Portable generator safety tips:
It's important portable generators are protected from the element. People may get the idea of the garage. You can just keep the garage door open right? WRONG! Never ever run your generator in the garage! Generators can emit carbon monoxide, so when you run it near your home, you run the chance of that gas creeping into your home and giving you and your family carbon monoxide poisoning.
Which brings the next little tidbit. Always keep your generator at least 5 feet from your house especially if opening windows, doors or vents. And make sure you have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in your home.
Never refuel your portable generator while it's hot. You must always wait for it cool down.
If you are wanting the option to hardwire your portable generator to your panel, your safest option is an Interlock Kit. Many main electrical panels will allow this to be installed right on the panel. Call an electrician to take a look. If you were to just plug your generator in, utility workers could suffer serious or fatal injury when restoring the power. An interlock kit prevents any back feeding of electricity back to the grid.
The only downside to the interlock kit, is you may not know when the power comes back on because the main breaker is shut off.
Standby generator safety tips:
We have already touched on several facts with standby generators. The biggest safety tips are maintenance and the transfer switch, which all standby generators must plug into!
Just like the interlock kit above, the transfer switch for a standby generator disconnects your home from the grid. This again keeps electricity from back feeding keeping utility workers out of harms way. The transfer switch will only send power to designated circuits. There's that load thing again! ;)
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