I view this thread with rather mixed feelings. Reality is that during an extended emergency, people
are going to get their hands on generators, and they
are going to find ways to jury-rig connections into their electrical systems. Is it better to blow them off by telling them, "Too late--you should have hired a pro to put in a transfer switch long before the emergency came," and thus leaving them to their own devices, or is it better to try to improve the situation by telling them where the risks are, and how to make an emergency hookup in a reasonably safe manner?
On the other hand, there really is no "reasonably safe" way to do this without at least one of those sliding interlocks that interlock the main breaker and the upper-right-hand breaker in the panel, because it is otherwise just too easy to cross-connect the generator with the grid. So all you can really do is bring them from "extraordinarily dangerous" down to "extremely dangerous."
This is rather like being caught between Scylla and Charybdis.
[This message has been edited by SolarPowered (edited 12-30-2006).]