NORTH LIMA, Ohio (WKBN) – All of the hurricane and tornado coverage across the country might have you thinking about getting a generator. If that's the case, look no further than Generator Specialist, Inc. in north Lima.
"There are several ways that we can provide emergency powers. One of the ways we can do it is that we have a portable generator," said Mike Krake of Generator Specialist. "They have to be run outside. You can't run these in an enclosure. You take them outside, start them up and run them. And then we need a method of connecting it to our house."
Connecting a generator to your home is easier than you think with Generator Specialist.
"To do that, we use a manual transfer switch. This manual transfer switch will disconnect normal power from the grid and connect the generator," said Krake. "The way we do that is we have a cord that we would normally plug into the generator. The other end of the cord would plug into a weatherproof receptacle mounted on the outside of the home."
It is then permanently wired through the house to a manual transfer switch. Then, once you have the generator up and running, all you have to do is flip the individual switches to the generator position and you'll be powering the circuit breakers.
"The important part is if you have more load on the generator, you don't have to turn all the circuit breakers on," said Krake. "You can pick and choose which ones you want and you have meters that can let you know what the load is on the generator."
The experts at Generator Specialist are also experts on safety.
"We don't backfeed anything. We can't do that. We don't want to do that. We take a chance on hurting somebody if that's done," said Krake. "The transfer switch is the device that isolates or keeps normal power and emergency power from being connected. When you're on emergency power, it cannot backfeed. It can't go out the wires and it can't go to the transformer where the electricians working."
Krake says there is a certain load you can put on a portable generator as you can't put everything on it. So how do you know what to put on it?
"We predetermine when somebody is talking about a generator," said Krake. "If we have to go more, we see if you have geothermal or if you have an electric furnace that presents a larger load on the generator."
Krake says right now if you decide to have a full generator installed for your whole home, the price range is between approximately $10,000 to $15,000, depending on the complexity of the installation and the size of the unit. If you're looking to start with a portable device, the price drops to a range of approximately $3000 to $5000.
"The larger the generator, the more we can do with them and there's different styles," he said. "The inverter generator runs a little bit slower because of the way it's designed and will speed up naturally when the load is larger. The nice thing about that is you consume less fuel and it's quieter."
As far as the investment goes, how do you make that decision?
"When I visit somebody, I always ask the question, 'What do you want?' And it depends. Some don't want their basement to flood, so we want to make sure we run the sump pump," said Krake. "They want to make sure that the pipes don't freeze so we make sure that the furnace is running. They may be gone all winter down in Florida, and they want to make sure their house is secure. One of the things that you do is have a permanently installed generator that starts and runs by itself, and it will come on when the power fails."
Generator Specialist is located at 12038 Woodworth Road in North Lima. Call (330) 549-5393 and visit them online at GeneratorSpecialist.com.