BrianK Posted yesterday at 02:44 PM Author Report Share Posted yesterday at 02:44 PM (edited) 2 hours ago, Magwa said: well the lights are back on just short of 7 days .... man depends on electricity like our ancestors depended on Fire! Correct. Most homes are dependent on it, not all but most. Being w/o power is the pits. Glad to hear you got power back. We're rural and my plan after we first moved to rural Maine was to revert back to pre-REA days. Kerosene figured prominently in those plans. That plan worked fine for short outages which we had a lot of. Then we had an ice storm that put 4-5" of ice on everything. Trees came down and power lines couldn't take the weight. So out came our kerosene appliances to supply our light, heat, and cooking needs, to include melting ice for the toilet, washing, and after filtering, drinking*. What worked for short outages then showed the flaw. Pre-REA days had homes that weren't as tight as todays homes. Burning hydrocarbons produces water which started to condense on the cold walls. We were screwed. Store shelves were empty and the area was devastated. We know because we had to go out to see what was going on. Most folks couldn't move but our 4x4 made it through and around the downed trees. We were w/o power for 5 days and only got it back that soon because we're on a trunk line. It was that ice storm that caused me to rethink things. I put in a solar (PV) system with battery back-up. Now if the power goes out I can furnish power in seconds from the massive 24v batteries. Typically the solar part is useless in a storm 'cause of the clouds, but if the clouds clear out our smallish system will power the house if we're careful in consumption. But I also put in a welder/generator and that can easily handle larger loads and recharge the batteries. Sort of like the way a WW2 diesel/battery submarine worked. I also had built an addition specifically for a wood stove. We have a lifetime supply of wood. * W/o power our well pump doesn't work. And since it wasn't TEOTWAKI I wasn't going to remove the pump and 100' of piping to use the well casing "bucket". But our weather, the reason I came here... We're back in the deep freeze and snow is expected over the next 36 hours. When I woke up it was 18* and that was actually warmer than yesterday this time. 3 more months of this. Edited yesterday at 02:47 PM by BrianK added the weather report Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shooterrex Posted yesterday at 04:27 PM Report Share Posted yesterday at 04:27 PM 60 deg today. Warmer the next 2 then back to winter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
98Z5V Posted 17 hours ago Report Share Posted 17 hours ago 15 hours ago, Magwa said: well the lights are back on just short of 7 days .... man depends on electricity like our ancestors depended on Fire! I know for a fact that you are quite well-versed on basing things on fire - so I never had any concerns at all about how you were gonna come out of this, brother... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magwa Posted 5 hours ago Report Share Posted 5 hours ago 23 hours ago, BrianK said: Correct. Most homes are dependent on it, not all but most. Being w/o power is the pits. Glad to hear you got power back. We're rural and my plan after we first moved to rural Maine was to revert back to pre-REA days. Kerosene figured prominently in those plans. That plan worked fine for short outages which we had a lot of. Then we had an ice storm that put 4-5" of ice on everything. Trees came down and power lines couldn't take the weight. So out came our kerosene appliances to supply our light, heat, and cooking needs, to include melting ice for the toilet, washing, and after filtering, drinking*. What worked for short outages then showed the flaw. Pre-REA days had homes that weren't as tight as todays homes. Burning hydrocarbons produces water which started to condense on the cold walls. We were screwed. Store shelves were empty and the area was devastated. We know because we had to go out to see what was going on. Most folks couldn't move but our 4x4 made it through and around the downed trees. We were w/o power for 5 days and only got it back that soon because we're on a trunk line. It was that ice storm that caused me to rethink things. I put in a solar (PV) system with battery back-up. Now if the power goes out I can furnish power in seconds from the massive 24v batteries. Typically the solar part is useless in a storm 'cause of the clouds, but if the clouds clear out our smallish system will power the house if we're careful in consumption. But I also put in a welder/generator and that can easily handle larger loads and recharge the batteries. Sort of like the way a WW2 diesel/battery submarine worked. I also had built an addition specifically for a wood stove. We have a lifetime supply of wood. * W/o power our well pump doesn't work. And since it wasn't TEOTWAKI I wasn't going to remove the pump and 100' of piping to use the well casing "bucket". But our weather, the reason I came here... We're back in the deep freeze and snow is expected over the next 36 hours. When I woke up it was 18* and that was actually warmer than yesterday this time. 3 more months of this. Yes I like the Idea of solar just not all the batteries... but we have a wood stove in our kitchen and it will heat the house to around 64 to 67 not really warm but plenty warm if you put on a sweatshirt and use a blanket , water is not a problem i use a gas gen to fire up the well and pump plastic food grade barrels full we keep 100 gallons will last a week even flushing the toilet. if it is yellow let it mellow and if it is brown flush it down so we do not flush every time. if SHTF we have a stainless casing bucket to use by hand just remove pump which we can pull by hand. So heat to cook on and water are the basics we use candle lanterns and bees wax candles, did not really even miss the Tv but we have a 2000 watt lionenergy motorless generator that we charge when the well is running and we have solar panels for it it will run a 4 watt led for 99 hours and we charge our phones and my hearing aids and we have a ham radio it will power as well. it never gets below 80 percent... so power is a habit not really a necessity but we too love it when it is on and we use it like sugar it is addictive.... but with a bit of effort i believe we could convert back to not needing it if we had to would be hard but oh well so is life.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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