by a transformer in the furnace itself, in which case powering the furnace should power the thermostat. Others have an independent transformer -- you'd need to find that and supply power to the circuit that feeds it. Otherwise, most furnaces (all?) have an emergency heat override switch which basically allows you to manually call for heat without a thermostat.
I just use portable kerosene and propane heaters so I don't have to depend on the gas company or power company. If the power grid is down you won't have gas for very long.
They want to go all electric now can you imagine if you had an electric furnace green deal give me a damn break we need fossil fuel thank God your furnace was gas
@@hateall19 the guy was saying that green energy laws in many states (maybe federal) are going towards electric heating. There thought process is that electric can be powered with solar, wind, hydroelectric, or even just an old fashioned power plant, and by doing so, it creates less emissions and green house gases than having all these gas furnaces in every house. Pretty soon, in many places, you wont be able to buy gas furnaces any longer. Must convert to electric. Which will be impossible to heat using a portable generator as they pull like 10K watts, 15K watts or something.
