Generators and Interlock Systems

This is episode number 215 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad that you could join us for another live episode here in the studio. How you doing, Kev?

Oh, I'm just having a banging up good time.

A banging up good time.

Bang, bang, going out with a bang.

We shot a lot of guns tonight.

We shot a lot of guns tonight. We shot a bunch of guns and we did so in epic fashion.

Yeah, so big thank you to, uh, the Blackwood Gun Club, uh, which is just down the road from the studio here. for letting us come out and shoot a lot.

We, we put a lot of ammo through, uh, the rounds tonight, and, uh, we did it with a purpose.

Yeah, well, and also, so I mean, in conjunction with our thank you to, to Blackwood, we also want to say a big thank you, huge, to, uh, Adrian. Yeah, over at In Home Floor, uh, man, who provided some of the, uh, the targets.

Yes, let's just say the targets.

Well, so there were We're being a little cryptic because we can't say a whole lot about what we were doing.

No, I mean, here's the deal. There were some references made to some products. Yeah. And on the show with Adrian.

Yeah.

And let's just say we tested whether or not the validity of those claims.

Yes.

And, uh, we've got some pretty good video. Yeah, that's gonna come out and you're gonna find out. Yeah, if you haven't already, what, what, um, the results were.

Yeah, so thank you to Adrian. Uh, definitely thank you to, uh, Aaron and, and Jeff Bearden and, and then to John. Yeah, who's, uh, who's our range master over there for the evening. Yes, he took care of us and, and taught us many things.

Oh dude, he was fun.

I like him.

He and I could be friends.

Yeah, absolutely.

That guy's a good guy to know.

Yeah, well, and if you're— I mean, if you're local, like, I— one of the reasons I love Blackwood is it's the only range that I know of where you can pretty much do everything. Yeah, um, because you can— you have a pistol range, you have a long rifle range, and then you also have, uh, trap and skeet and clay shooting.

All right there.

All right there. Like, no, there's, there's other ranges in the area that have aspects of those, but they don't all have both, right? Um, plus they're just, I mean, just great people to go hang out. So it's a fantastic facility. So if you haven't been, I encourage you to go. I'm a member over there. Okay. Um, so, uh, but yeah, we, I mean, how long we were there for?

Almost 2 hours. Oh, well, we got there at 6:30 and I think we left closer to 9. I think we were there between 2 and 2 and a half hours. Yeah, yeah, we— but we, we went through several rounds. Yeah. What was your favorite gun that you shot tonight?

Um, I mean, it could be yours, one of yours even, but I mean, like, my, my all-time favorite gun is one of mine, which is, which is, uh, my Marlin 30-30. I, I love lever-action rifles. They've always been my favorite. I But I will say I really liked the optics on his AR.

Oh dude.

Um, and it was, it was fun to shoot.

Yeah.

It was really impressive to stand behind somebody else while they were shooting.

And it wasn't the— it wasn't like the typical AR that you think of. No, it was, it was, it was a hand— it was like he completely custom built this thing to look like something off of, uh, a video game, basically.

Um, but like, he had Call of Duty, I think is what he would call it.

But he's, he's got some, some pretty amazing— like, I mean, this, this thing had a punch to it.

Yeah.

And it didn't— it didn't— you didn't feel it.

Yeah.

Because it had, it had some pretty amazing, like, shock absorption to it. Right. Um, But, uh, that, that was definitely my favorite.

Yeah, you like the AR the best?

Oh dude, that one was—

You like it better than the AK? I—

oh yeah, the AR, the AR was a lot more— I like the AK too, but like you said, the optics, I mean, you literally see like a laser that you can point at whatever. It's super accurate.

Well, that's the thing is like those, I've come across those in the past and they haven't been very accurate. Yeah, that one was accurate.

It was accurate and It was a lot of fun.

Yeah.

It was a lot of fun.

Cool.

We had a good time.

Yeah, we're gonna be releasing quite a bit of content from this evening's activities. So hopefully you guys will be able to tune in and enjoy some of that.

Yeah, no doubt.

I also gotta give a shout out to my buddy over at H-E-B because he hooked me up with, or hooked me on these new 1877 mineral waters.

Yeah.

And they have the flavored ones.

Oh. Yeah, lime's my favorite, or lime and grapefruit actually.

They don't have grapefruit. Well, that, that I know of.

But the lime's really good.

Lime is very good. The one that I got, I— so he told me that his, his favorite was the lime, so I got the lime. They also have a mango flavored one, which is really good. Okay, I like that one better than this one.

Interesting.

This one, I mean, it kind of has like a margarita kind of a— it's not, it's not sweet.

Sure.

But like it has that lime.

Yeah.

So anyway, I mean, like, this is their, uh, answer to Topo Chico.

Yeah. And like half the price. Yeah.

And like, it's just as good if you ask me. So, I mean, and I, I like Topo Chico, but yeah, this one's— I mean, it's just as bubbly. I love it.

Yeah. Cool.

So we're gonna, we're gonna generator it up tonight. So you, you had some upgrades done to your house?

Yeah. So, well, I'm there.

It's always fun when we have content about the show that I— it's you know, mostly self-serving.

Yeah, yeah, it's stuff that we do. Uh, well, here's the deal. I— we're not completely done. We'll, we'll get into that in a minute. But, okay, um, I've always, since we moved to Houston, I've, I've wanted to have a generator.

Okay.

Because, uh, we have hurricanes, right? And even when we don't have hurricanes, we got weird ice storms that happen.

I don't know.

Like, we— there's always something.

Sure.

And the potential for the power going out is high. Now, I will say this, uh, we are now on a completely different grid. It's actually the same grid that you're on.

Okay.

And, uh, it's the, uh, the power company is a co-op, and they do a really, really good job of taking care of their customers. Yeah. Um, and, and so I'm hoping—

Are you on their internet, by the way?

I am.

Okay.

Yeah, it's been good. It's been good.

Okay.

I mean, I, I really like TACUS, um, when we had them, but their internet's been great. It's been fine. It's fiber, so it's been great. Um, but it's one of those deals where I just, man, I just don't like the idea of being without power for multiple days in a row. And part of it is just, uh, you know, I've got a family. You know, if it's just me, I can handle it, but I, I'm just not interested in dealing with that with, with kids and all that kind of stuff.

Sure.

So, um, I've wanted a generator, but I don't want to go pay for a Generac. I mean, that's, that's ultimately the way to go, but like, those can be anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 depending on what size you need. I mean, your mom and dad have one. They're amazing. Like, you get a flicker and then the power's back on, you can run absolutely everything in your house.

Pretty much.

They're— it's amazing, but they're so expensive.

They're pricey.

And so I—

It's like buying a John Deere tractor, man. You pay a lot for that green paint.

Yep.

Yep.

But it also does the job.

Yeah.

So, you know, you get what you pay for. But I'm, I'm cheap. And, uh, I was, I was talking to my wife over the summer, and I think I mentioned this on one of the episodes, like Uh, they lost power to our well. And when we lost power to the well, it was just a tripped breaker at the time, but we'd have water. Right.

Yeah.

And so I realized in that moment, I've never really been on a well before. So this is the first time I'm learning. And I realized, okay, if we are in most residential places and we lose power, we still have water.

Right.

Where we're at now, if we lose power, we lose water.

Yep.

And that is a whole different ball game, you know. And yeah, you can keep buckets of water around and flush the toilet that way, I get it, but it's just a whole different ball game. So I was like, look, we're gonna come up with a solution. We're gonna install a generator, right? And I've always wanted a natural gas generator because that fuel is readily available even during hurricanes. Sometimes the flow is not as, as good as you want it to be, but typically you've got natural gas available and you're not having to keep, you know, jugs and jugs of, of gasoline or propane around if you have a dual fuel. So I found one. Um, most of the prob— most of the time whenever you get into like what's a tri-fuel

generator, which is what we got, is gasoline, propane, and natural gas, is the natural gas part of it is kind of dinky. Like, you just don't get much power out of it, right?

Yeah.

And, and it's just this— the amount of— it's just the size of it, the motor and everything combined. So, um, interestingly, Duramax has come out with the largest tri-fuel on the market without that's portable.

Hmm.

And so, uh, the thing on, on gas has a peak wattage of 13,000 watts, which is a lot. And all the way down to the pro— uh, the natural gas, the peak wattage is 10,000, which is significantly higher than a lot of the other ones that are out on the market. So it's more expensive to. Um, I'll just tell you, like, I, I don't mind putting the price out there because you can go look for it. Um, I bought mine at Generator Factory Outlet online. It's free shipping. Uh, it's $2,500.

Mm-hmm.

So for a generator, that's pricey, but it's a 50-amp generator. Like, it'll run my, my camper if I want it to, if I want to boondock with it. Um, it, it's big enough to run my air conditioner my oven, my dryer.

Like, it's big enough to run anything I need it to, like, individually or simultaneously.

So I should be able to, uh, run— I should be able to run my, my air conditioner and all the lights in my house. And, um, I, I don't really know. I'll have to do some testing, but I'm guessing that if I need to run my dryer, I'll probably turn the air conditioner off.

Okay.

You know, um, but I mean, some of these generators, they're not big enough to, to do that with.

Right.

And here's what the issue is. If you don't have it set up in your house to be able to plug it in on the outside of your house, then what you're doing is you're just running cords.

Right.

To your refrigerator.

Extension cords.

Extension cords. To your refrigerator, to your washer, to whatever it is that you need power, right? You're running extension cord outside because you— please don't put your generator inside your house.

Yeah, um, it's a good hot tip there, Kev.

People do it, Craig. People do it. Um, but like, it's just— it works for the essentials, right? But like, a big deal that people are doing now is they're putting on these transfer switches onto the outside of their house where you literally plug your generator into a switch, like a, like an outlet, right, the outside of your house, and you can run your entire house off of it.

Right.

Um, but you got to be careful about how this is done. And so what I did, there are a couple of different ways you can go, and this is kind of what we want to get at tonight. is you can do a transfer switch with a separate breaker box to where you've got like anywhere from, uh, 5 to 10 breakers that are dedicated to your generator.

Right.

And those are what you get, and you have to dedicate them.

Yeah.

So you get whatever circuits, whatever lights, whatever, you know, if you want to put your, your air conditioner on it, you can, but That's it, right? Well, if you open up my subpanel or my, my main panel— I've got a main panel and subpanel— you open up my main panel, dude, there are a ton of breakers in there. And not only that, they're all doubled up. Every single one of them is doubled. So what does that mean? So, okay, inside your breaker box you've got, you've got poles. So you, you put us— you put a breaker on a pole. So like a 15 or a 20 amp, you're gonna put on a single pole. But on mine,

it's got 2 separate breakers on that one pole.

Okay.

On every single one of them. So basically you've got a, a what they call a tandem, a tandem, uh, breaker on a single pole.

Okay.

So like I've got a bunch of 15 and 20 amp breakers that all have 2 breakers on it.

Are they like connected? They're like, they have like, there's switches connected?

There's no connector to it. They're completely separate.

Okay.

And so you, you put on 2 different circuits on each one of them, but it only takes up 1 slot.

Okay.

In your breaker box. But then you've got bigger, uh, breakers like a 30-amp and a 50-amp, and you can even put 100-amp depending on, you know, whatever you've got. But typically a 50 and a 30 are, are typical. So a 30 is going to be like your oven, your dryer, um, and, and those sorts of things. My well is on a 30-amp breaker.

Okay.

Then your, your air conditioner is going to be a 50, right? But you need to— you need that on 2 separate poles because it's— you need, you need both circuits coming into 2 separate poles.

Okay.

Uh, that's just the way it's safer that way. So without getting into too much tech and stuff that I probably don't know what I'm talking about anyway.

Same.

Yeah, so, but you had— you need those 2 separate poles. This is important. There's a reason I'm telling you this.

Okay.

Um, so what I chose to do, rather than doing a completely separate breaker box with dedicated breakers— I've got so many breakers, I want to be able to turn on what I want to turn on. and turn off what I don't want on. And I want that to vary based on the situation.

Sure.

So you put on, uh, what I did is I put on what's called an interlock system.

Okay.

Okay, so, uh, the brand I used was Gen Interlock. There are other brands out there. This is just the one that I, I used. Um, and so basically the— what it does is it's just a metal plate that you install on the outside of your breaker panel.

Okay.

And you have to put your, your breaker, either a 30 or 50, whatever size your generator is, in the top right 2 slots.

Okay.

Of your panel. And so the way it works is that breaker is off if your main power is on.

Okay.

Okay. So that's your generator plug. It's what runs that, that actual outlet. It is directly connected to that 50-amp breaker.

Okay.

For me, it's a 50. So the only way to turn that breaker on, because there's this metal plate that covers that, that breaker, the only way to turn that 50-amp breaker off is to slide that metal Up. Yeah. So that you can turn that on. I've seen these. So you move it out of the way. But the only way you can slide that metal piece up is to turn off your main power.

Okay. So you have to turn the main power off.

You have to turn the main power off. You can slide the metal piece into position and then turn your 50-amp breaker on. The opposite is also true. You cannot then turn your main power back on without turning that 50-amp breaker off.

Okay.

The purpose of that is so you're not double feeding. Right.

You're not creating a feedback loop.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So it, it makes it all safe. But what it does, what this little simple piece of metal does is it allows you to run your entire panel off that 50-amp breaker.

Okay.

So you've got your air conditioner, your oven, your dryer, these higher load things. plus all your, all your lights and your switches and all the things that are electric in, in your house, you can turn them on as you want or turn them off as you want. And so, um, man, I'm telling you, like, this is a— it's a game changer in the way people that live in hurricane areas, which we do. South Texas is one of them. there's, you know, Florida is one of them, Louisiana is one of them, Mississippi, like all these places that get hurricanes, um, and lose power regularly. And I, I don't know, I— there's a lot of people up in the north that lose power because of, you know,

snowstorms and those types of things.

Yeah.

That, you know, I would highly encourage you to look into the generator interlock system, and I, and I'll link up what we're—

what we used I wonder if up north where it gets so cold, like, if generators are actually viable outside like that.

They are. They are.

I mean, like, I know people have like Generacs and like diesel generators and things like that. I'm wondering if like the natural gas ones in the—

I know that, like, I— because I've got friends up there that have generators for that reason. So I don't, I don't know if the, like, the natural gas option works as well. Right. I— someone's gonna have to help me out on that one. But for gasoline or whatever, it's still, it's still a viable option.

I would imagine. I mean, as long as you can get it started, it should be fine.

Sure. I mean, oh dude, that's, that's the other thing about this thing. It's a remote start.

Ooh.

It's got remote start on it.

What do you mean by remote? Like it has a—

It's got a remote that you can start it with.

Okay.

It's also got push-button start.

That's nice.

So you don't have to go out there and crank it with the, you know, traditional, yeah, rip cord.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and, uh, it's also got a low, like, uh, uh, low oil. It'll, it'll sense and tell you about it. It's got a carbon monoxide detector on it. So, you know, if you're dispensing too much of that, it'll beep at you and tell you what's going on. Um, the thing's really, really—

You would think it would do more than beep. I mean, like, with a carbon monoxide sensor, it's like, why don't you just go ahead and shut off?

Yeah, well, it may. I don't know.

I don't want to test it.

I don't want to test it. Honestly, I haven't read about that as much to find out, but it may just turn itself off. I'm not sure.

That beep will just slowly lullaby you into death. Yes.

But anyway, so, you know, the ability to control whatever works on your house and what doesn't is kind of a nice deal with this interlock system. Um, they're really, they're easy to install. In fact, a lot of electricians have the, the, the kits. They'll just come out and, and do it for a fee. I actually had a friend who's an electrician come over and help me with it, and I bought all the parts and paid him a couple hundred bucks. And that's nice. Yeah, and just wound up saving me.

What, what would it, what would it have cost you if you didn't have a buddy like that?

So I did, I did some looking. It's anywhere from $900 to $1,100 around here.

Okay.

Is the Kind of the going rate. And what that comes with is that comes typically with, um, the interlock kit, the, uh, external outlet that you have to install, right? Uh, most of the time it comes with a cord for your generator. So it comes with the actual, you know, 30 or 50 amp cord that you need to plug your generator into that outlet.

How long of a cord is that?

Uh, typically I think they're anywhere from 10 to 25 feet.

Oh, that's not bad.

Now, depending on— That's good.

That's a good size.

Good.

Yeah.

And it's an expensive cable.

It is.

I think it depends on, on who does it.

Sure.

And I, I think it comes with the breaker and then just the labor to install it.

So, but you still got to buy the generator.

You still got to buy the generator. And, um, but other than that, you're, you're pretty well set. Have you tried all 3 fuels on your— I haven't even turned it on yet.

Okay.

Because I've been waiting to get all this done And this was the other thing I was gonna say. It just so happens that where the gas line is at my house and where the breaker is at my house are on opposite ends. Ooh, that's not cool. So I had to make a decision. I either had to run the electric— the electricity, like put a 50-amp, you know, copper line all the way over to where my gas was. Or bring the gas line over to where the breaker panel is.

I'm actually curious as to what you did.

Well, I would imagine the electrical would've been cheaper. You would be surprised at what copper costs right now. Copper is very, very expensive. And depending on what size you need, can be anywhere from $8 to $15 a foot. Geez, it's so expensive. So, um, honestly, it was a wash at what was going to be cheaper.

Oh, really?

It was within, it was within like $100, $150 to determine which way you want to go. And so as I was doing the calculations, talking with the electrician, talking with the, with the gas guy, um, Which, by the way, I didn't know this for a long time. If you ever need gas, like, pipe work done—

Plumber.

Yeah, it's a plumber.

Yeah.

I didn't know who it was for a long time. So those of you out there going, hey, I got, you know, I want to hook up, you know, my, my gas logs, right, in my fireplace, who do you call? Call a plumber. Don't call the gas company.

Nope.

In fact, if you call the gas company, they won't know who to tell you to talk to.

No. Well, because they can't.

They don't know. They can't.

Well, they can't. Ethically, they can't refer plumbers.

Okay, well, there you go. Either way, that's who you got to talk to.

I mean, can you imagine if like the gas company decided to like refer a gas— a plumbing company?

Jeez. Right?

I mean, like, yeah, it would, it would destroy everyone else's business.

It would. So yeah, so anyway, um, ultimately I decided to bring the gas over to where the breaker panel is. Um, I think the electricity, like moving, moving that over the plug might have been slightly less expensive.

Um, well, here would be my question is, does it move the generator further away from your bedroom?

That— okay, this was all part of the equation, and ultimately it puts the generator next to our bedrooms if we do that.

Okay.

But there, there's a couple of things. One is just the sheer distance that we're having to go with it. There could potentially be a little bit of voltage drop.

Oh, if you moved—

If I, if I move the, the electrical line. Yeah, the electrical line. It's probably not much, probably not that it's gonna make all that much difference. However, if it's any, I don't want that.

Sure.

I mean, we're, we're talking about, you know, another bedroom set of lights or something. Like, I wanna be able to turn on the maximum amount of stuff that I can, right? And so Like, if I'm gonna experience any voltage drop at all, even if it's minuscule, yeah, I'm not real interested in that. Yeah. Um, the other thing is, if I— the way they're going to install it, and the gap, that's the thing, the gas is— they're waiting, they're, they're purchasing the parts to come do it, so it's not actually installed yet.

Okay, I got you.

Which is why I haven't turned the generator on yet.

I got you.

Um, I'm waiting on that, but because of the way they're installing it, if I decide to move, which I never plan on doing, but if I did, I could take that with me. I could take the gas line with me.

I got you.

Um, it's a flexible hose. It'll, it'll go up and, you know, through the attic, and I can, I can remove that and take it with me.

Okay.

So that was something. Um, but yeah, it's gonna be It's gonna be super nice. I mean, I'm gonna have a quick connect over there, quick connect into the, into the deal.

Jacks right in.

Jacks right in and, uh, plug the—

But you get, you would get more power running it off of gasoline though, right?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, so, uh, you know, the way this one is set up, uh, the, the, like I said, the peak wattage of gasoline is 13,000. The running wattage is 10,500. So, okay, so what that, what that means is the difference is a peak would be like when your air conditioner comes on, it draws more power on its startup cycle, right?

Right.

Um, it's like you've probably heard before, you'll use more gas starting your car than you will running it, right? Just because that initial surge, that's the peak watts. So, but the running watts is what it really needs most of the time. So it's 13,000 and 10,500 for gasoline. If you use propane, it's 12,000 peak watts and 9,500 running.

Okay.

And then, but propane is—

Propane's even less, right?

It's very inefficient.

Right.

It, like, you, if you had like a standard gas grill propane bottle, it would last like 2 hours.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe. depending on what you're running. Like, it's not gonna— you're gonna have to have a lot of propane bottles. That's— I'd rather haul gas around than propane.

Are you talking about like a 20-pound?

Yeah, yeah.

Like, are they 20 or 25?

They're 20.

Okay.

And then, you know, like, for my RV, I've got 2 30-pound ones, but propane's a pain.

Sure.

I mean, not everywhere carries it. They're heavy and They're combustible pretty bad, you know, and so are gas— so is gas, true, but it's different. They're not gonna go boom quite the same, right? Um, and in a storm, you're more likely to find someone who will get you gasoline than propane.

Hmm.

I might, might—

Yeah, I mean, like, when we— I mean, we kind of had a propane shortage around here for a while.

We did.

So, I mean, it was way easier to get gasoline than it was propane, right?

So, so then when you jump down to natural gas, so you had 13,000, 12,000 on peak, uh, natural gas is 10,000 and 8,500 running. Okay, but that's not unusual because natural gas just doesn't have the oomph, the oomph. Yeah, that the others do, but it's in supply, right?

And I can put it on.

Yeah, I can just plug in and I don't have to carry around for days, for days, you know. And I don't have to worry about in the middle of the night I'm gonna run out of gasoline and we're gonna have to go, you know, fill it up, anything like that. Plus it's cleaner. So like your carburetor, all the things that have— that run on your generator, it's just not going to clog up the same way as gasoline.

Or so could you, could you then It's like you're running on, uh, natural gas, right? Um, let's— freak accident, all of a sudden natural gas is gone. I mean, like, say you had a— I mean, obviously you got a gas tank on this thing. I mean, is it, is it a matter of just like flipping it over and it can just convert and continue to run, or do you need to stop it, change the fuel source?

My guess is you would need to stop it, change, change the fuel source, and start it up again.

Yeah.

But who knows? Yeah, I haven't tried it, but that's gonna be a— I mean, that's normally the way that kind of stuff would work.

I would imagine. I was just curious if they've come up with some sort of advancement or redundancy that's like, hey, we just sensed that you're out of natural gas, we're just gonna go ahead and flip on over to the gas.

I don't think so. Um, but honestly, it's probably safer that way anyway. I would imagine. Yeah. Um, but it's pretty simple to do that. uh, to, to use gasoline over, over the other. And honestly, like, I've always got propane around my house, uh, because I've got my camper there. I've also got a couple of spare 30 pounds. So I've actually got 4 30-pound tanks at my house, uh, plus a couple of 20-pound tanks. So I've always got propane around, um, and I would use it if I needed to. But, um, this thing has enough, enough power that, I mean, 8,500 watts is enough to run quite a bit at your house.

Yeah.

And honestly, you're probably gonna be conserving. You're gonna be using more fan power than you are air conditioning power.

Yeah.

You know, and hopefully, you know, hopefully, I mean, during Harvey it was hot.

Yeah.

You know, but, you know, if it's a little, like if a hurricane came today at here, here in Houston, It's cooler. Yeah. It's cooler right now than it, than it has been. So, you know, maybe you're running it a little less and all of that.

And we've got a, we've got an episode coming up. I know we're gonna be talking about that article I sent you earlier today.

Oh yeah.

About how like this, this guy's making the claim you don't really have to worry about turning your lights off anymore in order to save money.

Right.

So I'm, I've, I've gotta finish, I've gotta finish reading it.

Right.

Um, but I, I think, I think we're gonna dive deep on that one in an upcoming episode. 'Cause I think that's worth talking about.

It absolutely is. Um, and, and, and look, So one of the things, going back to my breaker panel, one of the things that was weird is it's so full that in order to take, put that 50 amp where it has to go in that top right slot.

Right.

It's actually 2 slots. There was a 30 amp there and I need to move it over to the other side, but I only have 2 poles to put it into.

Right.

and I need to put 2 30-amp breakers in it. Well, that's called— you ready for this? Uh-huh. A quad tandem 2-pole 30/30. Okay, so it's, it's— I'm more impressed that you even remember that. I know, I know. I thank you. I'm very impressive. So it's a, it's a quad tandem, so it means there's 4 actual switches in there. But it's, it's 2 30-amp breakers, but they have to be on 2 separate poles.

Right.

Because the, a 30 and a 50 have to be on 2 separate poles to get both, uh, both circuits coming in. And so the way they do it is they've basically got 2, uh, one breaker crossing both poles in the middle and one on the outside. So it's got a 30 in the middle and a 30 on the outside. Okay, does that make sense? No, but carry on. So basically you turn this one off and on, and you turn this one off and on.

Okay, I got you.

And so it's just the way, the way they have to do it in order to get both poles in there but also only take up 2 slots instead of taking up 4 slots. Well, the problem is with shortages right now, you can't find them. Oh, the 30— that you can find a 3020 And in fact, I did find a 3020, and what I needed to run was my oven and my dryer. Because stupid me, I have a— last episode we talked about washer and dryer, right? I have both electric and gas available for my dryer. I've always had an electric dryer, and when talking to people, they're like, look, if you've already— if you always had electric, just use electric.

Nah.

I should have gone gas.

I see.

Yeah, because it was available. I could have done it. It's more expensive.

Really?

Yeah, it's like, it's like $200, $100 or $200 more to get the gas.

Yeah, so much cheaper to operate though.

It's cheaper to operate. And honestly, I could have taken that freaking breaker out altogether. I wouldn't have needed it. Yeah, um, but I needed to put both of them right there. So with all the energy of— so this is where I was going. with all the energy-efficient appliances that we have these days, including like lights that are LED.

Yeah.

And then, you know, your, your, uh, your TV, energy efficient. Your, uh, if you have an electric water heater, it's got energy efficiency. Refrigerator, even my washer and dryer have this energy-efficient rating on it, right? So my electrician was like, okay, Um, we're gonna try it. You got this 30/20 because that's all we could find. We're gonna try to put your, your dryer on it. Nope, it kept tripping it.

Yeah.

Kept tripping the breaker. So we, we figured out a way to figure it out because I had the subpanel that had a slot in it. We figured it out. But, um, but yeah, I mean, your, your electrical is something that you probably don't want to do No. Especially working in a breaker box. Electrical scares the crap out of me. Yeah, man, like it can really mess you up. So, but the airlock system really is, I mean, here's the deal. Let's say you turn on too much, it's just gonna flip that breaker.

Right.

So you're safe with all of that. And you may have to walk outside in the rain if it's in a hurricane and, uh, you know, turn different things on. Or maybe it's not raining anymore.

Yeah, get an umbrella.

It's not that big of a deal. It's really not. So that is one thing I'm gonna have to figure out is like housing my generator.

Okay.

Like I'm gonna have to figure out some sort of COVID um, to, to put it under. A lot of people like build a little like shed and like, like do a vent to port out the exhaust.

Yeah.

That sort of thing. So I'll figure that out, but Anyway, I'm, I'm really happy with the setup, and I think it's going to be really, really nice, and I won't have to leave if I lose electricity now. Yeah, you know, and even right now, but like, let's say something crazy happens today, we lose power, um, I can run it on gasoline until the natural gas is—

Yeah, I mean, like, I think most of those have pretty big tanks on them.

They do.

Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, it— I don't, I don't remember how big the tank is on the But you can do a couple. Like, some people even have it to where, like, they have it siphoning from the—

I think most of them have, like, a 10-gallon tank on them.

Yeah, they're pretty big. And, you know, it'll run for a while on it if I want it to. So anyway, I don't know. What questions do you have?

Any? No, man, I think you covered all of it.

Cool.

So anything else?

I think that's it, man. For all of you out there listening, thank you for downloading today's episode, listening to us on the interwebs. Please go leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. We would appreciate that very much. Click the like and subscribe button if you haven't already. Tell your friends about us because we are here each and every Tuesday. Until next time, we'll seal it.

Seal it.