Practice

[OtterbatHellcat]

Decided to take today and do a dry run of utilizing what I have on hand when the power goes out for an extended period of time. Yes I'm on my laptop typing this, not the point right now.

Maybe folks are better organized than I am, but I thought I had stuff pretty well set up. Wrong.

Since it got dark, I've been operating on candles and oil lamps. When I went to look for something I needed, I used an oil lamp...they suck to really see anything. Under the crawl space trying to find the little sterno cooking furnace thing, no luck. Did eventually find it in another room, all with a shitty oil lamp output. (Seriously, you should try this)

Found out that the Sterno Safe Heat 2 product when used under the cooking apparatus only lasted about 30 minutes. Not enough time to prepare the freeze dried meal that was split in half due to using travel cooking gear size restrictions. Irritated with that, I started another can of Sterno 2 sitting on the stove and it's been burning for one hour and forty minutes at this time, of an advertised two hour burn time. No idea why the other can burnt out in 30 minutes under the travel cooking set I have.

I'm not a Wise Foods rep, but the couple of times I've eaten it......the stuff ain't bad at all.

[Great-Kazoo]

1st item is a dual fuel generator


#2: Do you have a gas or electric stove or water heater?. If gas you don't need electricty to operate them

3: power goes out (for us) we go to already cooked and vacuum sealed frozen items.

4: You might consider replacing the sterno and oil lamps in favor of battery and or solar LED lights. Not do away with, but as a secondary / plan B use. Those cheap lawn solar lights make great in home emergency lights.

4: take those empty water bottles,fillthem 3/4fullthen freeze. They are great for keeping pershibles cold, then use for drinking.

There's more you can do, already discussed in past threads.

[OtterbatHellcat]

There's more you can do, already discussed in past threads.

Yes, I should scroll further back than I did. I know you guys have more than likely covered most of this stuff.....it's just that today I wanted to force myself into using the stuff I have on hand right now. The cooking thing was sterno because I wanted to use the travel gear, I have other methods of heating and cooking if I was confined in the house. Sucked that the packaging was more plentiful than the gear could cook at one time. That was more of an "out on the road" test drive with that....I.E. get home bag or bug out bag.

I'm going to do this more often though because I need to have it down, and know what it is that works good. I can live without a lot, but I don't want to miss out on stuff that I can have when everything goes shitty.

[OtterbatHellcat]

Try refilling an oil lamp........using candle light. That's effed up.

[brutal]

Glad I have the camper parked next to the house.

I try to keep plenty of propane on hand with not only what's in the RV, but a couple spare bottles for the grill.
I also have a dual fuel coleman stove if needed and both white gas and unleaded on hand.
If I had to pick the top thing I'm lacking, I really don't have enough gasoline to run the genset for an extended period unless I siphoned the car which I tend to always try to keep at least 1/2 full.

I also don't have the house setup to tap from the genset so I'd have to rig power to the furnace if needed.

[ray1970]

Try refilling an oil lamp........using candle light. That's effed up.

Sounds dangerous too.

[OtterbatHellcat]

Sounds dangerous too.

I know. I did do it at the kitchen sink, but 1 candle power output really does suck. I had other oil lamps ready to go but I wanted to do it.

[hurley842002]

My wife has enough candles to likely provide light to the whole forum, but I've got a couple LED lanterns that work quite well and last a long time, those are what I prefer, but having the candles as backup is comforting.

[OtterbatHellcat]

Glad I have the camper parked next to the house.

I try to keep plenty of propane on hand with not only what's in the RV, but a couple spare bottles for the grill.
I also have a dual fuel coleman stove if needed and both white gas and unleaded on hand.
If I had to pick the top thing I'm lacking, I really don't have enough gasoline to run the genset for an extended period unless I siphoned the car which I tend to always try to keep at least 1/2 full.

I also don't have the house setup to tap from the genset so I'd have to rig power to the furnace if needed.

I've got a metric shit ton of propane on hand, I know that the fire department wouldn't be happy if they knew about it. Just the prep shit I have under the stairwell storage area would probably blow this house all over the neighborhood.

Gasoline is a big deal to have, I've thought about having a few 55 gallon drums on hand. Yeah you're going to have to use it and refresh it, but that's not hard to do. Sucks there's some stuff I can't (shouldn't) do now because I'll be moving. When I do get where I'm going, I'll have a lot of gasoline and water in storage for sure....solid plans for that.

[hurley842002]

Sucks there's some stuff I can't (shouldn't) do now because I'll be moving. When I do get where I'm going, I'll have a lot of gasoline and water in storage for sure....solid plans for that.

Where are you moving to OBC?