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[mlappin]

ITO, Yes I know that the ground and the neutral are two different parts to the electrical system. It was stated that if a transfer switch or interlock switch(or straight backfeeding with the main off) was going to have the potential to 'backfeed' the neutral back to the grid. But the neutral is actually grounded right outside the home, plus grounded at the pole. Additionally the utility company when working on lines while in a storm will ground all of their work as to not cause one of them to be hurt by someone backfeeding the grid.

Don't know if this makes sense or not, but when we milked cows we had a stray voltage problem, guy from the power company came out and found a "bad" ground on our system that looked like new. He claimed sometimes the grounds from the utility can be have more juice on em than the hots.

Single phase is pretty simple, you start getting into wild legs on three phase and things change. On our delta phase at the farm as long as the "common", "neutral" or "third leg" (have heard em all used) is grounded its a ground, if it loses ground it's now hot, hence the wild leg designation.

[hondaracer2oo4]

I agree. My point is ultimately that shutting off the main breaker and backfeeding the panel is no different than a transfer switch(without and isolation panel) and an interlock switch as long as you do shut down the main breaker.

[Wood Nutt]

On a normal single phase residential installation, shutting off the main breaker does NOT disconnect the neutral or the ground conductors, only the power conductors .  Most should have two 120V hot leads and the main breaker only disconnects those two cables coming from the meter box into your main panel box.

You don't need to satisfy anyone on this OWF site of your installation of a generator, you must satisfy the requirements of your local utility provider!  Regardless of whether you have codes or not where you live, if you are not sure of the requirements at your location, you should contact them before potentially backfeeding into their system.  If they are reputible, they have a policy/procedure for this.  Most will disconnect the commericial side when they find a generator not installed correctly and won't turn commercial power back on until the generator install is corrected. 

God forbid, if one of their employees gets hurt or killed, and they trace it back to someone backfeeding into their system, I would not want to be that person!  There are wayyyy too many lawyers and the utility company usually has many good ones that will make it their mission to find someone else responsible for something like this other than their client!

[d conover]

My brother in law has mentioned blowing up a few generators that were back fed into the system without the meter being pulled.

When they turn the transformer back on, the 8,000 volts (I think that is right) doesn't do much good for a generator.

He says it doesn't bother them to blow one up if someone doesn't care enough to safely hook them up.

He likes pulling the meter because he says just throwing the breaker isn't always enough, He says sometimes neutrals carry voltage.
Just repeating what I have been told and he has been a lineman for 25 years and works with it every day, climbing poles etc..

[bajonesy77]

My brother in law has mentioned blowing up a few generators that were back fed into the system without the meter being pulled.

He likes pulling the meter because he says just throwing the breaker isn't always enough, He says sometimes neutrals carry voltage.
Just repeating what I have been told and he has been a lineman for 25 years and works with it every day, climbing poles etc..

 If neutral carried power it would go straight to ground, thats the way the U.S. power grid works  anyway. 
 I have mine hooked up same as honda, works perfect. If you have to ask how power works you should pay an electrician to do it for you and he will follow the "code".

[mlappin]

My brother in law has mentioned blowing up a few generators that were back fed into the system without the meter being pulled.

He likes pulling the meter because he says just throwing the breaker isn't always enough, He says sometimes neutrals carry voltage.
Just repeating what I have been told and he has been a lineman for 25 years and works with it every day, climbing poles etc..

 If neutral carried power it would go straight to ground, thats the way the U.S. power grid works  anyway. 
 I have mine hooked up same as honda, works perfect. If you have to ask how power works you should pay an electrician to do it for you and he will follow the "code".

My brother in law has mentioned blowing up a few generators that were back fed into the system without the meter being pulled.

When they turn the transformer back on, the 8,000 volts (I think that is right) doesn't do much good for a generator.

He says it doesn't bother them to blow one up if someone doesn't care enough to safely hook them up.

He likes pulling the meter because he says just throwing the breaker isn't always enough, He says sometimes neutrals carry voltage.
Just repeating what I have been told and he has been a lineman for 25 years and works with it every day, climbing poles etc..

If the ground is good that is, like I already pointed out, our stray voltage problem was due to a perfectly good looking ground, no discoloration, no corrosion, etc.

The manual transfer switch I bought is a three pole, hot, neutral, hot.