Generator powering house using Conntek 60837-00 14-50P ... diagram

I am not an electrician ... just a hacker ...
NOTHING I say here should be taken as gospel !!

A stand-by auto switching generator (thinking like a Generac unit) is well north of $10K ... doesn't make sense to me, so I bought a portable generator to run the house in the event that we lost power for long.  In years past. losing power was common at my location, but with the build up in our area, it's not so common any more.  And while it's nice that it's un-common, the down side is that portable gas generators needs lots of routine maintenance that I don't want to do any longer (mainly having to drain out the gas).  So instead I bought a dual fuel Pulsar G12KBN generator (solid wheels ... no airing them up) that is rated to 50 amps at 240 VAC, or 12KW surge, 9.5KW continuous ... won't handle the A/C load, but everything else is covered (I use oil for heat, so not a big draw in the winter).  With "dual fuel", I could use it w/ propane for short periods, but be able to switch back to gas if the "grid" is down for an extended time (note ... gas provides more power out, while propane de-rates the output power).

HOW TO CONNECT THE GENERATOR ...
or how I did it ... 
YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS. 

I didn't want to invest in an auto switch-over circuit for the generator as that's thousands of dollars ... and now that power is so stable, I may never need to switch or at most, maybe once every 24-36 months ... but I want to be ready.  So since I know "house power" and 240 VAC wiring fairly well, I setup a 50 amp "camper outlet" outside on the wall, and I run a MALE TO MALE cable to connect them.  I'm smart enough with house power that I'm careful with how to connect them, but if you don't know what your doing, THIS CAN KILL YOU !!!  The simplified steps you take to connect it are:

1. Shut off house main panel breaker.
2. Shut off camper outlet.
3. Connect male to male cable.
4. Fire up generator.
5. Switch on camper outlet.

To make using the generator a tolerable NOISE experience, I decided that parking the generator right outside the house sucked, so I decided I'd park it far away ... I figured 75' should do (to my detached garage).  A little calculations showed that 75' needs a minimum of 6 gauge, but it was "iffy" so I went with 4 gauge wire (which is rated for 60 amps) for lowest voltage drop.  This resulted in me buying a 75' section of 4/4 cable that is 1" in diameter.  I bought some of the common 90 degree NEMA 14-50P connectors to put on the ends, but the 90 degree connectors makes flexing the 4 gauge cable pretty impossible.  Also, the pins were no where near large enough for the 4 gauge wire.

Someone suggested a straight-in connector, so I bought two of the Conntek 60837-00 for $30 each ... and while not 100% perfect, it's about 99.9% perfect, which is close enough for me.  They are rated at 12,500 watts, so a bit more than the peak of my generator.

There's two little issues in my application with these connectors.  The first is that the cable is 1 inch in diameter, and the "compression ferrule" on the Conntek is also 1 inch, so it's snug, but not too bad. Just makes it tight to screw on the compression stage.

The next thing that's a little iffy is the wire diameter.  Ideally, the .24 inch diameter of MY 4 gauge stranded wire (charts say from .20 to .26, so I mic'd it) should fit into the pins just fine, (using drill bits, I find that the max size that you can fit is .25 or so ... a few pins are a bit larger then that, so I just documented the smallest).

But unless you have tools for cutting big wire like this, using everyday handyman tools means that the strands come apart some and you can't get the wire into the slot without leaving "wire hairs" dangling out.  So I decided to put a lot more thought into it, and get creative ... here's what I did:

I stripped off about 8 inches of the outer jacket, then took off 6" from the individual wires ... thus leaving 1 to 2" of "working room" (note ... 2" is the MAXIMUM).  You need the 6" of bare copper so it stays TIGHTLY together.

The Conntek takes about 5/8" of bare wire into it's connection zone, so I took out a propane torch and soldered each wire so they were solid from 1/4" to 3/4" from the insulation end... this means you need to know how to solder, and it requires you to rotate the cable around and solder 2-4 times ... to expose the whole wire ... this makes sure that solder is all around on each wire ... the final result is shown here:

Then, cut through the soldered area leaving 5/8" of bare wire ... like this (I found a pair of pliers worked well for the 5/8" spacing and to hold the wire cause it get's hot while cutting it):

Assembled:

In case a diagram helps clarify, try this:

Step 1 ... strip off 8" of jacket

Step 2 ... strip off 6 to 7" of insulation to show 6 to 7" of copper wire (depending on if you want 1 or 2" or working room).

Step 3 ... tin the wires from 1/4" out to 1/2" out

Step 4 ... cut the wires off at 5/8" (I used a Dremel cut-off wheel).

Step 5 ... and you are left with this

This makes the ends nice and clean ... there may be burrs on the ends so polishing the ends with sand paper maybe necessary ... once you do that it goes right in.

In case you don't know how to solder, and want to try a different approach, you can probably clip off some strands to make the wire smaller.  The cable I bought says it uses 119 strands in each wire, so I figured that if 119 strands is rated at 60 amps, that's about 1/2 amp/strand, so 50 amps means no less than 100 strands.  So you could probably clip off 9 of the strands and make it fit well.  And 110 strands should be good for 55 amps, so that's a 10% tolerance.  Is this the perfect way?  NO !!!  It's not perfect or MIL-SPEC, but it probably should work just fine. I was about to do that myself when I thought of this soldering approach.

Just a note ... my garage is on a separate line, so it's easy to look over to the garage from the house and if the garage outside lights are ON, then residential power is back.  When that happens ...

1. Switch off the camper outlet
2. Switch off the generator
3. Disconnect and wrap up the cable.
4. Turn the house main panel back on