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Can you power your house with an F250?

MACDRIVE

MACDRIVE

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 17, 2006
1,695
3
Clovis, California
My brother's got him one of those super duty 4X4 Ford trucks. It's a four door and I'm thinking it's a 2007 because he said it has a little over 600 miles on it. Anyway, it's got that big diesel and the power plug on the bumper. He lives out in a rural area that loses power a lot. He want's to know if he can power his house with it. I told him I saw some guy on that TV show Jericho powering his house with a Jeep Cherokee. Of course that's TV and things are not always for real. :D
 
heh

On all of the diesels I've seen, you plug the TRUCK into the house (when it cold) to keep something in truck warm, otherwise it takes forever to start the diesel in the morning.

Jericho rocks. I can't flipping believe we have to wait until Feb. til the new episodes start.
 
For one thing, its a Ford. Fords suck. Simple as that. That truck wouldn't power a pencil sharpener. If it has a powe plug on the bumper, front bumper im guessing, it is probably so the glow plugs are always ready. Althought the diesel truck that i have driven, it will start no matter how cold out it is. You can go and buy a power inverter to power things. Any where from a 200 watt for like charing a laptop or cell phone, all the way up to a 2000 watt that you can use to run a tv, fridge, etc etc.

Tell your brother he should have bought a cummins.
 
cantthinkofone said:
For one thing, its a Ford. Fords suck. Simple as that. That truck wouldn't power a pencil sharpener.
Click to expand...

I personally do not like fords but they don't "suck". why even say that as it serves no purpose to the question being asked

I do not know though if any truck can power a house. I mean it may have 300ish hp which is about 223kW but it does not continuosly run at 300hp. You would have to look at the torque curves for the engine. Is there a way to convert the engine power to electical or are you potentially limited to just what the alternator is outputting which would be way less?
 
In a word, no.

Unless it's got some world-class inverter built in, I suspect - and I'm sure a perusal of the owner's manual could confirm - that it can't take over, at best, a 500W load.

There are some excellent sub-$800 generators out there. I recently bought one and installed a transfer panel next to my circuit panel. Now, should the power fail (which, ironically, happens all the time but hasn't happened once in the several months since I bought the generator), I simply wheel it out of the garage, plug it into the special outlet box that runs into the house, flip the transfer box switch, and have power for key items in the house (furnace, sump, fridge, etc.).

I highly recommend something similar for him, and professional installation unless he knows what he's doing. As the storms in the northwest showed, people without power fall prey to carbon monoxide poisoning if they use generators (and car inverters) inappropriately. It's better to prepare ahead of time than try to figure out what to do in the middle of an outage.
 
cantthinkofone said:
For one thing, its a Ford. Fords suck. Simple as that. That truck wouldn't power a pencil sharpener. If it has a powe plug on the bumper, front bumper im guessing, it is probably so the glow plugs are always ready. Althought the diesel truck that i have driven, it will start no matter how cold out it is. You can go and buy a power inverter to power things. Any where from a 200 watt for like charing a laptop or cell phone, all the way up to a 2000 watt that you can use to run a tv, fridge, etc etc.

Tell your brother he should have bought a cummins.
Click to expand...

Tell me when that Cummins destroys the poor 4 speed auto mated to it. Personally, I would buy a Ford before a Chrysler product. Every Chrysler product I have owned have had problems. Most common problems were oil burning and transmission failing.

And to answer the question of the OP, I don't think so. There is a plug you can plug the truck into the house, but that is the engine block heater as already said to help the truck get started in the cold.
 
jsw said:
In a word, no.

Unless it's got some world-class inverter built in, I suspect - and I'm sure a perusal of the owner's manual could confirm - that it can't take over, at best, a 500W load.

There are some excellent sub-$800 generators out there. I recently bought one and installed a transfer panel next to my circuit panel. Now, should the power fail (which, ironically, happens all the time but hasn't happened once in the several months since I bought the generator), I simply wheel it out of the garage, plug it into the special outlet box that runs into the house, flip the transfer box switch, and have power for key items in the house (furnace, sump, fridge, etc.).
Click to expand...

That happened to my friend's family. They were sick and tired of constant power failures where they lived...so they bought an expensive generator with enough juice to cover all of the vitals plus some niceties. They had it professionally installed, set it in a discrete part of their yard between some trees, nested it in some ground cover and landscaped to hide it. They haven't had a power failure in the 3 years they've had it. :rolleyes:
 
The diesel in an F250 would be more than adequate to power a house, but (as mentioned already) the truck doesn't have the kind of robust inverter that you'd need.

cantthinkofone said:
For one thing, its a Ford. Fords suck. Simple as that. That truck wouldn't power a pencil sharpener.
Click to expand...

People arguing about Ford v.s.Chevy v.s. Dodge trucks crack me up. Do those opinions come with a mullet? :rolleyes:
 
Lord Blackadder said:
People arguing about Ford v.s.Chevy v.s. Dodge trucks crack me up. Do those opinions come with a mullet? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Usually a mullet and one of these stickers, which anger me. :p :

_CCE_11-calvin-pee.gif
 
OutThere said:
Usually a mullet and one of these stickers, which anger me. :p :

_CCE_11-calvin-pee.gif
Click to expand...

DUDE!!! Ford sucks ass!!! GO CHEVY!

No, Chevy sucks ass, you moron!! GO FORD!

(I'm actually surprised to see a Dodge bigot. They usually stay out of it.)

Yes, they're both idiots. All major manufacturers of heavy duty trucks make perfectly decent vehicles. I want one of those calvin peeing, but on the picture of a pick up truck. Piss on 'em all!
 
Im not trying to start a my truck is better than yours argument. Sorry if i did.

Agreed that crysler products have problems. The most common one is the front end going out on thier diesel trucks. The bushings fail because of the wieght of the engine. 35k miles is when it happens, and not a mile longer. When they will fix is problem has yet to be determend.

Lord Blackadder: If you wish to dawn mullets and argue, very well. Although out of all the voices i can impersonate, a redneck is not one of them. But i live in a town full of them ironicly.

ehurtley: I am not a crystler bigot. I like both dodge and chevrolet. But never have liked fords. But i do like trucks with better track records as in nissan and toyotas more.

macdrive: What about solar pannels? Tax write off, and they are getting cheaper and cheaper every year to have.
 
bahhhh go ford!!!


as stated before thoes plugs are to keep the engine block heater going and the glow plugs lit if equiped. i have a block heater in my tbird, havent ever used it because im missing the cord that plugs into the block.
 
Just to really throw the truck people in this thread for a loop...

You may not be able to do it with your F250, but you can do it with your Prius! With the simple addition of a commercial-grade inverter connected directly to the hybrid battery pack, it is able to supply 5-6 KW (5 to 6 thousand watts,) for a long time. The battery discharges, the car runs the engine to recharge the battery, and repeats.

All this adds to the car is the inverter from an old server-grade UPS (the rack mount kind,) since they usually use the same voltage battery as the Prius' battery pack. And 5000 watts is more than my house draws normally. (Maybe if I had all my computers on, PLUS the electric dryer...)

Of course, as with any generator, you do need to prepare your HOUSE significantly for the addition. And the guy whose site is linked above took the extra step of adding a big bank of batteries in the house, and only plugs in the Prius when that battery pack is running low.

I haven't tried it on my Prius yet, I'm waiting for the warranty to expire. I don't want to break it in a way Toyota won't cover while Toyota is still willing to repair other problems, after all. :)

For truck guys, Chevy offers a 'mild hybrid' Silverado that includes a 2400 Watt 'generator' onboard. (It only gets 2 MPG more in the city than the non-hybrid model (about a 13% improvement,) and gets no improvement on the highway.) By comparison, Ford's 'full hybrid' Escape 36/31 only has a 1500 W 'car-style' inverter built-in, but gets 13 MPG better on the highway and 5 MPG better on the freeway than the 4 cylinder conventional model, and a whopping 16/7 improvement over the V6, while having slightly more power than the V6. (200 hp V6 vs. 227 hp for the hybrid's engine+electric motor combined.) Although since the Escape Hybrid is the same basic design as the Prius, one could probably make the same 'UPS' modification to it as to the Prius.
 
Another problem using the truck engine would be that the idle power would be significantly below the potential. You'd have to lock it in at a higher engine speed in any case, which presents a situation where the engine computer must be tapped into and controlled.
 
can't you take off the rear tire, hook up a belt drive to a generator, and have that powering the house... wait that was in a movie. nevermind.:D
 
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