Originally Posted by ottotheboar

Personally I think a carport would fine with the exhaust pointing away from the house.

Originally Posted by thinbrit

I use a transfer switch with my portable generator. It is essentially an electrical sub panel, rated for my generator. Installation is simple, if not laborious. You transfer all the circuits you intend to run with the generator to the new sub panel. When running on the generator, I throw a large switch that isolates the incoming line and transfers the sub panel to the generator input (which is mounted outside my home). Switching back moves all the breakers on the sub panel back to the main breaker feed. After adding the transfer switch, I was left with a sparsely populated main panel, and all the previous circuits moved to the new sub panel.

The switch is attached to two large breakers, one is the mains supply and one is the generator input. Closing one breaker opens the other, and vice versa. These large breakers in turn feed my sub panel. The panel includes amp meters for each 110v input, to help balance the load. You want roughly half of the load on each 110v leg of the sub panel to prevent stress on the generator.