OK, so I've posted in the past about having my house wired to run off of a generator.
And, there have been discussion threads about running a house on a generator, etc
Here is the history.
About two years ago, I had the house wired so that with a few flips of switches, I could plug a generator into my house and run basically everything I needed. Except for the dryer and AC. But all the heating (gas heat), TVs, lights, fans, etc.
Then, we lost power over the Christmas holidays last year and I got to put my preps in action. And everything worked as planned and I was a big hero.
Fast forward to this June. For whatever reason, we lost power for an extended period.
I came home from work at lunch and figured, no problem. I'd get the house up and running so my wife and grandsons could ride out the problem.
Shortly after getting everything set up and running, the genny trips.
Weird. Especially since it worked so well before.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get things to power up. I threw breakers for the AC, Dryer, fridge, freezer, and no go.
So, I finally had my friendly electrician come by the house today so we could trouble shoot this issue.
I could tell that he just knew I was whacky and must have screwed something up.
So, we fired up the genny, flipped the switches and boom, genny tripped.
We scratched our heads for about an hour trying to figure things out. Nothing had really changed since the previous power outage. Except (I thought) we put in a new washer and dryer.
We isolated them and still the problem persisted.
So, we decided to turn every breaker off and then back on one at a time to see which one might be the culprit.
Turns out, my wife had bought a new iron a few months ago. It apparently has some sort of auto-on circuit. Turns out that when the power goes off and comes back on, the iron cycles up and during that time and afterwards, it is drawing something like 12 amps/1500 watts. That is about 33% of the generator output!!!
When I would crank up the genny, the iron would basically overload the circuit and shut me down.
Figured that since this was a weird on, I'd pass it on in case any of you ever have a head scratcher like this.
Never would have guessed this was the cause.
Dave
And, there have been discussion threads about running a house on a generator, etc
Here is the history.
About two years ago, I had the house wired so that with a few flips of switches, I could plug a generator into my house and run basically everything I needed. Except for the dryer and AC. But all the heating (gas heat), TVs, lights, fans, etc.
Then, we lost power over the Christmas holidays last year and I got to put my preps in action. And everything worked as planned and I was a big hero.
Fast forward to this June. For whatever reason, we lost power for an extended period.
I came home from work at lunch and figured, no problem. I'd get the house up and running so my wife and grandsons could ride out the problem.
Shortly after getting everything set up and running, the genny trips.
Weird. Especially since it worked so well before.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get things to power up. I threw breakers for the AC, Dryer, fridge, freezer, and no go.
So, I finally had my friendly electrician come by the house today so we could trouble shoot this issue.
I could tell that he just knew I was whacky and must have screwed something up.
So, we fired up the genny, flipped the switches and boom, genny tripped.
We scratched our heads for about an hour trying to figure things out. Nothing had really changed since the previous power outage. Except (I thought) we put in a new washer and dryer.
We isolated them and still the problem persisted.
So, we decided to turn every breaker off and then back on one at a time to see which one might be the culprit.
Turns out, my wife had bought a new iron a few months ago. It apparently has some sort of auto-on circuit. Turns out that when the power goes off and comes back on, the iron cycles up and during that time and afterwards, it is drawing something like 12 amps/1500 watts. That is about 33% of the generator output!!!
When I would crank up the genny, the iron would basically overload the circuit and shut me down.
Figured that since this was a weird on, I'd pass it on in case any of you ever have a head scratcher like this.
Never would have guessed this was the cause.
Dave