Generator Services Seattle

You can for a lamp or a fridge, but powering a home’s circuits that way is dangerous. Plugging a generator into a wall outlet (“backfeeding”) pushes power back onto the utility lines and can seriously injure line workers, and it bypasses every protection in your panel. The safe and legal method is a transfer switch or an interlock kit, which physically prevents the generator and the utility from being connected at the same time.

Yes. Transfer switches, interlock kits, generator inlets and standby generator connections all require an electrical permit and inspection in Washington. We pull the permit, do the work to code and meet the inspector — and where the generator runs on natural gas or propane, we coordinate the gas side as well.

Manufacturers generally recommend an annual service along with periodic self-tests, which most units run automatically. Regular generator maintenance matters because a standby unit sits idle for months at a time — the point of the service is to confirm it will actually start on the day the power goes out.