This page is about putting one on a Meridian lot specifically: what the machine has to carry in a house on city water rather than a well, where it can legally sit when the side yard is barely wide enough to walk down and the air conditioner is already standing in it, what your panel has to be first, and how install day runs. Written by American Electrical Services — the electrical division of American Rooter & Drain, established in Caldwell, Idaho in 1945 and working the greater Treasure Valley ever since. Idaho Electrical Contractor LIC# 3671445. The electrical line is (208) 782-8268; the on-site estimate costs nothing.
We are in Meridian constantly: 1,825 jobs at Meridian addresses across 885 households sit in our dispatch records, 449 of them inside the last twelve months. The electrical division is the newest part of the company and its Meridian work so far runs 36 calls — 20 in 83646 and 16 in 83642. A failed exterior GFCI, outlets for an island and a bidet, wire run for ceiling fans, a spa disconnect terminated, a chandelier and dimmer, a Tesla charging station, fire alarms and carbon monoxide combo units. A generator is the same panel, the same meter and the same yard, with a much bigger decision attached.
What will still be running in my house when the power goes out?
Whatever you decide belongs on the list — and that decision comes before the machine, not after it.
On a Meridian lot inside the city you are almost certainly on city water and city sewer, which quietly removes the biggest backup load a country property has to solve — nobody here is keeping a submersible pump alive at the bottom of a well casing. That works in your favour: a given machine buys a Meridian house a more complete outage than it buys an acreage out in the county. If you do have your own well and a septic pump, say so on the phone; that is the harder conversation, and it lives on the generator installation page.
What decides the size is the instant a motor starts. A compressor pulls far more current for the half-second it takes to get spinning than it does once running, and the generator has to swallow that instant without stumbling. In Meridian houses the instants that matter are the air conditioning compressor — two of them in the bigger floor plans out toward Black Cat, and they do not take turns on their own — the furnace blower, an electric range, dryer or water heater, a heat pump, and a sump pump if you have a daylight basement. Around those sits everything trivial on its own that matters enormously by hour six: the refrigerator, the freezer in the garage holding a quarter of a beef in July, a CPAP or oxygen concentrator, the router, the cameras and the door lock.
Our catalogue is built around air-cooled units rated 10/9, 14/14, 18/17, 22/19.5, 24/21 and 26/22.5 kW, with Kohler air-cooled at 14/12 and 20/18 kW; past those the machines change character entirely — liquid-cooled, with a radiator and a coolant loop like a car engine — at 22/22, 27/25, 32/32 and 38/38 kW. Those paired figures are not typos and not a range: the first is what the engine makes burning propane, the second what the same engine makes burning natural gas. Sizing off the wrong half is how a machine ends up unable to carry what it was sold to carry.
Where can the generator sit if my side yard is barely wide enough to walk down?
This decides more Meridian jobs than the machine does, and it is why nobody can quote you honestly without standing in the yard.
A standby unit needs clearance from windows, from doors, from anything that opens, and from the property line. On the deeper lots near downtown that is a non-issue. In a newer subdivision, where houses sit close and the fence line sits close behind them, the usable ground is a narrow strip on one side — and the air conditioning condenser is often already standing in the middle of it. Sometimes the answer is the back corner, sometimes the far side of the house, sometimes the front-facing side yard, which is where the architectural committee enters the conversation. If your subdivision has an HOA, tell us at the estimate; finding out after the pad is poured is an expensive way to learn it.
The walk-around also settles how far the machine ends up from the two things it must connect to: the gas meter and the electrical panel. In many production-built Meridian homes the panel is inside the garage and the meter is on the opposite corner, so one of the two runs is going the long way around whatever you pick. That distance is not cosmetic — it is a real tier in how the job is built. A run past 30 feet, or gas and electrical on opposite sides, is a step up; past 50 feet, or trenching past 30 feet, is another. What the trench crosses matters as much as its length: sod, gravel, a concrete walk, the driveway, tree roots, and in nearly every irrigated Meridian yard the sprinkler mainline and laterals nobody has a diagram for.
Does my electrical panel need work before I can have a generator?
Sometimes — and far better found out at the estimate than on set day.
The automatic transfer switch we install is a 200-amp OEM unit, with a 400-amp option for larger services — which presumes a service the switch can be built around. Newer Meridian construction generally has one. Older houses in the original grid near Main and Pine sometimes do not: a smaller service, an obsolete panel, or a meter socket that has to be replaced before the switch can land at all. And if your panel already carries a hot tub, a shop circuit, a heat pump or an EV charger added after the house was built, the panel can be the constraint rather than the generator.
That work exists as its own project and we do it alongside the install rather than as a second trip — a 200-amp meter pan swap, a new 200-amp overhead service entrance, or a new load center with all new breakers. If that is where you are, start at panel upgrades in Meridian. And if an EV charger is on the property or on the list, mention it in the same visit — a charger and a generator sharing one panel is a design decision, not two unrelated jobs.
Will it start on its own if we are out of town?
Yes, if it is built with an automatic switch. It senses that the utility is gone, starts the engine, waits for it to come up to speed and voltage, moves the house across, then reverses all of that and shuts down when the utility returns. Nobody calls you. You find out from the controller log, or from your neighbours.
The switch is not optional, and the reason is not paperwork: it guarantees the house is connected to the generator or to the utility and never to both at once. Backfeeding a line the power company believes is dead can kill someone working to restore your street, and it will destroy your generator the second utility power returns. That is also why a double-male cord pushed into a dryer outlet is never acceptable — it energises the panel through an unswitched path and puts your house back onto the utility line at the same time.
There are quieter versions of the same idea: a manual switch you throw yourself, cheaper but useless while you are in Sun Valley for the weekend; a load-shedding switch that briefly drops a large appliance so the air conditioning can start; or portable prep, a 30- or 50-amp inlet behind a 200-amp manual switch with up to 50 feet of heavy-duty cord.
Do I have gas at the house, or does this have to run on propane?
If there is a gas meter on the wall, that is your answer — and on most Meridian lots there is one, because the same main that feeds the furnace and the water heater will feed the generator. Natural gas means no tank in the yard, no delivery to schedule and no runtime ceiling.
One thing has to be nailed down before the order goes in, and it is not the generator itself. A standby unit is a large gas appliance, and your meter was sized for a furnace, a water heater and a range — not for those plus an engine running flat out. Confirming the meter and the service can feed it is part of the on-site assessment. If they cannot, the meter is not ours: it belongs to Intermountain Gas, the upgrade happens on their schedule, and no installation package of ours covers it. Writing us a bigger cheque does not move their date, which is why we raise this at the estimate rather than on set day.
Propane is the answer where the main does not reach. It runs a standby machine perfectly well and changes one thing: runtime becomes a number of gallons rather than an assumption, so size the tank for the outage you are actually afraid of.
Is it going to be loud enough to bother my neighbors?
It makes noise, and in a Meridian subdivision where you put it matters as much as which machine it is. The outage itself everyone forgives — at that point half the street is grateful and the other half is asking who installed it. The exercise cycle is the one that causes friction.
Your generator runs itself briefly on a schedule to move oil through the engine, dry the windings and prove the battery still cranks. That is what keeps it trustworthy in January, so it is not something to switch off; it is something to schedule. We set it with you at startup rather than leaving whatever the factory picked, and we tell you what a normal cycle sounds like from inside the house — the most useful diagnostic you will ever have, because when the sound changes you know before the outage does. Aiming the exhaust away from the closest neighbouring window costs nothing at the design stage and cannot be changed later without moving the machine.
What happens on install day, and how long is my power off?
The sequence is fixed, and the dates land in writing at the estimate. What stretches a schedule is never the wiring.
1. The free estimate visit. A licensed electrician looks in the panel, locates the meter, measures both runs, checks the clearances and asks what you want still running. Fixed written price up front.
2. Permits. In Idaho both the electrical work and the gas piping to the machine are permitted, and that permitting sits inside our packages — you file nothing and you never face an inspector alone.
3. The gas provider, if the meter has to change. The one step that is not ours, which is why meter capacity gets checked in step one.
4. The base. A pad rated to 180 mph wind, a poured slab, or a custom aluminum stand fabricated for the site and anchored down where the unit needs lifting out of snow or a low spot that collects runoff.
5. Set day. The unit lands on its base and is anchored, the electrical is pulled, the gas line run and pressure-tested, and the switch goes in between meter and panel. Load management, soft starts on the compressors, and a time delay where the house calls for one.
6. Startup and system testing. Not switching it on and leaving. The machine is commissioned and the transfer proved by pulling the utility out from under it while you watch.
7. Inspection. An inspector with no stake in our invoice signs the work off. That independence is the point.
Your power is off only while the switch is landed at the service — a planned interruption the electrician places in the day for you at the estimate, so you can plan around it.
What does it cost to put a generator in?
The machine is a single line on the invoice; your yard is everything else. So we publish no generator prices and quote no ranges. A range is only a number to be disappointed by later.
What moves the figure on a Meridian property: how much of the house you decided to back up, which sets the size before anything else; the distance from the machine to the meter and to the panel, and whether those two sit on one side of the house or opposite corners; trench feet and what the trench crosses; what the unit sits on, and whether concrete has to be cut and replaced; and add-ons like whole-home surge protection, load management beyond one appliance, or a 400-amp switch. Two things sit outside our number entirely: a meter upgrade, if your gas provider has to do one, and panel or service work where the panel turns out to be the real constraint.
Packages also differ in ways a side-by-side price sheet never shows. Ours all include a high-capacity battery, load management for one appliance where needed, soft starts on the air conditioning compressors, required permitting, startup and system testing, a sizing guarantee and a lifetime workmanship guarantee; above that they part company on years of included maintenance and years of extended parts and labour warranty over the factory coverage. Your quote names which package it is, and that is usually where the gap between two numbers is hiding. Here is why we won't quote a price over the phone.
What do I have to do to keep it working?
Own it like a small engine that lives outdoors, because that is what it is.
Full maintenance means oil and oil filter, plugs replaced and gapped, a fresh air filter, every electrical connection and gas fitting at the machine checked, then the unit run and watched. Air-cooled and liquid-cooled units take completely different kits: our air-cooled kit covers units up to 28 kW, the liquid-cooled kit up to 60 kW. The first service is not like the others — break-in oil comes out early, and valve clearances and fastener torque get checked while the machine is young.
The battery is the whole ballgame. A generator that cannot crank is expensive yard art, terminals corrode outdoors, and the charger keeping the battery topped up can fail silently — neither announces itself until the night you need the machine. A pre-season check runs the unit under load; idling it in the driveway proves almost nothing.
Can you work on the generator I already have?
Yes, whether or not we installed it. Air-cooled repairs run to controllers, stators, rotors, brushes, diodes, voltage regulators, stepper motors, starters, fuel regulators and complete engine swaps; liquid-cooled adds radiators, belts, coolant probes, alternators and coil packs. We stock and install parts for Generac and Kohler equipment.
The transfer switch fails on its own too, independently of the engine — the coil that throws the mechanism, the smart transfer board that decides when to throw it, the load-shed board and modules, the small 10-amp fuses protecting the controller. A machine that exercises perfectly every week and then fails to carry the house during an actual outage is usually the switch, not the engine — say that on the phone, because it changes what goes on the truck.
Replacing an old machine is shorter work than a first install: if the pad, the gas line and the switch are sound, a replacement reuses all three. We also install customer-provided equipment — ask for it by name so it gets quoted correctly.
How soon can someone come out and look at my house?
Call (208) 782-8268 and ask for the generator estimate. It is free, on site, and done by a licensed electrician rather than a salesperson with a tablet. Three things make the visit faster: a photo of the inside of your panel door with the breaker labels visible, a photo of the gas meter and where it sits relative to the panel, and your own written list of what has to stay on — the part only you can answer.
If the problem is smaller than a generator — a dead circuit, a breaker that will not stay in, a scorched receptacle — that is electrical repair in Meridian, a much shorter call. Neighbouring towns run out of the same shop under the same licence: Boise, Eagle, Star, Kuna, Nampa and Caldwell. Everything else we run in this town is on the Meridian services page; the rest of the electrical work begins at the electrical division or at lighting installation in Meridian.
Call (208) 782-8268 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.
