Unseasonable Cold

[rvm45]

Friends,

I was discussing the recent weather crisis in Texas, with some friends and I had some thoughts.

Everyone would like to have a nice retreat—either to live at or at least available to move to during a crisis. The sad fact is, that most of us cannot afford a retreat. In fact, many of us may even be living in apartments. Even if not in an apartment, you may be hemmed in by zoning and other regulations on all sides.

What could apartment-dwelling people have done to be better prepared for the crisis in Texas?

Yeah, without a crystal ball that will tell them exactly what crisis they're about to face?

Well, food and water in reasonable quantities are always a good thing to have on hand. Even if you're freezing your nads off, at least you won't have to waste any effort worrying where your next meal is coming from.

Plenty of wool blankets, quilts and comforts is always a good thing.

How about warm clothing and boots that you can walk long distances in?

Yeah, I DON'T CARE if you live in Florida or Texas. Unseasonable Cold may come. Also, what if circumstances force you to evacuate further North?

But what if some sort of long-term cold wave hit? Read about "The Year Without a Summer"—that was back in the Early 1800's. I've also read that in Medieval Europe that there were 3-consecutive years without Summer.

(Both of these were caused by ash thrown into the atmosphere by BIG-ASS VOLCANO ERUPTIONS…)

So, if you really want to be prepared while living in your little apartment, you should probably have one of those little $300 Woodstoves and enough Chimney material to replace the chimney at least once.

Yeah, so your landlord would have a conniption if you installed a Woodstove? Dudes, if there is a "Year Without Summer", your landlord will probably be eaten by Cannibal Vegans. The Laws will be battling hoards of Radically Pacifist Zombies and no one will give a rat's ass if you install a small Woodstove. No one will have the time or energy to care.

The only thing that will prevent you from running a stovepipe out a window and burning wood, will be the lack of wood OR the lack of a stove.

Use your head. If it is 20-below-zero and you're heating your house with wood—you can pile the whole damned family into one small room—preferably one with only one window.

Hey hey—you want to do a workmanlike job of running the stovepipe out the window. Better have glass-cutter, putty, plywood, laun, Good Stuff, etcetera on hand to make a nice neat exit wound.

Yeah yeah—One of those light-duty camp stoves may only last for a year or two, if it is in daily use. You can probably afford to store TWO if you're OCD—but if things go on for over a year, someone will be welding boilerplate Woodstoves for sale or barter.

What is that other good thing that you will need?

FUEL!

IF you are going to all the trouble to stock a Woodstove and sundries, you should have scouted your immediate neighborhood quite thoroughly for possible sources of wood when TSHTF .

Who saw "Doctor Zhivago"? It was a boring movie and I don't even remember the plot. I do remember the Bolshevik Guards summarily executing people for scavenging firewood.

IT COULD HAPPEN HERE!

Be prepared to harvest your wood quietly and surreptitiously AT NIGHT.

Never mind the Laws. Someone may want to knock you in the head for your firewood—or saws. Maybe they're even Cannibal Vegans. Best have one cut wood while another stands guard.

Since MOST people won't have Woodstoves, the competition for wood may not be as intense as it otherwise might be.

NOTE: ONE STANDS WATCH

With What!?! Obviously, there is very little utility to storing and planning ahead, if you can't protect your belongings.

People will see the smoke coming out of your little chimney…

Sooner or later, everything comes around to Guns…


…..RVM45

[papaof2]

For a while, I had a source of fresh, clean small wood - the cutoffs from a woodshop - mostly oak. They also installed hardwood flooring - the real stuff that was stained after installation - and I still have a 30 gallon plastic garbage can with a foot or so depth of those cutoffs. It's all about how good you are as a scrounger ;-)

A small wood stove can be built from a 20lb propane tank - there's even a design that requires zero welding (check Youtube). Most of the designs suffer from the lack of a grate and would burn through the bottom of the tank in a few years. Simple enough to put firebrick in the bottom or add a grate (a two-piece grate, to fit through the loading door) to extend the life of the stove.

[willc453]

Ebay has a small wood stove that some use in their BIG tents. It's got a flat surface so you can cook something on it and there's a rack on each side of it, so you could hang up gloves, etc. The other option (Ebay again) is a kit which converts a 50 gallon oil drum into a wood stove, but ya gotta buy the pipe. There's even a double stacked version. As far as wood goes, why not pallets and buy a pallet spreader which is designed to lift boards on a pallet. There's even a electric hammer designed to save you time (and muscles) in knocking the nails out of the wood. But why not have a Coleman stove that uses gas or propane whether they're the small or taller bottles? I prefer gas as I have 5 gallon gas cans stashed. There's an adapter so you can used a 5 gallon propane tank on a propane stove that's set up for the small bottles and not only that, you can refill those small bottles from a 5 gallon tank. Videos of this are on Youtube. Water? Brother drank a lot of 2 liter soda pop, so I just washed 'em out and refilled them with tap water. And NEVER had any trouble with algae growing in them. Added a couple of cases of individual water bottles. Brother was in a panic one time because he had no water. Asked him if he'd paid the water bill and of course he had. I said, well, it looks like you're screwed be I HAVE 100+ gallons of water stored in the shed in the backyard. Thing is, when I said I HAVE water, he gave me such a dumbfounded look, at which time I told him the water company had stopped by earlier to tell me they were going to be working on the water main for a few hours, so we'd have no water for a little while.

[papaof2]

We've had one "announced" water outage when the County got to us on their scheduled water main replacement program (about every 40-45 years; all these plans are on the County web site). They sent out notices about two weeks in advance, then went door-to-door the day before. We've had one "Boil water" order when the system lost pressure a couple of years ago. The unannounced outage was when a guy on a backhoe missed the sewer line he was hired to dig up and got the water main instead - I noticed "glug glug glug" coming from the laundry room and quickly determined it was backflow on the water line. I turned off the inside shutoff, got out some water, and told my better half; nothing else we could do until the repair was finished - then we ran all the faucets and an empty load through the washer to clear the debris from the lines having had reverse flow.

We keep 20 gallons of "convenient" water in 5 gallon containers with faucet/spigot. There are a few frozen gallons in the freezer to maintain its temperature longer when power goes off. I can drain the hot water heater for xx gallons more and all the piping in the house for even more gallons. Then there's the 250 gallons of rainwater for outside watering - and I do have good filters for that.

[rvm45]

Friend,

When I worked as Meat Inspector in the slaughterhouses, all of the water outlets were required to have "Anti-Back-Siphonage Devices" to prevent contaminated water from flowing backward into the water lines.

I have NO IDEA what one of these devices costs.

However, A dedicated Survivalist might consider installing one on his water main. It wouldn't be a happy-making thing to have sewage back into your water lines—this spoiling your 50-gallons of water stored in your hot water tank…

O, wait…

While an anti-back siphoning device MIGHT have some utility…

Your water was contaminated BEFORE it got to your house. It was THE WATER COMPANY that sorely needed anti-back-siphonage devices….


…..RVM45

[papaof2]

The County water system installed anti-backflow devices when they installed the "smart" meters. When they do that, every water heater needs an expansion tank so the expansion as water heats has a place to go - other than raising the pressure in the house's water lines to the bursting/leaking point. I'm sure all the plumbing companies were happy about that.

The water system probably needs an anti-backflow device at every neighborhood shutoff. That would greatly limit the area of contamination when they do have a pressure loss event.