Getting Your Standby Generator Ready for a Random Lake Winter
If you have a standby generator at your Random Lake home, October is the month to make sure it will actually start, carry the load, and hand power back cleanly once the lines come back. That means four checks: the battery and charger, the weekly exercise cycle, the transfer switch, and the space around the unit. Do it now, while it's still comfortable to work outside, not the night the first ice storm rolls through Sheboygan County.
A generator that sits all summer can look fine and still fail when the furnace and well pump need it.
Start with the battery and the charger
The starting battery is what turns the engine over, and cold makes every weak battery weaker. Look at the controller for any battery warning, check the terminals for corrosion, and note how old the battery is. Standby units typically keep the battery topped up with a built-in charger fed from a circuit in your house. If that circuit got shut off, or a breaker tripped over the summer, the battery has been slowly draining with nobody noticing. Follow your owner's manual for the battery type and replacement interval.
Make sure the exercise cycle is still running
Standby generators are typically set to run a short self-test on a schedule. Go out and watch or listen for one. If it's not happening, the clock may have reset after a power blip, or the unit may be sitting in “off” instead of “auto.” A generator left in off won't start in an outage, no matter how new it is. Note any stored fault codes on the controller, too.
For the engine side — oil, filters, plugs, coolant on liquid-cooled units — stick to the maintenance schedule in your manual. Our generator maintenance checklist walks through the full annual list.
Test the transfer switch, not just the engine
The weekly exercise cycle usually runs the engine without moving your house onto generator power. That means the transfer switch can go untested for a long time. The switch is the part that disconnects your home from the utility lines and connects it to the generator, then swaps back when power returns.
We Energies, which supplies electricity and natural gas to the Village of Random Lake, puts it plainly on its generator safety page: the only safe way to connect a generator to your home wiring is a transfer switch installed by a licensed electrician, because it isolates your circuits and prevents dangerous backfeed onto the power lines. A switch that sticks, chatters, or doesn't transfer is a problem you want to find in October.
A controlled switchover test — cutting utility power on purpose and watching the generator pick up the house, then hand it back — is the honest way to know it works. This is the electrical side of generator service, and it's the work we do around Random Lake on our generator service page.
Clear the space around the unit
Rake leaves and pull weeds away from the enclosure so the air intake and exhaust can breathe. Think ahead to January: where will the snow off the roof land, and where does the plow pile go? A generator buried in a drift can't breathe either. Check your manual for the required clearances and keep a path open so you can get to it.
Check what's actually on backup
Out here, the circuits that matter in a winter outage are usually the furnace, the well pump, the sump pump, and the fridge. If you've added a freezer, a heated garage, or an EV charger since the generator went in, the generator or transfer switch may not be set up to cover them. Walk your panel and the transfer switch labels and make sure the circuits you'd need in February are really on there.
Portable generator? Same rule applies
If you run a portable generator instead of a standby unit, the winter prep is simpler but the safety rule is the same. We Energies says to never run a generator inside a home, garage, crawlspace, shed, or other enclosed area, and to install carbon monoxide alarms. Our post on hardwired smoke and CO alarms covers that piece. And never plug a generator into a wall outlet to feed the house — that's backfeed. Use a properly installed transfer switch or inlet setup.
Permits and code for new generator work
If this fall's check turns up a transfer switch that needs replacing or circuits that need to be added, we pull the permit when the job requires one. In the Village of Random Lake, electrical permits go through the village's online permit portal. New work in Wisconsin is installed to the 2023 National Electrical Code, which the state adopted in its electrical code (SPS 316) effective September 1, 2026.
Get it checked before the cold sets in
Couillard Electric is based right here in Random Lake, and we work on generator hookups and transfer switches across Sheboygan County and the surrounding area. If your standby unit hasn't had a switchover test in a while, or you're not sure what it's actually backing up, reach out and we'll set up a visit before winter does it for you.