Did your prepping work for you during this long outage??

Cabinetman

Cabinetman

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HI all.

We just got our power restored this afternoon after five full days of zero power. All 19,000 homes and businesses in Enfield were shut down since mid-afternoon on Saturday.

So, I got the chance to practice some of my prepping stradagy. I found that theoretically it looked straight forward but pratical application was more messy than I anticipated. I'm going to install a transfer switch to hook my generator into my box, something I should have done before. Using hd extensions was messy and tough to do due to the lengths needed. Propane went faster than I had thought it would although we had extra people here (my m-i-l and daugher and s-i-l) so we were cooking and lighting for five. Gasoline for the generator was ok. I had 25 gallons and was buring through the last of it after 5 days of continuous power. I could have stretched that further but the elderly lady here needed to stay warm. So, I'll need more fuel on hand to go the extended days.

Other than that I was pleased with what we had avaiable and were able to endure five full days of no power. Now to replenish and prep for our first real winter storm!

Rome
 
I got power back on today. It was a good opportunity to try out preps, and learn ways to improve. Overall, it went quite well.

I do not have a generator, and it is intentional since I cover for that other ways. But, it would have been nice to have one so that I could provide electricity to the pellet stove to make heating easier and more pleasant. Max wattage for the pellet stove is 350W, easy to cover on even the smallest generator. So, I used a combination of kerosene space heater and a propane Mr Heater. From previous tests, I knew the kerosene heater would be able to properly heat the house with an outdoor temp of 20F, and it did that job fine, although quite smelly of course. It was not on full-time so I used about 7 gallons of kerosene over 5 days. In the morning, I'd also run Mr Heater to help warm things up a little faster and make a nice foot warmer. It is only 9000 BTU which is just half what I need to possibly heat the house, but it is a help, and doesn't stink. I was surprised that I was down to one propane tank, mostly empty (oops! It happened because I brought a full one to Mom's house and didn't replace it), so I was able to re-fill the completely empty one on Monday at the hardware store. My neighbors had no alternate heat and were just having to deal with being cold.

I had much more food in the fridge than could be finished off before it spoiled. After 48 hours, I was done trying to eat any of it. I did a combination of cooking on a propane burner ("for outdoor use only") and a charcoal Volcano stove... very nice stove, but I really gotta learn how to light charcoal without lighter fluid -- I had to soak the charcoal to get it to light, and I don't store lots of lighter fluid. I realized that several of my camping-themed pots are too narrow to put on either of these stoves... not good to have flames going up the sides of pots and melting a plastic handle. So, I stuck to the wider pots and dutch oven and had great results. The percolator is narrow so I placed it on a larger pot on the stove... a bit weird, but it worked. I need to rethink my pots and burner diameters. Also, I'd like better indoor cooking capability.

A headlamp proved very useful for trying to cook outside in the dark and have two hands free. I also have this silly ball cap that has an LED light built into it; that actually worked great for lighting up while hands free.

If you drink coffee, that is important to not suddenly stop. So, be sure preparations include that. Note to self: electric coffee grinder is ELECTRIC.

The office got power back early, so I showered a couple times at the gym there.

If this were middle of winter with 0F temps at night, heating would have been a much bigger deal. This week, even without heating, you can survive and also not have pipes freeze and burst. But, that would not be the case at 0F. I won't leave a kero heater running by itself all day, so that is a problem if I have to leave the house for the day in extreme cold and not have the heater running. Having someone else there would help.
 
The blackout we had during Irene was our first test and we found some big holes in the plan. I'd fixed ~80% of them by this blackout and the ones I did not were minor. We were pretty comfortable as far as light, heat, & minimal electricity needs being met. So now I am ready to go deeper and add more capabilities.

I've considered a transfer switch and may indeed do that down the road along with a larger capacity and quieter generator. In the interim, and on my short list, is to rewire the furnace so I can plug it directly into the generator and run it as needed to keep the house warm. Since our hot water is a zone off the furnace, we'll have hot showers too. It hit me today that with that one simple addition, our house routine would be almost normal during a blackout.

We had decent light with oil lamps but I am adding a few more. They beat candles, are bright enough to read by, quiet, and put out a bit of heat. Burning them for hours used only a cup of oil each so the are reasonably economical. I just need to add some more to get light in other areas and stock back up on oil. So far Wal-Mart has everyone beat on price with 1/2 gallon at under $4. The hardware stores were 2X+ that.

That's really it for us.
 
I hope that those of you who use alternative heat have a battery operated CO detector or three.

Sent from the Hyundai of the droids, the Samsung Replenish, using Tapatalk.
 
House we just bought already had a breakout box for running off generator, so on Saturday we bought one (and also a snowblower). We had heat, water, lights, etc. We were pretty much set. We also stocked up on French toast supplies and bacon.

Generator went through about 5 gallons a day, so I just need to buy a few more Jerry cans (just had one on-hand for this storm).
 
Last edited:
Prepper said:
charcoal Volcano stove... very nice stove, but I really gotta learn how to light charcoal without lighter fluid -- I had to soak the charcoal to get it to light, and I don't store lots of lighter fluid.
Click to expand...

What is this "lighter fluid" you speak of?

Seriously, I never touch the stuff. Don't want my burgers and steaks to taste of half-burned hydrocarbons. Get one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Weber-87886-Chimney-Starter/dp/B00004U9VV

41VYS1070YL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
 
We did fine. We have a camp stove so we could cook, wood stove for heat, so our house was nice and toasty, ran the generators for a while to keep the freezers frozen and our small cooler fridge. I learned years ago when we were with out power, phones, etc for about a week, and take every outage as a learning experience t see what else we need to do.
 
MisterHappy said:
For people looking to re-stock on lamp / heater fuel:

Some Hess stations have Kerosene pumps, much cheaper than the hardware store.

Google Hess, they have a store locator, where you can filter for the Kero-sellers.
Click to expand...

On the Hess site, the store locator is a broken link. On the Hess Express site, there is no way to filter for Kero. [angry] Do their marketing and web people have ANY clue whatsoever?
 
Last edited:
Prepper said:
I do not have a generator, and it is intentional since I cover for that other ways -

I had much more food in the fridge than could be finished off before it spoiled. After 48 hours, I was done trying to eat any of it.

I did a combination of cooking on a propane burner ("for outdoor use only") and a charcoal Volcano stove...

I realized that several of my camping-themed pots are too narrow to put on either of these stoves...

If you drink coffee, that is important to not suddenly stop. So, be sure preparations include that. Note to self: electric coffee grinder is ELECTRIC.
Click to expand...

We used our generator to cycle the fridge for 15 minutes every few hours except overnight. We saved 90% of the food. Our generator is small, 2500W, but ran the fridge just fine.

You aren't using the charcoal stove inside are you? The comment on battery CO detectors is definitely worth paying attention too. We have several and they gave me good reinforcement that we weren't putting our house in a deadly situation.

We used all our regular cookware on our small Coleman. The 425 has the footprint of a briefcase but we could get 2 big skillets on it. The wind wings adjust outward to compensate for their width. The Coleman stayed on our 3-season porch for cooking duty.

For coffee, we don't grind anymore although I wouldn't mind getting a hand grinder. Our coffee method worked out well. I picked up a Melitta single cup brewer. It holds a standard cone filter. It sits nicely on top of a thermal carafe we have that holds six cups of coffee. I'd charge the filter and pour hot water through it. Coffee stayed hot for hours that we.

We used several of our carafes and thermoses to keep hot water around for dishes, tea, etc. We'd boil up enough to fill them all and then have hot water all day. This worked very well.

Melitta brewer -

melitta2.jpg
 
MrsWildweasel said:
We did fine. We have a camp stove so we could cook, wood stove for heat, so our house was nice and toasty, ran the generators for a while to keep the freezers frozen and our small cooler fridge. I learned years ago when we were with out power, phones, etc for about a week, and take every outage as a learning experience t see what else we need to do.
Click to expand...

I am looking at wood stove fireplace inserts to offset our oil bill for next year. A friend has a wood stove to heat his home and what I pay monthly for oil, he pays for the whole winter. This is probably the single best improvement we could make.
 
I had a couple hiccups in my plan. My Cummins 12kw generator wouldnt start, so one call to my cousin/ mechanic took care of that. It runs my outside wood stove, inside furnace all the pumps for the radiant heat, well , basement power ( tv, direct tv) fridge, freezer, 2 lights in the kitchen. Need to get a bigger propane tank. I went through 100 gal of propane in 5 days. Propane company came and filled the tank up yesterday with 3% remaining in the tank. I had to cut my way out of the driveway on sun and had barely enough mix for the chainsaw. Overall I could have rationed some of energy usage but it was good to see how much it took with everything running up to the max. Food wasnt an issue but I should have used paper plates/ plastic cups.
 
Got juice back last night.
I live in a condo so no generator. The lady and I went to my parents place after two days, his gas furnace and hot water heater need no electric so that was great.
As far as supplies, we were fine. We brought over food, batteries, candles and camping equipment. We only had two lanterns, which were fine for this go-round but I'll definitely be stocking up on them for the winter. Think we'll get a sm gen for the fridge, freezer and a few lights for his place.

I suspect N.E. will have a repeat scenario, prob not as long, if there is a decent ice storm this winter which seems very plausible, given the current state many trees are in.
 
Last winter we topped 180" of snow total. That's huge and this year it looks like the wet weather is going to continue which means and other major snow event. We're already 50" of rain over normal. That doesn't bode well.

I did run my generator continuously for a few reasons. First, I did want to see if it would handle the loads and second I wanted to see what the usage would be. This storm came when Fall was still with us and the temps outside weren't bad. Even so, one night I did turn the generator off and by 0230, the temp in the house dropped to about 50 degrees. With my MIL here (she's 82) it was tough on her so I left the gen on from there on out. My furnace cycled as it would normally keeping the house at it's normal schedule heating points.

I actually did hard wire the furnace to an outlet that is designed to use a special extention cord I made from 12/3 romex. Both ends were male. I shut off the main and the breaker to the furnace. Then I just plugged the extension into the special box (I've painted it red and also labled it) and ran it like that the whole time. However, getting a transfer switch will allow me to select more circuits and use the wattage the gen offers more efficiently. There won't be any more extension cords needed to the fridge or freezer. Plus, if I want, I can deselect the freezer for a few hours and use that power someplace else like the lights in the living room along with the tv and DVD player. There are a lot options. I know that a lot of guys just plugged the 240 volt outlet into their electric dryer outlet. That energized both sides of the box. Then they turned off the main and all the circuits, leaving on only the ones that they wanted to power. Properly handled this will work but if you fail to shut off the main, you'll be sending power back through the grid and cause and issue if not injury. So, the manual transfer switch is really the way to go as it's legal and works. In a pinch, however, using that dryer line as an entry into your breaker box will work if you're super careful. I'd just not recommend it.

Rome
 
dwarven1 said:
On the Hess site, the store locator is a broken link. On the Hess Express site, there is no way to filter for Kero. [angry] Do their marketing and web people have ANY clue whatsoever?
Click to expand...

Guess that utility got phased out....

If you go to the store locator, yuo can open up the individual store, and there's a list of what they have at the bottom.

Natick sells it, and worcester,IIRC.
 
Reliance controls makes a good transfer box. Easy to install, switches completely wired you only need to make the wire connections and their instructions are good. It takes less than an hour to make all the connections, it took me much longer to run the wire and plug from the garage to the transfer panel box.
 
MisterHappy said:
For people looking to re-stock on lamp / heater fuel:

Some Hess stations have Kerosene pumps, much cheaper than the hardware store.

Google Hess, they have a store locator, where you can filter for the Kero-sellers.
Click to expand...

Died or clear? The red stuff can clog the wicks.
 
green_metalflake said:
You aren't using the charcoal stove inside are you? The comment on battery CO detectors is definitely worth paying attention too. We have several and they gave me good reinforcement that we weren't putting our house in a deadly situation.
Click to expand...

People keep asking this, so I'll answer. No, I am not using charcoal inside (if I was, I would not be typing here today), and I have two CO detectors (plus several other smoke detectors), one I placed 4 feet from the heater. The only devices I used inside were those that said they were for indoor use. Actually, I'm not sure about the little fold-up hiking camp stove that I also used inside, but propane/butane should be fine inside. I used my large propane burner outside because it said for outside use only, although I suspect that would have been safe enough inside.
 
green_metalflake said:
We used all our regular cookware on our small Coleman. The 425 has the footprint of a briefcase but we could get 2 big skillets on it. The wind wings adjust outward to compensate for their width. The Coleman stayed on our 3-season porch for cooking duty.
Click to expand...

One more thing, do you know what model that Coleman is? I'm looking for a propane device that'll cook multiple pots at once. I realized my flaw when I had to start up multiple separate cooking devices to cook anything more interesting than just reheating a Mountain House packet. I was cooking rice on one pot, and cooking chicken adobo on another pot. It is a bit silly to have to have both a charcoal and a propane stove on at same time just because I only have one burner. Although I do love the volcano stove... very efficient, only uses 12 charcoals and stays hot for 2 hours. I need to practice more doing single-pot recipes that can be cooked with just one dutch oven pot on the volcano stove.

Edited to add: Maybe this one? Looks reasonable enough.

http://www.rei.com/product/723280/coleman-2-burner-stove
 
Last edited:
dwarven1 said:
What is this "lighter fluid" you speak of?

Seriously, I never touch the stuff. Don't want my burgers and steaks to taste of half-burned hydrocarbons. Get one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Weber-87886-Chimney-Starter/dp/B00004U9VV

41VYS1070YL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
Click to expand...

I've been meaning to try one of those someday, although it probably wouldn't be compatible with a volcano stove because it has to fit down into the opening in the stove. I don't have a "normal" charcoal grill to try it with.

Another one I recently learned of that looks interesting is this:

http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/emberlit-stoves-are-now-in-the-tsp-gear-shop

which burns wood and is very efficient with fuel. I don't think this one does charcoal though.
 
Prepper said:
One more thing, do you know what model that Coleman is? I'm looking for a propane device that'll cook multiple pots at once.

I need to practice more doing single-pot recipes that can be cooked with just one dutch oven pot on the volcano stove.

Edited to add: Maybe this one? Looks reasonable enough.

http://www.rei.com/product/723280/coleman-2-burner-stove
Click to expand...

Nah, you just need more burners. My Coleman is a 425 and uses Coleman fuel, gasoline, or naptha. That said, rather than a new Chinese Coleman, I'd look for a vintage propane stove. Take a propane cylinder with you to try this one out, guarantee it works -

http://providence.craigslist.org/atq/2661721360.html

Or this one, a Coleman 425 in what looks to be great condition -

http://southcoast.craigslist.org/tls/2609969735.html
 
green_metalflake said:
Nah, you just need more burners.
Click to expand...

That's one way to do it. Thanks for the links; I had not thought of vintage stoves before.

When I initially did this part of the prepping many years ago (10? wow its been a while), I was thinking of being as efficient as possible, so that I could go as long as I could on limited supplies in a post-apocalyptic world. Plus, while camping, I normally planned out the food so it'd only require one fire. But, that prepping didn't account for the need to simply be more comfortable in a not-so-serious emergency like this one. Yes, if the EMP nuke went off, no way would I waste valuable fuel on multiple burners. But in most realistic emergencies, that would be perfectly fine, with little chance of even using up a single 20lb tank of propane during the emergency. So I'm off to find more burners...
 
Prepper said:
Thanks for the links; I had not thought of vintage stoves before.
Click to expand...

That's my first choice. More fun to own and it keeps it out of the landfill. The vintage propane stoves are dead simple. The only thing that can go wrong is the valve or a clog. I had one that was driven over and it still lit perfectly. Liquid fuel stoves are marginally less reliable but not terribly so. Most have the directions on them and even if they don't are dead simple to figure out.
 
It's short notice, and the wrong season, but I hunt coleman equipment at yard sales, both propane and liquid fuel.

Typical price for a lantern: 5-10 bucks. I've got a couple here or there that were not 100%, but then you make a frankenlantern.

Same with the stoves. I've found fewer, but they've always been in decent shape, and worked.

My eBay customers have all been pleased.

Winter project is to get together with the kids, and make 4 lanterns out of six, prefeably with only mantles to be purchased.
 
Ha. When I browse the tag sales and find gear like that, I usually clean it up and give it to the scouts or some boys who can't afford to buy new. I've got everything I need.

What I'm having a hard time finding are the "slip on" mantels. Unlike the 'sock" style that either clip on or tie on, these little mantels are open on both ends and slip over the manifold on small lanterns. I hope Cabela's has them.

Rome
 

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