# Thanks to this forum...lifesavers



## mblydude

I just want to say thank you to this community of people who are interested in helping others figure how to do things the right way.

I have done a lot of home improvement projects but this most recent was a real life saver (potentially, literally). We live in the country and i have two young children. When I decided that I wanted to get a generator to keep our home operating in the event of an emergency outage, I came across this forum and found a lot of useful discussion.

I ran 6G wire from the 14-30 inlet receptacle box I installed on the outside of the house to the panel, for a 25' run. (Used 6G b/c if we ever wanted a larger generator down the road, spending $12 more now was worth not having to run line again in the future). I hooked it up to the breaker panel and installed the interlock kit. The whole thing was pretty straight forward, and just took a bit of removing segments of drywall to have access to work the 6G cable into place. I was doing this all as we were getting a pretty good snow. After getting this all hooked up, I went to throw the main breaker back on to check that things were reconnected correctly...nothing happened.  

I thought I REALLY messed up, but stood there freaking out, looking at the panel going, "I KNOW it is hooked up right!". Then I thought I should call the electric company, and got a recording that there was a line down in our area and we were without power. :laughing:

Time to test the generator hook up then, right? Flipped the main back off, fired up the generator, flipped the breaker from the generator in the panel, and then moment of truth, flipped the breaker to the furnace and it kicked right on. 

Power was out for 36 hours and it was the coldest day in over 20 years and our family was sitting in 70 degree safety. We had furnace, fridge, lights, internet, etc. Could NOT have had a better timing to do this project. Thank you to the folks on this forum for helping me work out the details to do the thing right. :thumbup:


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## oh'mike

Welcome---there is a pool of knowledge here and a helpful attitude--you are welcome.-Mike--


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## Mort

I'm sure I wasn't the one that helped you, but I'm always willing to take the credit. You're welcome.


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## alexjoe

Welcome here, definitely you will a lot of information from this forum.


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