How Do I Run a Generator Safely During a Storm?

Outside, at least 20 feet from the house, exhaust pointed away from every window, door, and vent — including your neighbor's. That distance comes from CPSC guidance and it is not negotiable in bad weather; “just inside the garage because it's raining” is the exact scenario that kills families every hurricane season. Protect the unit from rain with an open-sided canopy, not an enclosure. And back the placement up with battery-powered CO alarms on every level of the home — if one sounds, get everyone to fresh air first and ask questions after.

Three legitimate paths, in ascending order of convenience: heavy-gauge outdoor extension cords straight from the generator to each appliance (fine for a fridge and fans); a generator inlet + manual interlock or transfer switch, installed by a licensed electrician, which lets the generator feed selected circuits through your panel safely; or a standby generator with an automatic transfer switch (ATS) that isolates your home from the grid by design. What all three have in common: at no point does a male-to-male “suicide cord” exist, and at no point can your generator energize the utility lines a crew is working on. If someone suggests the dryer-outlet trick, that's a hard no — it's the backfeed scenario with extra steps. Mackey's transfer-switch installs run under Texas electrical license TECL 558211; the install walkthrough shows what the permitted version looks like.

A standby unit starts itself, carries whole circuits (including central AC if sized for it — see the sizing guide), runs on natural gas or propane so there's no gas-can economy, and needs you mostly to glance at its status lights. Expect it to run for days; the practical limits are oil-change intervals on extended runs and giving the engine an occasional rest per the manufacturer's manual.

A portable is a different tool: a few thousand watts, a fuel tank measured in hours (typically 8–12 at half load), manual everything. It keeps the refrigerator cold and fans moving — survival, not comfort. Run it in blocks (cool the fridge, charge devices, rest the unit), and budget fuel honestly: several gallons per day, from stations that may not have power either. That fuel math, more than anything, is why Gulf Coast households graduate to standbys.

• Shut down and cool before refueling — 15 minutes minimum. Spilled gas on a hot engine is the fire path.
• Store fuel outside living space in proper containers, stabilized if it's going to sit.
• Check oil daily on extended runs. Small engines consume oil under load, and low-oil shutoff is a feature you don't want to test.
• Standby owners: log the runtime. An outage week is a year's worth of engine hours, and the post-storm service interval counts them — book service after any extended run.

If the generator won't start or keeps stalling mid-outage, the troubleshooter has a generator tree that separates the check-the-choke fixes from the call-us ones.