So we went out Sunday Sept 16 and since the pump was in I was excited to get it going, the last time we went the pump was in and I brought the generator but I looked at the pump and it didn't have a plug or a hose bib. It's a good thing really since if I had tried to start the generator I would have noticed it didn't have a battery... Anyway this time I had tested the generator and stopped by B&C to get the electrical connectors and some adapters so a hose could be screwed on.

The generator has a 125/240V 30A socket which is called L14-30V. The socket I got has 4 connectors: W, G, X, Y. The pump has three wires; black, red and green. Hmm well green looks obvious, that's the ground so I wire that up. Now I know black is hot so I look on the instructions for the plug and it says to hook the hot to either X or Y. Okay done. Now I have a red wire from the pump which I Ass-U-Me is the common ( white ) so I hook it all up and start the generator. Nothing. I'm not sure if I'll even be able to hear the pump over the generator so maybe it just takes a while. Wait Wait Wait Wait, still nothing. Okay now I get out the multimeter ( cheapo $5 one ) and test at the breaker box. On closer inspection of the breaker box it has a cover that if flipped one way connects the pump and if connected the other way doesn't, and it's on OFF. DOH! Okay now try the generator again. Wait Wait Wait Wait, Nothing. Darn. Okay now I check the voltage at the breaker and it says 140V. Anyone see 100V lying around? I take apart the little box on top of the pump seal and check that, again 140V. Okay I must need to bridge something to get 240V. I take a piece of wire and connect X to Y in the plug. The generator makes noises like it's under strain which I take for a good sign, but then it's breaker pops out. Double darn. I give up, I must be doing something wrong. Later when asking someone who actually knows about such things it turns out that in this situation the neutral common wire ( white) is not used and I was supposed to hook red to X and black to Y and G to G and it should work.  I feel dumb but at least now I can hook it up the next time we go out there.