QUESTION: I recently purchased a gas heater. I also own a generator. The furnace installer told me that if I used the generator to power the heater, I could blow out a circuit panel on the heater. The guy told me that I could get something to install on the heater that would make it possible to run the heater with the generator. Is that true? Where can I find one of those things?ANSWER: Today's heaters can be temperamental, but they also cannot be asked to do things for which they were never designed. It might have saved you a lot of time after the fact if you had asked about hooking up your generator to the heater when you were shopping for the new one. I would contact the manufacturer of the heater directly to see if it could provide the specifications, including the make and model, of the device you would need to make one work with the other.Generators are often asked to do more than they are designed to do, and also can be misused. Is this a whole-house generator we are talking about? Then perhaps the generator is easily able to operate the heater if the power goes out. Contact the generator manufacturer as well to make absolutely certain that the heater-maker recommendations fit your machine.

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