That is what a standby generator is: a permanently installed engine, wired into the house, that starts itself and carries the load until the utility comes back. It is not a portable machine dragged out of the shed and fed from a gas can. It sits on a pad beside the house, it burns the fuel already coming to your property, and the decision that actually matters is not which badge is on the housing. It is what you want still running, and what has to be built to make that happen.
This page is the standby side of the work: sizing to your household, the transfer switch, fuel in plain words, what changes when a well pump is on the list, how the install runs, and what the machine asks of you once it is sitting there. It is written by American Electrical Services, the electrical division of American Rooter & Drain, working the greater Treasure Valley since 1945. Idaho Electrical Contractor LIC# 3671445. The electrical line is (208) 782-8268, and the on-site estimate is free.
What size generator do I need for my house?
Not by square footage. By starting loads, and by what you decide belongs on the list.
A motor pulls far more current in the instant it starts than it does once it is spinning, and a generator has to absorb those instants without stalling or dimming everything else in the house. In Treasure Valley homes the instants that decide the size are the air conditioning compressor, the well pump, an electric range or dryer, and a heat pump or electric water heater. Counting those takes an electrician standing at your open panel with a list of your appliances — which is exactly what the free on-site visit is for, and it is why nobody can size a machine over the phone.
Before the count, though, comes the question the count answers. There are three honest shapes to a backup system, and they cost very different amounts.
- Everything, all at once. The whole panel is backed up and nothing in the house behaves differently during an outage. The air conditioning runs, the range works, you forget the power is out. This needs the largest machine of the three, and on some houses it needs work at the electrical panel to go with it.
- A defined list. Furnace blower, refrigerator, well pump, sump pump, a few lighting and outlet circuits, a medical device. Smaller machine, smaller footprint, smaller hole in the yard — and during an outage you live with a plan instead of forgetting.
- Everything, but taking turns. This is the one most people have never had explained, and it is the one that moves the price. A load management module watches what the house is drawing and briefly sheds a large, non-urgent appliance — the electric dryer, the electric water heater — for the couple of minutes the air conditioner needs to start, then hands the power straight back. Nobody pushes a button.
That third option is a sizing lever, not an accessory. Every one of our installation packages includes load management for one appliance where it is needed, plus soft starts fitted to the air conditioning compressors, which flatten the startup surge itself rather than absorbing it, and a time delay where one is required so that big loads do not all come back in the same second. Between those, a house is often genuinely comfortable on a smaller unit than a straight everything-at-once calculation would demand. Ask a competing bid whether it includes any of the three, and ask what each one does to the machine size — two quotes for "a whole house generator" are not the same purchase when one of them is quietly assuming you will never run the dryer and the air conditioning in the same hour.
One more thing catches people comparing spec sheets: a standby unit carries two power ratings, not one. Our replacement packages read 14/14 kW, 18/17 kW, 22/19.5 kW and 24/21 kW, and those pairs are not typographical errors. One figure is what the engine makes burning propane, the other is what the same engine makes burning natural gas. Only one half of the pair applies to your house, and sizing off the wrong half is how a generator ends up unable to carry the load it was sold to carry. When you set two bids side by side, ask which of the two numbers each was built on.
Above the air-cooled sizes the machines change character entirely. Air-cooled units are the ones that look like a large air conditioner on a pad beside the house, in an aluminum housing. Past that they are liquid-cooled — a radiator and a coolant loop, like a car engine — on a bigger slab, with their own service kit and their own service intervals. A house with two air conditioning systems, a shop, an irrigation pump, or a genuine nothing-turns-off requirement ends up on that side of the line. The load count decides which side you are on. Preference does not, and our installation packages carry a proper generator sizing guarantee precisely so that the count is ours to get right rather than yours.
Will my well pump run on a generator?
Yes. A well pump runs on a standby generator, and on a property with a well it belongs on the backup list ahead of almost anything else in the house.
On city water a power cut is dark and inconvenient. On a private well it is no water at all — no taps, no toilets, no water for livestock — because the pump is electric and nothing else is moving water up that casing. The pressure tank holds what it holds, and once that is gone the house is out. Add a septic system that pumps effluent up to a drain field instead of letting gravity carry it, and that stops too. That is the difference between an outage being uncomfortable and an outage making the house uninhabitable on day two, and it is why so many of these calls come from out past the canal: the rural ground around Marsing, Homedale, Wilder, Parma, Melba, Greenleaf, Midvale and New Plymouth, and the country stretches out toward Payette and Weiser.
The well also drives the sizing conversation rather than sitting quietly at the bottom of the list, because a submersible pump starting under a full column of water is one of the heaviest starting loads on the property. Tell the electrician about it at the estimate, and tell him what you know:
- Roughly what horsepower the pump is. It is usually on the tag at the pressure tank, on the well log, or on the paperwork from whoever set it.
- Submersible down the casing, or a jet pump in a pit house. They start differently and they are reached differently.
- How deep the well is, if you know, because depth is what makes a pump work hard.
- Whether there is a booster pump, a cistern, or a second pump for irrigation — those are separate loads and they are frequently forgotten until the first outage.
- Whether the septic is gravity or pumped. If there is an effluent pump or a grinder, it belongs on the list with the well.
On an essentials system the well, the furnace blower and the refrigerator are the core of what gets backed up, and everything else is argued about afterwards. On a whole-house system the well simply has to be inside the number, which is why the pump details change the recommendation before anything is ordered.
What is a transfer switch and do I need one?
A transfer switch is the device that moves your house off the utility and onto the generator, and its job is to guarantee the house is connected to one source or the other and never to both. Yes, you need one — every permanently installed generator has to have one, and so does a portable that is going to feed house circuits.
The reason is not paperwork. Generator power pushed backward onto a utility line that the power company believes is dead can kill a lineman working to restore your street, and it can also destroy your generator the moment utility power returns while your machine is still connected. The switch is the component that makes both of those impossible. Everything else about it is a question of how much you want to be involved.
Automatic. An automatic transfer switch senses the outage, starts the generator, waits for it to come up to speed, moves the house across, then moves it back and shuts the engine down when the utility returns — with nobody home and nobody notified. Our installation packages include a 200-amp OEM automatic transfer switch, and a 400-amp upgrade is available for larger services. Load management lives here too: one of the switches we install has load shedding built into it, so the turn-taking described above is decided at the switch rather than out at the machine.
Manual. A manual switch means you are home, you throw it yourself, and you start the machine. It costs less and it is a legitimate choice, not a bad one. The honest question is whether the outages you are worried about are ones you will be awake and at home for, because a manual switch does nothing at all while you are asleep or away for a week.
A portable, connected properly. If a permanent unit is not where you are yet, the safe way to run a portable into the house is a properly installed 30- or 50-amp inlet with a manual transfer switch behind it, and we install that prep as a job in its own right. We also install small air-cooled portable units. What is never safe is a double-male extension cord pushed into a dryer outlet: that energizes the panel through an unswitched path, puts your house on the utility line at the same time, and is the exact hazard the switch exists to prevent. If that is your current outage plan, it is worth replacing whether or not you ever buy a standby machine.
Transfer switches also fail on their own, independently of the generator, and that is a repair rather than a replacement. The parts that go are the coil that physically throws the mechanism, the smart control board that decides when to throw it, and the small fuses that protect the controller from voltage swings. A generator that runs happily on its weekly exercise but will not pick the house up during a real outage is very often a switch problem, not an engine problem, and it is worth saying that on the phone because it changes what we bring.
Should I get natural gas or propane?
Natural gas if the main already reaches your house. Propane if it does not. For most of our service area that decision is made by the street rather than by you.
Natural gas. No tank in the yard, no refills, and no runtime limit. A standby generator on natural gas will run through a week-long outage with nobody driving out to you, and that is the whole argument for it.
There is one thing to settle before anything is ordered, and it is not the generator. A standby generator is a large gas appliance, and your meter was sized for the furnace, the water heater and the range — not for those plus a generator running flat out. Confirming that the meter and the gas service can actually feed the unit is part of our on-site assessment. If they cannot, the meter upgrade is performed by your gas provider, on their schedule, and it is excluded from every one of our installation packages without exception. That is a real dependency on somebody else's calendar, which is why we raise it at the estimate instead of on install day.
Propane. The answer wherever there is no gas main, which covers a great deal of the rural ground we work. It runs a standby generator perfectly well, and it adds one thing natural gas does not: runtime stops being unlimited and becomes a number of gallons. So the questions change shape.
- How big is the tank, and who fills it? A generator carrying a whole house draws far harder than a furnace does.
- Is it filled before storm season or after the first outage? A tank at a quarter in November is a different machine than a full one.
- Where does the tank sit relative to where the generator can legally sit? Both have clearance rules, and they have to work with each other.
- Is it your tank or the supplier's? That decides who is responsible for the regulator and the line.
If a tank is being set specifically for the generator, size it for the outage you are actually worried about rather than an average week. And whichever fuel you land on, go back and check which half of that paired rating your quote was built on — that is the one place the fuel decision quietly reaches back and changes the size of the machine.
How long does a generator installation take?
The on-site work runs in a fixed order and you get the dates in writing at the estimate. What stretches the calendar is almost never the wiring — it is permitting and inspection, the gas provider if your meter has to be upgraded, and the equipment itself.
Here is the order, so you can see where the waiting actually lives.
1. The estimate visit. A licensed electrician opens the panel, finds the gas meter, measures the run to wherever the machine can legally sit, checks clearances from windows, doors and the property line, and asks you what you want still running. You get a fixed price in writing before anything is ordered. This visit is free.
2. Permits. Generator work is permitted electrical work in Idaho, and the gas piping to the machine is permitted as well. Required permitting is inside every one of our installation packages — you do not file anything and you do not meet an inspector on your own.
3. The gas provider, if the meter has to change. This is the step that is not ours. We find out whether it applies at the estimate rather than on install day, precisely because paying us more does not move their date.
4. The pad or the stand. Air-cooled packages set the machine on a generator pad rated to 180 mph wind or on a concrete slab. Sites that flood, drift or sit low get a custom aluminum stand fabricated instead, anchored on site, to lift the unit up out of snow and standing water.
5. Set day. The unit is placed and anchored, the gas line is run and pressure tested, the electrical is run, and the transfer switch is set at the panel or the meter. The load management module goes in, the soft starts go on the air conditioning compressors, and a time delay is set if the house needs one.
6. Startup and system testing. This is not plugging it in. The machine is commissioned, the transfer is proved by actually taking the utility away from it, and the exercise schedule is set with you standing there so you know what a normal test cycle sounds like.
7. Inspection. Somebody who does not work for us signs the work off, and that independence is the whole value of it.
Replacing a generator you already have is a shorter job than putting a first one in, because the site work is largely done. Three cases cover nearly everyone:
- The pad, the gas line and the switch are all sound. A swap reuses all three, and hauling the old machine away is inside the package.
- The machine is fine but the switch is not. An older manual switch, or one that has failed, is replaced with a new 200-amp automatic transfer switch inside the same project rather than as a second visit.
- You bought the generator yourself. We install customer-provided equipment, with or without a customer-provided transfer switch. It is a defined package rather than a favour, so ask for it by name if there is already a machine sitting in your garage.
Tell us the brand, the kilowatt figure off the data tag and roughly how old it is, and we can usually tell you which of the three you are in before anybody drives out.
What maintenance does a standby generator need?
Engine oil and an oil filter, new spark plugs with the gap set, a new air filter, every electrical connection checked, and a battery that is watched rather than assumed — on a schedule set by run hours and by calendar time, whichever comes first.
That surprises people, and it is the half of ownership that decides whether the machine works in January. A standby generator is not an appliance that sits inert and then performs. It is a small engine that lives outdoors and is asked to start under load after months of not running, and manufacturers write the service interval accordingly.
- The exercise cycle. Your generator runs itself for a few minutes on a schedule for exactly this reason — to move oil, dry out the windings and prove the battery. We set that schedule with you at startup and tell you what a normal cycle sounds like, so an abnormal one is obvious to you rather than to nobody.
- The first service is not like the others. A new engine's break-in oil comes out early, and the valve clearances get checked and the fasteners brought to torque while the machine is young. That visit is a different job from an oil change, and skipping it is not the same as skipping one oil change.
- Full maintenance. Oil and filter, plugs gapped, air filter, and every electrical connection checked. Air-cooled and liquid-cooled units take entirely different kits, which is one more reason the two families are quoted and serviced separately.
- The battery. A generator that cannot crank is an expensive lawn ornament, and the battery is what cranks it. Terminals oxidize where they sit outdoors, and the charger that keeps the battery topped up can fail quietly on its own — neither one announces itself until the night you need the machine. Corroded terminals get a new terminal kit rather than a wire brush and hope.
- Before the season. A pre-storm check on a system that has been sitting is a real visit: battery and connections, oil level, electrical connections, and then actually running the unit under load rather than letting it idle in the driveway. Idling proves almost nothing.
We maintain and repair both air-cooled and liquid-cooled machines whether or not we installed them, down to controllers, stators, rotors, starters, fuel regulators and radiators, along with the transfer switch parts described above. We install and stock parts for Generac and Kohler equipment. Call with the brand and the model number off the data tag and we will tell you plainly whether it is something we cover before anybody is dispatched.
What does a whole house generator cost?
The machine is one line on the invoice and your yard is the rest, which is why we do not publish generator prices and do not quote a range. A range does nothing except set you up to be disappointed by the real number.
Here is a real job instead of a range. A whole house generator we installed in Mountain Home this August was a 24/21 kW air-cooled unit, and the same invoice also carried a new gas line run, the trenching for it, whole-home surge protection at the electrical entrance, and a section of concrete cut and replaced where the pad went in. None of that was an upsell. It was what that particular house needed in order to have a generator at all.
What moves the number:
- How far the machine sits from the gas meter and the panel. Our packages assume a short run with the gas and the electrical on the same side of the house. Once either run passes 30 feet, or the two end up on opposite sides, the job steps up a tier; past 50 feet it steps up again.
- Trenching. How much of it, and what it has to cross — turf, gravel, a driveway, tree roots, an existing irrigation line. The same tier boundaries are written in trench feet as well as in run length.
- What the machine sits on. A wind-rated pad, a poured slab, or a fabricated aluminum stand. If existing concrete or hardscape has to be cut and replaced to make room, that is real work with real hours in it.
- Placement. Clearance from windows, doors and the property line, how far equipment has to be carried in, and on a propane site the tank's own clearances.
- Add-ons. Whole-home surge protection, load management beyond the one appliance, additional soft starts, a 400-amp transfer switch.
Two things sit outside our price entirely and you should hear about both before you sign anything: a gas meter upgrade, if your provider has to perform one, and work at the electrical panel if the panel turns out to be the constraint rather than the generator — that is its own project, covered on the panel upgrades page.
There is also a real difference between packages that never shows up in a side-by-side price comparison. Every one of ours includes a high-capacity battery, load management for one appliance where it is needed, soft starts on the air conditioning compressors, a time delay if required, required permitting, turn-key installation, and startup and system testing. Past that the packages part company: they carry one, two or three years of maintenance, and five, seven or ten years of extended manufacturer parts and labour warranty above the standard factory coverage, and the upper packages build in whole-home surge protection with two-stage protection on the generator and utility side and on the air conditioning system. Your quote names which package it is. That is where the gap between two numbers usually lives.
Alongside those, the installation packages carry a proper generator sizing guarantee, a lifetime workmanship guarantee, a storm service guarantee, and a written price that is the price. The on-site estimate is free. A licensed electrician comes out, opens the panel, finds the gas meter, measures the run and asks what you want running when the power is off, at no charge — and you get a fixed price in writing before anything is ordered. More on why we won't quote a price over the phone.
Standby installation, replacement, maintenance and repair all run out of one shop under one licence number, across the valley and into eastern Oregon: Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Kuna, Star, Middleton, Garden City, Hidden Springs, Mountain Home, Emmett, Fruitland, Payette, Weiser, Parma, Marsing, Homedale, Wilder, Ontario, OR, Nyssa, OR and Vale, OR. Melba, Midvale, Greenleaf and New Plymouth are inside the same service area and have no generator page of their own — call and we will come look.
Everything else electrical starts at the electrical division page, or go straight to electrical repair or EV charger installation. For every trade we run in one town: Boise, Nampa, Caldwell, Meridian, Mountain Home and Ontario, OR.
Call (208) 782-8268 or request service online and a licensed electrician comes out at no charge. American Electrical Services · 1005 Commercial Way, Caldwell, ID 83605 · Idaho Electrical Contractor LIC# 3671445. American Rooter & Drain's main line is (208) 366-5771.
