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Friday my 150 gets a couple of new tires, alignment-brake shoe check. Also, going to have the antifreeze replaced with new coolant and set to -40F. Continuing to bring in 2 1/2 cords of firewood per week to feed the 5 wood stoves that we will have in operation. Anyone store any water for emergency?
Sam
we keep maybe 10 gallons in the garage for emergency use in the toilets, (well and septic) and usually have a few cases of bottled water set back (rotated often),
if there is a hurricane, or snowstorm predicted and predicted to get bad, we will fill up the tubs ,
I have gas logs that will run if the power is out,
a big enough generator to run the well\septic pumps, if needed
and a kero heater as a backup,
honestly, winters are mild enough and the house insulated well enough that even on the coldest night a few extra blankets and all is good,
longest we have been w\o power was after hurricane Isabel, and that was 10 days,
Longest we have been without power was 15 days about ten years ago with the Delcho[sp] came thru our area of the country. The ONLY place to buy gas was Kroger as they ran off a natural gas powered generator. @ that time we had a 4,000 watt generator that we ran @ night and when I returned from work. This was in late July into August so we ran fans @ night. Learned new survival skills to cope with daily life. Now we have a dual fuel 9,375 as backup and a 100 gallon propane tank for it.
I pity those who aren't ready for what weather has to throw at us, not to mention anything else.
Sam
Isabel was a quick learning curve for us,
I was running a grocery store 30 miles away, that lost power for 10 days (and was on well and septic as well)
we had a tiny generator at the time, it would run lights and the fridge, nothing else, even the toaster oven would bog it down,
fortunately Mom had county water, (but no power, ) so I would go by on the way home and take a cold shower, then home to watch the news and weather on a tiny battery operated TV we had
after that we bought a better genset (and later replaced it a couple years ago) and started to lay in some supplies,
granted, we are not true preppers, but have learned to become much more self sufficient during such things,
while at our first house we lost power for 4-5 days during a winter storm, so I went out afterwords and picked up a couple lanterns, Coleman stove etc, that we still use sometimes,
I burn wood also i just had a Mitsubishi Ductless Air Conditioner and heater with hyper heat 4 zones put in you can run each zone separate just heat one area you have a unit in or leave it shut off my neighbor said it is amazing uses less electric than a light bulb going to give it a good test this winter wood is so nice but sometimes you just get tired of cutting and splitting it and of course my wife complaining about the mess all the time and sometimes the ants that wake up inside a piece of wood when it gets warm i will burn wood on a really cold night in my fire place just for the romance of it
I have a 40,000 watt diesel generator that runs my house and water well. 2- 500 gallon diesel trailers if needed.
Block heater keeps the engine warm so it can go to full rpm at startup which is after a 10 sec power outage.
IF all goes well till spring we plan on having solar to keep the lights on. I am looking at a MEP 10,000 watt or an Auoria [sp] one. The MEP is considerably cheaper and does so much more. The Champion will then be held in reserve as I can run it on propane.
Sam
49 degrees @0430, coldest since last April.
Sam