ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area What do you do?

Just today, I came upon a homeowner suicide setup. Nice compliant inlet, interlock on panel, done by lic. EC. The HO had to show me his 'used it for years' setup. 10 Ga rubber cord, twistlock modified to fit the 'new' gen, and the good old dryer plug to backfeed his panel. "I just turn the main off, and put tape on it'!!

That was what I saw a lot of here. Most worked OK but one had some real strange stuff going on and I just loaned him a bunch of cords. He told me he smoked the satellite box, the fridge would only run with 2 branch circuit breakers on and he had other issues. It sure sounded like a neutral problem to me and I did not want to own a bit of it.
I think some of these problems may be simply because some generators ground the neutral and some don't. If your dryer cord is only connected to the generator ground, the neutral floats.
I really hope I talked a few of these people into some kind of transfer equipment, even if it was just the panel interlock device. I do have my neighbor next door on board.
Then they could run a real 4 wire feed into a back feed breaker (with a clip) and be somewhat legal with the interlock.
At that point you should lift the bonding jumper in the generator. (Non-SDS) I am not sure it is life threatening tho if you didn't and it might actually be more dangerous when you are using cords.