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  • The Shed

    LET THE POWER BE WITH YOU

    Jun 14, 2019 5 minutes
    By Mark Beckett
    Photographs: Mark Beckett

    As winter approaches and power outages become more likely, we thought it might be useful to identify what you need to know about generators, safety, their uses, and how to connect them to your home.

    A ‘generator’ is a motor driving an alternator to produce power, and with the advent of inverter generators (see my review of Honda inverter generators on pages 82 and 83) the basics haven’t changed, but how they operate has.

    Safety

    Like all motors burning fuel, generators give off carbon monoxide. This is a colourless, odourless killer that makes you fall asleep and doesn’t trigger any safety reflexes in the brain, so it will kill you. While the fumes are deadly, the heat from the exhaust outlet can also burn anything combustible if it’s too close.

    In addition, unless you bolt it down, your generator can and will move around,

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