What Gauge Wire?

[CrkdLtr]

You should honestly look at having a manual transfer switch installed for this scenario. Reason being, if I'm not mistaken, is that even if you turn off the main breaker there is still the odd chance that power could back feed on the neutral wire which is still connected to the bus bar in your panel and connected to the utility neutral line. The neutral bus is grounded to earth so any voltage "should" ground itself but in those odd chances the voltage can injure a lineman working to restore power to the area.

Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[my-rifle]

You should honestly look at having a manual transfer switch installed for this scenario. Reason being, if I'm not mistaken, is that even if you turn off the main breaker there is still the odd chance that power could back feed on the neutral wire which is still connected to the bus bar in your panel and connected to the utility neutral line. The neutral bus is grounded to earth so any voltage "should" ground itself but in those odd chances the voltage can injure a lineman working to restore power to the area.

Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

My house has a main fuse outside next to the meter. To the best of my knowledge when I pull it out the house is completely disconnected.

Again my goal here is to avoid an electrician. Evacuation of an entire neighborhood for month is cheaper than having one of them over.

 

[El Rubio]

Something else that most overlook when backfeeding their panel is the neutral-ground bond. A portable generator is designed to run stand alone and provides that bond. It's typically a wire attached on the back of one of the outlets. The problem is that your house panel also has a neutral to ground bond. What happens is this can cause GFCI breakers to trip. It's really bad if your generator breakers are GFCI, because your main breaker trips as soon as you hook it up. The solution is to remove the neutral-ground bond on the generator. You'll need to restore it if you use it to run things stand alone.

I wouldn't drive a separate ground rod unless it is also attached to the house ground system. By driving a ground rod next to the generator, you create a difference of potential between that ground and the house ground and could get some voltage on it - at the expense of the generator's voltage. You could also create a dangerous path to ground for surges. All grounds must be connected together and ideally at the same potential.

 

[Isaac-1]

Part of the problem with turning off the main breaker and backfeeding is that you can not be 100% sure someone else will not come along behind you and turn it back on while the generator is running, this then steps up to several thousand volts when it gets back to the pole to transformer putting a high voltage surge down the power lines, potentially for miles to where the linemen are working on a break on what was a "dead" wire a moment before.

The other problem with turning off the main breaker is the chance the contacts inside have welded themselves together due to a power surge or lightning strike, in this case the switch can be in the off posittion and current still passes through the breaker, this is a somewhat common failure mode for residential style breakers. This is why good electricians test that circuits are dead before starting work on them and don't just trust that the breaker being off means the circuit is dead.