10/14/21 Wiring For My Back-up Generator?

     We bought a generator back in the summer sometime and it is now paid for, but I have not finished preparing for its usage as I would want it.  The idea when we bought it is that we would run multiple cords to it as it sat in our patio in the back.  My thought, if the summer rolling blackouts did come was to keep the fridge and freezers running and then if we could, also run the portable A/C to keep us comfortable.  To me, that sounds like a lot of wires running all over the floor.  We did buy a handful of heavy gauge wires, if the need arose.

    Another way to wire it would be to connect it to the power box somehow, but with the solar panels, hot, pool, and the normal crap, I honestly don't have any more empty slots to add more circuits.  I saw a couple videos on the idea of "backfeeding" the house and I think that is how I am going to do this.  We have a 240volt supply our back for the hot tub heater and I know for sure that in an emergency we would not be thinking about firing up the hot tub, so it stands to reason if I could borrow the power lines, it makes sense.

    Of course, I could get an electrician to come and wire a new connection, but that would mean it would be over close to the power box, and there is no way I would leave my generator out there on the side of the house, exposed for some a-hole to simply drive by, see it and decide he needs it more than us.  To run yet another set of lines to the backyard would be expensive.  When I wired the power for the pool pumps and stuff, Fox charged us $2500 or so, I don't want to pay something like that again.

    I had been thinking of the best way to do this and yesterday I saw a connector over by where they sell the generators at Lowe's and I bought it.  I was thinking it would be complicated to make a Y connection with the wires to feed either the heater or be fed by the generator, but after looking through Youtube videos it looks to be pretty easy.  I just take the wires coming to the heater, make a splice inside the new generator connection box with a pigtail, that is when you add a short ~8-10 inch third line to a connection and then use this to power (or in this case, take power there in the generator connection box) and then send the new set of wires out to feed the heater.  I know, if I ever do "backfeed" power to the house, I must FIRST AND FOREMOST make sure I have turned off the main power breaker, so the house is not backfeeding power to the incoming power lines.  This could be dangerous to the line workers trying to bring power back up.

    The last hurdle to getting this done is figuring how to open the heater and removing the wires that Fox installed, but I'll try to do this weekend, now that it shouldn't be so hot.