I-Home improvement

[TEX]

Here's an idea for some of you. Others may not like it.

The power went out this morning--upstream there's a pole down, a transformer out, lines down, blah blah...will be quite awhile before power is restored. So I went to the supply house and bought 50 feet of 10-3 SJ with ground (maybe your supplier calls it 10-4) and installed a LJ14 (240 volt/30 amp, "twist" plug) on one end and a male, 4-prong dryer plug on the other. Set up the generator where it fumes can't get sucked into the house.

Then, turned off the mains at the panel, and fired up the generator. It "backfeeds" through the dryer plug, feeds any circuit I want, controlled by the breakers, and protects the utility guys via the mains being off--no direct shorts when they get it back on, either.

So, right now, the fridge is running and protecting my food, and of course, I fired up the modem and laptop. I'll let the fridge run awhile, then cut it off, and watch the game later. Then run the fridge again, etc.