The good thing about planned outages is the opportunity to plan. Disaster relief is pretty good tactically. Strategically there are resource limits. Politics play a role as well, which is unfortunate.
In your current circumstance you are mostly reacting. There isn’t much planning time. Looking forward, I’m a big fan of Sceptre for water and fuel jugs. US EPA fuel nozzles are a nightmare - get the old fashioned ones. They are better for you and better for the environment. You need potable water as well as water to flush toilets. If it rains collect water.
Gas, particularly LPG, is your friend. LPG includes propane and butane and those labels don’t make any difference.
If you buy a generator ethanol is not your friend. It’s a horror. During events run what you can get. Afterward run a tank of ethanol free gas through and blow everything dry with compressed air. “Everything” includes carb jets. Clean out the bowl and inspect the float. Ethanol is horrible for small engines.
If you’re even moderately prepared cooking is really the least of your problems.
“If you’re even moderately prepared cooking is really the least of your problems.”
Agreed. I fell quite fortunate, for a lot of reasons.
Flushing?
If it’s yellow, let it mellow! I have to remind myself to flush when I travel.
But seriously; Is that just us?
1 Like
meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
104
I don’t live in drought prone areas but have practiced this for decades. Water is precious and flushing uses quite a bit of clean water. I do modify my habits when visiting others, using public facilities or when others are visiting me unless I know they have a similar life style. All of my closest friends do this, probably 60% of the next tier. My family thinks I’m nuts.
Water awareness is essential when you live full-time in an rv, which I did in the late '80s to mid '90s. Unless the water was for drinking or cooking it got used several times. Soapy water from dishes became water for flushing. Rinse water from dishes was heated to wash the next load. Hand washing water was captured for flushing.
My home office is in our basement. I usually pee on a tree outside the back door. We have a big frog who lives in the sump outside the door so our euphemism for my practice is that I’m “talking to froggie.”
I admit that I don’t adhere to this practice more out of habit now, but I am laid back about an accidental no-flush (I have a friend who would freak out). I do love those toilets in Japan where the top of the toilet is a small faucet designed for your hand-wash after you do your business. Any soapy water then fills your toilet tank for the next flush. Such a smart idea. Why do we not have these here in the US?!
You can buy retrofit kits that replace the lid of your toilet tank and replace it with a sink. They range in price from $50-200. SinkPositive is one brand that I’ve seen in person.
We have a couple of propane stoves that we use for camping/ racing weekends and I keep a few extra cans of propane around in case of power outages. This past weekend was a racing weekend for us and we returned home to super high winds (we are not in an area that gets outages… despite 2 fires in our area right now…) so I haven’t put them away yet just in case. They’re handy for cooking side dishes outside when grilling, too.
This isn’t the exact one we have but you get the idea.
I hope you turned off your water heater. Few water heaters are designed to work without power ( anymore ), and you don’t want to be in a situation where the pilot isn’t lit and thus spilling gas everywhere. I didn’t see many people saying this, but generally when the power is out for an extended time you should shut off your gas, because of the pilot lights that might work for a while, might blow out, then can’t restart.
Those little tabletop grills are cool, but did you see that train in pakistan that blew up? I think it was a poorly manufactured propane grill. The good news is certainly that they cost only a few bucks and are “disposable” and you can keep an eye on it. Most people have some kind of camp stove ( I love my jetboil, I think we have a coleman that uses little propane tanks ).
Most people have an outside gas grill and don’t think about how you can cook anything on it. It’s just heat. You can put a frying pan on it. I make all my hotsauce out doors now on my grill ( not grilling, just using it as a cook surface ) after an unfortunate incident.
I don’t have advice about what to cook. If we lost power at my house ( unlikely, we’re way down in the flats ) I’d be hooking my small generator up to the freezer and running it a few hours a day, which then means I’m not terribly limited in needing to use things from the fridge and freezer. An interesting point to note is a more-full fridge is considered more energy efficient because it spills out less cold air when you open the door.
When your power outage is due to fires and/or high winds (as is the OP’s,) grilling outside is not an option and your neighbors would probably draw and quarter you for creating another hazzard!
What’s the seasoning on the ribs? I was thinking that you maybe can do a quick salvage and turn it into Chinese steamed spare ribs, like at dim sum. Normally steam spareribs are small, bite size spare ribs, but I can’t think of a reason why you can’t keep these in larger chunks. Just not so chopstick friendly.
How has the lithium battery power pack worked for you? Have you found a way to charge it back up again? Any predictions on when you’ll get power back?
Remember that even if your utility water comes from water towers (no pumps to maintain pressure) electricity is necessary for the local utility to pump water back into the towers. You can certainly flush toilets with water from your pool, but drinking water (1 gal/person/day minimum) deserves some thought. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer. I worry about things. The good news is that I’m seldom disappointed. grin
The ribs look good. Sorry about the salmon. Did it smell off or did you declare it lost out of an abundance of caution?
Thanks for keeping us in the loop. My sister is the religious one in the family. The single candle I have lit for you is in the spirit of Tibetan Buddhists everywhere.
Thanks for checking in neighbors! I did not toss the salmon…yet. Husband had some for lunch, then I put it in the freezer, which was not freezer temp, but quite cool. I ate some of the steamed ribs , which have a BBQ rub on them.
Power was supposed to come on a six, and when it didn’t, I had a tantrum,and weekend a hotel room. By that time only our smallest generators/batteries were working. Before the fire, they were great. We could charge them with solar panels and that kept the fridge, TV, and router going. After the fire the watts from solar panel charged very slowly.
Anyway, shortly after we got to the nearby hotel the power came back on, we went back home. We knew because husband was able to do open the garage door remote, and t o open the garage remotely. The garage door opener has aback up battery that had also died.
And I’m back to figuring out what to do with my fridge contents. I would say the fridge was without power for 36 hours.
I HAVE heard it’s good for compost.
