most here have some sort of heating backup, what about other things any tips or tricks?.no politics pls just some tips and tricks
prep peeps
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Poindexter
Minister of Fire
Given my location, I have a much smaller infrastructure network to rely on. My employer did a disaster readiness study 3-4 years ago, the "disaster" was an earthquake bad enough to knock out our one rail and two road connections to the lower 48, and severely damage all three local runways.
We could not get a straight answer from the DoD about their plans for the 2 local military runways. My company is not counting on courtesy civilian air freight landing at either of the military bases before day 14.
In the best case scenario it was going to take about two weeks for the lead truck in a convoy of 18 wheelers to make it to town up the freshly repaired AlCan highway and multiple bridges. So I keep about two weeks of stabilized gasoline in my outdoor shed. I turn the gas over about every two years total, run it through my truck and refill the cans.
We thought we had 3-4 months of food in stock when social distancing started in 2020, and learned a thing or six about storing a variety of stable foods. I think it was long about day 4 or day 5 we realized we had plenty of food, but it was all the same stuff. We spent a LOT of money on delivered meals in 2020 and 2021.
We started canning in summer of 2022. Basically anything I can safely can at home in mason jars gets canned and stored. We do have 3 freezers, but my local electricity is mostly coal fired and there are several rail bridges between the power plant and the mine. The shelves my canned goods are stored on have solid walls on three sides, a pretty fair lip across the front of each shelf, and they are well enough secured that the canned food isn't coming down until the house in coming down.
We have looked at dehydrating food at home, but our electricity price makes this not cost effective. We do buy some foods commercially dehydrated. I do dehydrate our garden grown herbs at home, but making bales of say fruit leather would be cost prohibitive.
Water and sewer is another problem to consider if your power is going to be out more than three days or so. Keeping incoming water lines pressurized takes energy, usually electricity. Keeping the water treatment plant running so your sewer pipe doesn't back up takes a LOT of electricity.
Besides ongoing canning this summer, I need to look at this one some more. I would like to put a shutoff valve on my outgoing sewage so other people in the neighborhood filling up the drain pipes don't end up pooping into my garage. Might not be legal.
There are several household size water filtration systems available, but if the river is frozen thick enough having a good filter won't do me any good. At our best, the wife and I average about 55 gallons of water daily. Times 14 days, 770 gallons. We could maybe lose one chest freezer, bring in a 500-1000 gallon tank into the indoors and just fill it and be done with it.
I do have a small gasoline generator I can use to power my boiler a couple times daily to keep my household pipes from freezing, but without water flowing through them the underground mains will freeze fairly rapidly once delivery pressure (and therefore throughput) is lost.
At the end of the day our three main tasks in life are to heal from our past, enjoy are present and prepare for our future. Focusing too much on any one will cause suffering in the other two.
We could not get a straight answer from the DoD about their plans for the 2 local military runways. My company is not counting on courtesy civilian air freight landing at either of the military bases before day 14.
In the best case scenario it was going to take about two weeks for the lead truck in a convoy of 18 wheelers to make it to town up the freshly repaired AlCan highway and multiple bridges. So I keep about two weeks of stabilized gasoline in my outdoor shed. I turn the gas over about every two years total, run it through my truck and refill the cans.
We thought we had 3-4 months of food in stock when social distancing started in 2020, and learned a thing or six about storing a variety of stable foods. I think it was long about day 4 or day 5 we realized we had plenty of food, but it was all the same stuff. We spent a LOT of money on delivered meals in 2020 and 2021.
We started canning in summer of 2022. Basically anything I can safely can at home in mason jars gets canned and stored. We do have 3 freezers, but my local electricity is mostly coal fired and there are several rail bridges between the power plant and the mine. The shelves my canned goods are stored on have solid walls on three sides, a pretty fair lip across the front of each shelf, and they are well enough secured that the canned food isn't coming down until the house in coming down.
We have looked at dehydrating food at home, but our electricity price makes this not cost effective. We do buy some foods commercially dehydrated. I do dehydrate our garden grown herbs at home, but making bales of say fruit leather would be cost prohibitive.
Water and sewer is another problem to consider if your power is going to be out more than three days or so. Keeping incoming water lines pressurized takes energy, usually electricity. Keeping the water treatment plant running so your sewer pipe doesn't back up takes a LOT of electricity.
Besides ongoing canning this summer, I need to look at this one some more. I would like to put a shutoff valve on my outgoing sewage so other people in the neighborhood filling up the drain pipes don't end up pooping into my garage. Might not be legal.
There are several household size water filtration systems available, but if the river is frozen thick enough having a good filter won't do me any good. At our best, the wife and I average about 55 gallons of water daily. Times 14 days, 770 gallons. We could maybe lose one chest freezer, bring in a 500-1000 gallon tank into the indoors and just fill it and be done with it.
I do have a small gasoline generator I can use to power my boiler a couple times daily to keep my household pipes from freezing, but without water flowing through them the underground mains will freeze fairly rapidly once delivery pressure (and therefore throughput) is lost.
At the end of the day our three main tasks in life are to heal from our past, enjoy are present and prepare for our future. Focusing too much on any one will cause suffering in the other two.
all the tree huggers got another wake up call ,ice storm 1million no power cell phones nope, regular phones nope,charge electric cars nopewe had the 98 icestorm 2 weeks of freezing rain towers for main lines crashing to the ground .let,s electrify it,s clean 
idiots.never a balance always to the extreme
idiots.never a balance always to the extremelast couple of years montreal banning woodstoves if it doesn't meet a certain gph reg but not offering any help to install newer burners
That sounds allot like a very serious infrastructure issue not an issue of environmentalism.all the tree huggers got another wake up call ,ice storm 1million no power cell phones nope, regular phones nope,charge electric cars nopewe had the 98 icestorm 2 weeks of freezing rain towers for main lines crashing to the ground .let,s electrify it,s clean
We had a week-long outage due to a very intense January storm that knocked out regional power. The winds took down some of the transmission lines from large dams. We survived, as did almost everyone else.
Climate disruption will cause more and more infrastructure disruption as weather patterns change and storms intensify due to more energy being released by warmer oceans and seas. It's an unfortunate comment on the state of humanity that the motivators for changing human habits will be economics and loss of habitat instead of recognizing how special this planet is. There is no planet B. What is extreme, is the disregard for life and greed behind it. A balance would be very welcome.
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For us most outages are due to wind blowing down down dead ash or hemlock trees killed due to invasive species. And the only major inconvenience for us without power is lack of water
we foud out after the 1998 icestorm we depend on electricity for almost everything.humans have an amazing way of forgetting disasters lol
Like I said water is really the only big issue for us. Cell phones still work because all the towers have backup generators. I do have a generator I can run to pump water when really needed or run freezers etc in the summer if it goes more than a day
Backup generators on cell towers and internet cable systems run out of fuel after 24-72 hrs. Found that out.
The radios still work and like you we have a generator. Fortunately, our water has a large storage tank which will provide us with gravity-fed water for about a week. After that, it's a trip down to the spring source for water.
Our issue would also be water, living in the city we have no water storage tanks, other than the top of the toilets I guess. We have a storm water pond 100 yards away, but I'd need to conjure up a a still or water filter to make it drinkable. Winter would be easier, just melt snow.
I have enough gas on hand to keep the fridge and freezer cold for a couple weeks running the generator a few hours per day. Also have enough food in the pantry, and enough wood in the wood box to heat and cook with. Or propane to run the cookstove or BBQ.
I have enough gas on hand to keep the fridge and freezer cold for a couple weeks running the generator a few hours per day. Also have enough food in the pantry, and enough wood in the wood box to heat and cook with. Or propane to run the cookstove or BBQ.
They still worked here after 3 days not sure if they refilled or what. Our water is from a well with no tank other than the pressure tank. So no power no water.
Our water is from a town reservoir, on top of the highest hill. There’s also a water tower up there. A large generator and solar panels cover the underground reservoir. I wonder if I’d run out of water pressure eventually. I’m not sure if the reservoir is spring fed. I could definitely get gravity pressure, they are at least 150 feet above me and maybe a quarter mile away.
look at the video made of the 1998 ice storm in quebec and imagine if something like that happened now
For me again it would be water which I can get with the generator and I have enough fuel to last a long time if only used to pump water. And yes eventually we would loose cell service which would be annoying but not a big deal. We typically have enough food for a few weeks. And could always slaughter pigs if need be.
I have a couple of tri-fuel generators from Costco. They are construction grade (at best), not backup power grade, so they would not keeping running indefinitely. But I have an outdoor NG fixture that to provide fuel for them, plus some large RV-style propane canisters, plus some stored gasoline. The combination would likely last two or three months when used for well water and (at first) refrigeration; longer if the house NG line remained on. I should soon have wood heat. Enough dried and canned food for a few months, supplemented by some gardening. Unfortunately solar is not very useful in a cloudy northern climate with tall trees all around the house. Most of my neighborhood is in a similar state. But in a disaster lasting more than a small number of weeks, we'd likely be overrun by people from the nearer towns.
Not as good as I'd prefer for riding out the very large earthquake that the PNW is overdue for, but better than pre-pandemic.
I can meat, lots of meat, and we're on well water but I have stored hundreds of gallons. On generator fuel I recently finished a stock up program with propane so we can last several months. Of course wood heat and gravity septic. A hot tub of water for toilet flushing.
What I worry most about is those folks that are unprepared and want me to share. It won’t take long for them to figure out who has stuff.
What I worry most about is those folks that are unprepared and want me to share. It won’t take long for them to figure out who has stuff.
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