SHTF lessons from the recent Midwest “Icepacalypse”

I have always tried to be prepared for most things and since 9/11, even more so. I must say this…I have always tried to take some SHTF talk with a grain of salt, as I have a book called, “How you can profit from the coming devaluation” written in 1970 and studied this subject as a hobby for the last 40 years or so. I have seen a lot of cycles and today is no different, however, I will say this time in history has technologies and financial instruments that could cause more problems than ever before. I also believe your mind is a greater asset than having a multi-tool, however going without the basic preparedness tools is not smart. So while I am prepared for most things, I do not live on an Amish farm or have the ability to completely go grid free without any hick ups. We as a country will have up’s and downs and some down’s may be very bad, however, unless we go into WW3 and are taken over, in my opinion, things are not going back to the stone age. If we are invaded, it’s not going to matter how prepared you are, you’d better know how to fight or hide really well. Neither one is going to be fun. So for the “most” part, I am prepared for most bad events and I believe if the world as you know it ends, no matter what you do, it’s not going to go as planned. And I found that out, over the course of the first 4 days of last week.  Power outages due to excessive snow/ice storms and lightning strikes, tornado’s, flash flooding, trains derailing with toxic substances, random crime are the usual suspects of SHTF around here, however luckily, they don’t happen that often. I have been witness to every one of these “events” throughout my life here in Michigan, so none of it was new. What happened this time was different and very eye opening. Even though I know that electricity and gasoline are the life blood of this country, it really didn’t sink in as much as it did during this event. The power outage of last week was one of those events that changed the way I feel. Really…changed the way I feel.

Sunday: About 6:15 AM, my wife wakes me up and says the powers out. I put my clothes on and go out to start up the generator. After the 4 day power outage across the east coast, I purchased a generator and put up a transfer box, so I wouldn’t have to hard wire the generator every time the power went out. Some extra stored gas, flick of a switch, a pull and we are good to go. I’ve used our generator maybe 4 times in the last 10 years; twice in the winter when the power went out for at the most 36 hours. As I was starting the generator, I looked to the north west and saw flashes of orange light. It looked like a gas station was blowing up, however I didn’t hear any sound, just the flashes of light. I thought, “what the ??? is going on” and told my wife to call my daughter and son in law to make sure they were all right. They live in that general direction and I didn’t know if a train derailed over by their house or if a gas station blew up over there. I figured it might be farther away as I heard no sound. I did have the thought cross my mind that a “Red Dawn” event could be happening, but that was just my mind thinking as it does, “think the worse, hope for the best, prepare for whatever you can and find out the truth before making a judgment or going into action”. My wife told me the kids were alright and there was nothing burning over on their side of town. Hearing that news made me feel much better. What I did find out after getting stuff set up and going for a recon walk, was the ice build-up was so great, so fast, that the top of a power pole’s “t” at the top broke off and swung down into a transformer on the other side of the neighborhood causing my “explosions”.

As I stood outside getting my personal power station going, was the symphony of breaking tree branches, which lasted the whole time I was outside. We have a huge number of very old mature trees where I live and I was very careful of where I positioned myself, as I didn’t want to get killed by a falling branch. Some of these tree limbs weighed hundreds of pounds falling 30 to 40 feet. Getting hit in the head was not something I wanted to happen.

After I got everything going, I went for a recon walk, to see what the truth was and how extensive the damage was from just the last 12 hours was surprising. It was a lot worse than I could have thought from an ice storm. We’ve had ice storms before, but this was like an ice storm on steroids. For a perspective, we have about 80 homes in my neighborhood. Three power crews, each with 3 trucks worked for 48 hours straight to get “just” my neighborhood squared away. During my walk, when I was about 100 yards from my home, I started to pick up the tree parts that were blocking the road. One of my neighbors and old coworkers drove up and helped me clear a path. 3 cars drove by, without stopping to help. The neighbor that helped me was doing the same thing I was doing and told me about the transformer blowing up, as it was directly in front of his house. As I walked I saw many power lines that had been downed, ripped off houses and laying in the road. I saw many damaged trees and heard of a friend whose house was badly damaged by a fallen limb. For as many old, huge trees we have around my neighborhood and local area, I was surprised to see as little building damage as I did. I saw some, but nothing like a whole tree coming down on a house, though we did have very large trees that became uprooted. The people that had that happen on their property were very fortunate.

So my wife and I settled in. We were both pretty sick for the first 2 days of the power outage and that made things much more difficult to put up with. Trying to stay ahead of the survival power curve is more difficult when you don’t feel well. The one thing, that I had to do, was to top off gas supplies. I had some gasoline stored; however, I didn’t feel it was going to be enough for the duration of the storm. I heard a report of a week, possibly two. I thought that time frame could be a possibility. I didn’t want to have to “ration” my generator usage to an extreme as the weather got much colder throughout the power outage. When I got to the gas station at around 8 AM, there were some people there, but not many. I was relieved when I saw it was open. I topped off the gas cans I had left and went home. I felt lucky the power wasn’t out everywhere. Every day, I was able to fill the couple of gas cans I had used the day before, to keep topped off, just in case the power went off everywhere. Every time I went to get gas, there was a wait and only about 15 to 20 percent of my local town’s populations power went out, which means about 3,000 people.

Sunday was not completely uneventful after getting the generator going. We conserved electricity and only powered what we needed, but not everything was working. I started a fire in the upstairs fireplace, as I couldn’t get the furnace to kick on, only to have the fireplace spit out smoke. The cold air wouldn’t allow the fireplace to draw all of the smoke. I haven’t had that happen before, so I am not sure what caused that, but it made it so we couldn’t heat by fire. My chimney is clean and should have drawn the smoke, but it didn’t. I also have a fireplace in the basement, however the firebrick started to cave in last fall and I can’t get a mason to come over and fix it. I was going to repair it myself, however, I’ve had to work so much, I haven’t had too many days off where I could start on it. Manly, it’s a cluster and I regret not putting more effort into getting it fixed. I started to get a bit concerned about our heating situation, so I went to Menards to get a couple of radiator heaters. They worked to keep the temp in “some” of the house up, so the pipes wouldn’t freeze. I put one in the bedroom, which kept the temp up to a comfortable level for my sick wife and me. By Sunday night, I had figured out the furnace issue and got it going. So I unplugged the energy hog radiators.

Sunday night about 12 PM, I saw a guy stop his truck in front of the house across the street. He got out and started shining his light around looking for damage. I figured the woman who owned the home asked someone to check on it, as she wasn’t there during this whole time. I got my coat on, had a bright flashlight and phone, and sat out in front of my house ready to call the police if he tried to break in. After looking around the outside and acting kind of strange, he left. Either he saw me watching him or he really was just checking on the property. I figure it was the later, but I had a funny feeling he wasn’t on the up and up. I also figured if I called the police at this time, they wouldn’t come. So all I could really do was to ID the vehicle. I am not going to shoot someone over my neighbors TV and with how I sick felt that night, I wasn’t looking to try to “hold” him for the police if he committed a petty crime. If he had come over on my property to “deal” with me, I was prepared to defend myself. After he left, I topped off the generator and went to bed. Throughout the night, I combat slept. I woke up every hour to check that everything was ok. Needless to say, I didn’t get restful sleep and still felt like crap.  

Monday: At 7 AM, I went to get gas and heard at the gas station about a near fight breaking out at the local Menards when they got an emergency shipment of 150 generators the night before. I heard the police were called and it calmed the situation down. Saw one of my coworkers at the gas station and he said it was “very interesting” to see how people acted Sunday afternoon about 7 hours after the power went out at the Tractor Supply store when they got a truckload of generators. His words were “it was a mad house and I am glad I wasn’t in the middle of it”. From my understanding, the local Menards had another shipment of 200 generators come in on this day at 11 AM and they sold out in about 30 minutes.

At 2 PM on Monday, my generator quit. It looked like it blew a gasket, spit oil all over and I knew I didn’t have time to “fix” it, so I went on a hunt for a new generator or a hotel room. I have slept in 20 below temperatures, but I was not putting us through sleeping in the cold while we were both not feeling well when power was still available. I went to Menards and they told me they were getting another emergency shipment of 200 generators that would come in that night or the next morning. It was a Pulsar 6,000 watt for $741 out the door. Figuring it was smart to “take the chance” and basically, I had no choice, I pre-paid for one and went on the hunt again. Went to a couple of more stores and it was the same story. People were driving more than 2 hours south to buy a generator and that was not guaranteed. So I figured I could drain the water lines and wait it out in a hotel. All the hotels were full within an hour and a half drive. Plus, I had to wait for the “possible” generator to come. I figured worse-case scenario, we sleep in a colder house that night, drain the lines and go find a hotel until the generator came in. That night after waiting for 3 hours at the Menards, we had a new generator at 11 PM. My son in law and I got it put together and running at midnight. We had heat again and I found my house loses about 1 degree per hour in 20 degree weather. The heat was around 58 degrees in the house at midnight. So for the next 24 hours, every 4 hours, I go out and make sure the generator is working and isn’t burning oil to the point, I’d be in trouble again.

Tuesday: Went pretty uneventful and tried to get organized. My son and his fiancé were coming up from Kentucky for Christmas and my wife was dead set on making it as normal as could be. By this time, we were both feeling better and I had more energy to keep an eye on things. My son and future daughter in law stayed with my daughter and her husband, so extra the pressure of having them in the house while on electricity ration wasn’t there. Tuesday night I slept for 6 hours straight and felt like I got some good rest.

Wednesday (Christmas): We went over to my daughters who still had power to have a nice family Christmas, though we were very cramped. But who cares, it’s family and we get along. That afternoon, I changed the oil in the new generator. I asked God that morning for a gift of electricity for my family and I got a really nice Christmas present. The power came back on at about 8 PM. I kept my eye on the trees and the power lines ever since. I can see another go around if we have a big snow storm or ice storm, like they are predicting.

So what did I learn from this and how did it open my eyes a bit? Society is fragile. VERY fragile and there is nothing you can really do about it. All of the “Get Ready” highway signs in the world, or the government creating a website will not get people to prepare for bad times. Even after Hurricane Sandy, etc., they won’t do it. Only a small percentage that actually live like they are back in the 1800’s are going to be able to function in a worse-case scenario of the power going out nationally for a month or longer, however, they may have to deal with looters, etc. And no matter how “prepared” you are, if the case is a long term total power outage, you are probably going to have to fight in order to live. And you are probably going to die, unless you have a small army and become an instant war lord. And what happens after things calm down? Will they? We had most gas stations open. We had a lot of stores still open. Walmart and the local mall went down, but most food stores were open. Over half of the restaurants were still going and were PACKED. I only saw one local hotel that was closed due to the power outage and the rest were PACKED. The hotels that I stopped at were full of people milling around. There is a serious possibility of bad things happening when in a situation like that. If people weren’t able to access money, energy or food, it would get REALLY ugly.

A lot of people just walked away from their homes and apartments without even draining their water lines. People are just plain irresponsible and don’t know how to handle the smallest tasks that use to be common knowledge. Half or more of the people in my neighborhood packed up and left. I was told there were more than a couple of home break-ins during the power outage. I was lucky I could get a new generator after mine took a dump. What if the power went out for an extended time and you couldn’t get repair parts? What if you couldn’t get gas or if you didn’t have access to money? You may have gold silver for SHTF, but any stores that will operate are only going to take cash. Dunham’s sporting goods had the power out, but they were selling things to people who came to the front for cash. You wait outside, tell them what you want, they go get it and you had better have the correct cash amount. Gold is useless in a case like that.

The reality is if it gets bad, people will migrate to where they can live. If they don’t have money, food or hope of help, they get angry and can go to violence. So you had better have it in your plans of being able to bug out to a new location to hold up, not just “your” bug out location. Your bug out location may not be suitable for you to live there. I felt I was pretty prepared before and in for most circumstances, I am. I will be getting a new fireplace insert/wood stove for my basement. This storm made up my mind that I am not just going to fix the fire brick. We need something better to cook on and heat the house if something like this happens again. It’s a good thing I had a secondary or even a third ability to heat my house. Though the last one isn’t ideal and I wasn’t going to use it, as other avenues were available.

So what did I learn? You had better save some serious money and have access to it, just in case you have to take off for a while or you can’t access an ATM or use a charge card. Having a ton of preps and not getting to use them because you have to bug out, doesn’t help if you need cash. If it gets bad enough, bugging out to someplace that is “normal” may be your only recourse. If you live close enough to Canada or another foreign country that may be “normal”, make sure you’re your passport is in order too. You can only “own” what you can personally haul. Having gas for a vehicle may not be an option. You can have all the guns and ammo in the world, but if you can’t carry it and need to leave, it’s becomes a cache that you may never get to use. I will look into powering my house in a different way, other than by a standard generator. This experience showed me how vulnerable they are and I can’t rely on getting gas. And store as much gas as you feel comfortable with and can safely store. If we had a total power outage, I would have been scrambling. I will be looking into powering my generator with propane. We also have a dog, so more prep will be installed for him.

Make sure you have multiple plans for multiple situations. I am going to have a layered plan for each issue from a power outage to economic collapse. In the Military, there is a saying that at first contact even the best laid plans turn to crap. And I will have flexibility within my plans for the unexpected.

This experience showed me how much I want the “American experience” to work. I WANT society to work, so we have modern conveniences, like heating our homes in the dead of winter or getting food without having to live like we are in the 1800’s. I am so grateful we live in a country where people from other states will come in and help in a time of need. We had electrical crews come in from 9 states to help us and it’s the reason I only experienced a minor discomfort. From what I heard on the news, 27 people died in this power outage/ice storm. Imagine if it was worse. Like I said, this was minor to what it could have been. I am going to focus some energy to enlightening people that they realize how grateful they should be we live with the conveniences we have. Having to haul water, start a fire to heat it, heat it, then wash in it, is not as nice as turning on the dial and stepping in the shower. Freedom is worth having to deal with stuff like that, however, we should be making sure our society works while making sure we live up to our Constitutional Rights and ideals.  

What else did I learn? There are about 4 men in my neighborhood I can count on if worse comes to worse and they will step up to be leaders. That happened. Everyone else showed they are sheep. In the worse-case situation, I strongly believe there will be a lot of people dying before it stabilizes.

Hope my long winded experience gave you something to think about. I know I feel differently about where I am at and where I want to focus my energies. Having to set up a new life in a new location or “over the boarder” and the skills I have to make money were never really something I gave great thought about, but now they are totally in the emergency plan.

how much stored up?  how do you rotate it?


brand?  total hours on it?  you did regular preventative maintenance on it?


they had utility power there, or were they on generator?


how much cash did you have on hand at the outset, and would it have been enough if the ATM's weren't working?


ar-jedi

Good report of your circumstances and I'm glad you got thru it OK.

As far as folks being 'prepared', take a look even at this forum.

Look how many folks don't know you can't siphon 'uphill'.

Look how many eyes glaze over when talking about stuff folks should know.

It seems simple minded posts like how many mags do I need for SHTF or .25 vs .45 ACP, get 1000's of reads, and as many comments as folks have assholes...

The more technical topics of how to actually do something that requires ---and develops--- skills and knowledge, proportionally fewer want to put their brain in gear, ask questions, learn, and do.

Look at simple things like running an extra gas line to a heater or genny, etc. Most want to hire someone to do it instead of digging into the subject and doing it themselves. And spinning off and increasing their skills by doing one project after another.

Yet they want fancy backpacks to put their collection of shit in to be 'prepared'.

That's why I call ~50% of preppers, Sheeple Preppers -with guns.

The folks without good [verbal] communication, common sense, some practical knowledge, etc, skills, ---but with gunz, are going to be hammered so far into the ground if the S REALLY HTF it isn't going to be funny.

Thank goodness most of our disasters haven't come close to what they could.

Good writeup, thanks for taking the time to share!


That is different, is it not?


IMO, one of the more important observations in this post. Beyond being sick, which there isn't a lot you can do about, I think there's a pretty strong argument for including "comfort" items in SHTF planning.  Yes, you can live without hot water.  But a whole family going three or four days with no hot showers makes one wonder if it might not just be better to freeze to death.


This happens a few times a year with our wood furnace.  You have to somehow displace the column of cold air that has taken up residence in your flue.  Most of the time I can do this simply by opening the outside door (our furnace is in the basement with an exit to outside) for a minute or two; the cold air coming in the door forces some of the warmer inside air up the flue until convection takes over and it will draw smoke out the chimney.



Indeed.  

I would never use my generator to power my primary heat source. Two failure points in your heating system and both of them gave you issues. Both the furnace and generator failed at one point.

A 23,000 btu kerosene heater and 6 cans of kerosene would be a much better choice. I use kerosene or portable buddy heaters for spot heating. The huge plus is that you don't have to run the genny for more than a few hours in the morning and at night. Less wear and fuel consumption on the genny. Also, converting fuel to electric to heat is extremely wasteful. Especially on the scale you are running.

You were waiting for hours (in a public place) for Menards for hours to bail your butt out with a new generator when they might have had a new dynaglo on the shelf a few dozen yards away. They have kerosene too, although its very expensive, but you didn't plan your heat needs all that well. It was still cheaper than a new generator.

Man, glad you guys made it through ok.  Funny, Mr. Murphy is alive and well.  When does your generator crap the bed?  When you need it most.  Never on a 72 degree spring day during a test run.

I was worried as hell that it would hit us here on the East side of the state, but it petered out before it got here.

We lost power for 5 days in the summer, while the wife was 8+ months pregnant and that was pretty uncomfortable.  I bought a generator as soon as that was over (I borrowed one for the duration) and wired it up, same as you.

Living up here, I've always been concerned with the winter cold.  I bought a Quadrafire NG fireplace insert that can heat the whole house, but I've been thinking of cutting in an outlet on my furnace circuit so I could power the furnace with a battery/inverter over the night and save gas and have some noise discipline.  

It's good you had a gas station open to refuel.  When we got hit last, it was the pole that fed our street, so the station a mile away was fine, but I worry about that too.  

Glad you guys made it ok.

Truth.

Thanks for the report.

We need more "Lessons Learned" reports, IMHO.

Why is there not a sticky?

Seems like it could be very helpful as there are quite a few short term SHTF events every year, where preps and plans collide with reality.

This.

Glad you made it through, but
If I lived up north, heat would probably rank with water as a priority item.

Our house is all electric, so I consider that our biggest weakness.
We keep two generators capable of running our well.
I would not want to rely on a generator for 24/7 power.

For heat, we keep kerosene heaters, Mr. Buddy propane heaters and a wood stove (last choice)

For cooking we have coleman propane, dual fuel and coleman fuel stoves. (and wood grill)

For light, we have battery operated lanterns and flashlights, rechargeable batteries, solar charging station, coleman lanterns, kerosene and oil lanterns, candles (last choice)

"If I lived up north, heat would probably rank with water as a priority item."


Absolutely!

Heat in the very short term is even more of a priority than water in the winter at our bol.

Getting cold quickly affects mental ability to problem solve.

Thanks for the thread. Some good info there.
I plan to restore my wood fireplace by ripping out the current gas system.
We had our furnace fail one week and it was very tough to stay warm so I want a non-gas dependent backup.

i did one last year...
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_17/661411_Sandy____12_days_without_power__what_worked__what_didn_t____.html

ar-jedi

Glad you guys made it through OK, without broken pipes and the like.

You mention you couldn't get your furnace to run.  My older brother in Hastings had the same issue using a generator he got from his father in law.  It would run everything else but furnace would kick on then go off like it had an issue with the flame sensor.  I went over to check on it and the old generator he had was only putting out 104VAC on each leg.  Too low of voltage to run a furnace.  I've heard that generators should be run about every six months and a load put on them to exercise them.  I have a fixed 15KW generator with an automatic transfer switch on natural gas that exercises itself once a week automatically.  Ironically we rarely lose power when everyone else is out.

I live about 20 miles from Hastings and when I got there, WOW!  Lines down and no power, funny how a lot of people fly through intersections without paying attention to the lights out and procedure.  All gas stations seemed to be closed along with all retail and restaurants.  Not a good situation if you were low on groceries or thought "I will just fill up the car tomorrow morning".  I definitaley need to work on my food supply (we have freezers of food which should be OK with the gen. but should have more long term food that doesn't require special sotrage) and a back up fuel supply after seeing this.




4th ID, A1-10CAV.........D1-3ACR; Ft. Carson, CO

If it was me, I would also plan on an additional backup heat source(s).
(Also cooking and light)

Your whole house generator is nice, but you are still relying on a 3rd party for its operation (Gas Co.)

Thanks for the write up. It reminds me I have a lot of stuff to quit procrastinating on. I read somewhere that people were using Amazon prime to ship generators 2nd day or overnight during one of the recent power outages. Something to try if all the stores are out and the roads are passable. I'd consider a kerosene heater for short term backup heat.

There was also a good AAR from the Southeast's tornado swarm a few years ago. It had many contributors and much good information. I wouldn't mind seeing a single, well-organized sticky linking AARs and other important threads. The currently-stickied 'Fuel Can Oracle' and 'Med Pros - Antibiotics?' threads could probably be moved into it, too.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_17/646357__ARCHIVED_THREAD____A_few_things_i_have_learned_so_far_from_the_tornado_disaster_in_Alabama.html&page=1

< /Above my pay grade>

Appreciate you taking the time to write this up.
Good read!

after the multi storm 04/05 hurricane system, the state of Florida mandated that filling stations be wired with transfer switches to allow portable generators to be connected...many have on site generators... similar cooperative agreements with large grocery chains to provide back up power for their walk in coolers and check out lines...something you might consider with your local state representatives and county emergency management supervisors...

I was thinking of yours as the exemplar.

Tagged

Thanks for the thread, it prompted me to go out to start the gen set .

We were fortunate not to lose power in the recent ice storm but many in

the state were not.

We have some sub zero temps coming for the next several days and there

were some line breaks from the last bout with the temps.

The generator is a backup for a heat source. My fireplace downstairs will heat my whole house to 80 degrees within 30 minutes of lighting it. I've timed it. My upstairs fireplace will heat the upstairs pretty well, but it's not as hot as my lower level one. Those are my primaries. My secondary is the furnace via generator.

I thought about a kerosene heater and even looked at them, however they need electricity for the blowers and the smaller ones won't heat like I would need. Plus, kerosene heaters eat oxygen, so you have to keep letting cold air come in. Meaning, they shouldn't be run at night. I get what you are saying, but that wasn't a good option for what I was looking at.

According to the news today, we still have people without power in my local community.

ar-jedi

You store the amount of gas you feel comfortable with, can store safely and within your local laws.

My old generator was a 5500 watt with a briggs engine in it. I started it every 6 months to make sure it worked. Each time I put a new spark plug in and kept an extra one zip tied to the generator. It was 10 years old and I probably had 50 hours total on it. It was in very good shape and shouldn't have crapped out like that. The oil was good and at the right level.  

The local stores still had power from the power company.

As for how much cash to have available, that is also up to you. If you have a family of 10, you'll need to have more cash on hand than a 2 person family. I'd suggest having enough to purchase 2 or 3 tankful's of gas, enough for food/water and a hotel for 3 or 4 days. That way you can get away and be ok until you get your bearings and can make some decisions. Charge cards will still be good, unless we have a total banking collapse. So have enough set a side where it can't be stolen, but you can access it.

Nice write up.

I can definitely relate to a couple of those photos.

Good information! Thanks for posting...

Also makes me happy that we don't get many ice storms down here....

As far as fireplace draw, you gotta get the flue warm.  Cardboard works well for this.  I put it on top of the logs to heat the flue, and under the logs to get them started.  Do not do this if your flue is not clean.  I also crack a window by the fireplace to help with draft.  

The kerosene heaters for inside your home do not use electric at all. Do not ever use a torpedo kerosene heater in your home.

The regular kerosene heaters don't use up anywhere near the oxygen you must believe they do. We run them daily and never have any issues. You can run them all night long with no issues. Just be sure they don't run out of fuel. No open windows are necessary as your house is not nearly tight enough to be totally air tight. I find it funny you worry about a kerosene heater eating up oxygen, but not a big fire in a fireplace?

fireplaces are notoriously inefficient for heating. They should never be a primary means of heat.

A 23,000 btu kerosene heater will heat a fairly large area very well. If you have a large home you would want to bring your mattress into the main living area you are trying to heat and reduce the size of the area you need to maintain warmth in. If you have a big place and you need to heat multiple floors a smaller 9,000 btu kerosene heater will take care of an upstairs pretty nicely. I use an antique perfection heater to warm up our upstairs for a hour every night.

I can see you have a lot to learn about kerosene heaters and what they can do for you and your family. Don't discount them so quickly. They won't fail like your generator and furnace did. Very few moving parts and very reliable heat.

Yup...

Holy cow, do you use an insert or something?

My fireplaces are decorations that we use once in a while to make smores, they suck at actually providing heat.

These kinds of threads are my favorite. Thank you for posting your experience.

Fireplaces are work, most heat goes up the chimney, etc. Put a big fat woodstove in place and you'll get more heat and it will consume less wood. If you can find one of those coal/wood versions you can have a boatload of coal stored & not worry about it getting wet.

-heat water on top
-frying pan

My first reply took a shit so I'll sum it up.

Thermodynamics basics going from fuel to electric to radiation is wasteful. Use genset for essentials but not heat. Get kerosene or propane heaters as going directly from fuel to radiation is much, much more efficient and cheaper. Just requires common sense on ventiliation, insulation, and circulation (get a fan to push heat from ceiling around the rooms.)

Fireplace requires you to heat up the flue to get a draft going. I always used a torch made from newspaper. Remember to have air coming into the room so you get a draft. Start fire and if it's still sketchy, continue to torch the flue as the fire starts going. Once draft is established, you can decide on best way to direct air/heat from there.

If you're going to be outside make note of which trees to fell or trim around your house.

I live in a desert and I still have 50+lbs of propane and 25 gallons of gas. If I were up north, I'd double that. Just my preference.

I had more but I forget.

Just to point out, there are ways to survive without electricity. Might mean body heat, small fires, making massive blanket "forts" or rooms, etc. You have the advantage of at least having a roof over your head to keep the elements out. That will go a LONG way towards pulling through should plans fail. Just need food and water. With snow you got an abundant source of the latter as well.

Try taking a full sheet of newspaper, rolled loosely diagonally.  Light one tip and let it get burning a few inches.  Stuff the burning end up as far as you can into the chimney.  By the time it's burnt down to your hand, the chimney should be drawing.





 

A Pioneer Maid woodstove and a Honda eu3000is are not cheap, they are priceless.

Around here, 23,000 BTUs of continuous heat would drive most folks outdoors in short order...

+1




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I'll add a big +1 for a fireplace insert.  We just lost our heater for the past 4 days.  Its a geo-thermal system and the ground loop line pressure went to zero.  The company got out 4 days later to fix it.  Now mind you it does not get that cold here in Oregon, but I ran the fireplace insert and life went on as normal.  

I have shopped out a PTO generator to run off the back of a 40 horse Kubota tractor.  There is some debate as to if you want your tractor tied up making power.  well, this thread just settled it for me.  I know that Kubota will run at the required RPM to run the generator for the next 5 years if needed.  My plan is to only run it an hour a day for power anyways and I'll bet I could do this for six months if needed.  

Nice write up.  thanks for sharing.  

Great read, thanks op for sharing. I too got caught by the power outage. I always considered myself "prepared" in the sense that I had
the bare minimum to get by. This was my 1st test and here is what I did and what I learned.

Heat: I have a fireplace that remained unused, didn't need it. I have a gas radiant heater in the back family room which heated 1/2 to 3/4 of the house.
I ran a big kerosene heater on the other end of the house as needed. the average temp in the house was between 65 and 70 degrees. used a little less
than 2 gallons of kerosene for 4 days.

Electricity: I have a small generator for running a few things at a time. 3000 watt Craftsman. I ran it whenever the sump pump called for it. I also ran power
to my garage door as it has a battery back up that needed recharging. It was kinda cool being able to use the garage door opener during a black out
my frozen food went into coolers and placed outside. refrigerated food went out to the garage where the average temp is 45.

Water: city water with no interruption. gas water heater so hot showers as normal.

Lights. This was an area for me that needed improvement. We used candles and oil burning lamps.

Lessons learned: lighting seemed to be a big issue. during the day I was busy helping neighbors and generally staying busy. At night we didn't have enough
lighting to do much like play board games or cards so we were pretty danged bored! I also realized that im screwed during any other season for keeping my food.
Think I need a bigger generator.

immediate plans for the future include wiring my breaker box for generator hook up, getting a much bigger generator and hooking it up for tri fuel use.

Yep. Also, relying on a generator for heat typically means that the generator needs to run almost continuously - which increases the chances of it breaking before your power comes back on.

A better strategy is to only run genset only occasionally (for things like recharging phones, laptops and other batteries, keeping the fridge and freezer from thawing, pumping well water, microwaving food, running large power tools, etc.), and live without AC power the rest of the time - Makes both your generator its fuel supply last a lot longer.

re; boredom.... the addition of a digital 12v portable TV might be an option... I live in an area with excellent Doppler radar coverage north of the Tampa Bay area....we get some smaller tornadoes and water spouts off the trailing edge of cold fronts, and tropical storm squall bands... it's nice to actually see the "hooks" when the weather alert radio goes off...if your cable is still up, a section of additional cable and a double ended female coupler will tie you into your regular programming and get the smaller screen close to you... a rabbit ear will pick up a few of the stronger stations... my portable trolling motor was intended for use with the TV and 12v fans

I worked in a hardware store during an ice storm many years ago, I was amazed how crazy people would get when you told them the generators/batteries/flashlights were sold out.
Kerosene heaters were bought in by customers DEMANDING that we fix theirs right now, even thought there was a pile of other customer's kerosene heaters at the service desk.
I don't think the owners left the store for 3 or 4 days.  Some of the shop guys worked 18 hour days.

I also couldn't believe how many people DEMANDED to return their generators after the power came back on.
In general, people are stupid and a-holes

Yep! I knew we kept you around for some reason!

You really don't need a bigger generator for most home comforts. I have a 220v capable 3500 watt Champion that does great as long as I don't run the dryer or dish washer. I kill all the loads I don't need so they are not accidentally turned on. No need to waste huge amounts of fuel on a big generator.

Yep and they vote the same way.

whoops, hit reply instead of quote.

I suspect I won't be getting a much bigger one as I am learning quickly that I don't need it for what I want to be able to run. My current one
is old and has given me many years and many hours of service and is probably ready to be retired. It also has no means for me to be able
to hook it up to the house. If i'm not mistaken, I need a 220v outlet to do that and my current one doesn't have one.

If you want to run anything 220v then yes, you'll need a 220 outlet on the generator.  You can provide 2 110v supplies via 2 suicide cords, but that doesn't give you 220 since it's not in phase.

Not recommending the suicide cords, but I'm just saying it depends on what you want to do.

I have a 7500 watt with the 220 inlet on the house, but in want to be able to turn over the pool pump incase of another summer outage.  

I've never had too run the furnace in a winter outage, but I'm 100% OK with doing that durning the day.  It's a gas furnace and the electrical is just for the blower motor.  The fireplace insert is for night and when the gen is off.  It's a good one with a thermostat and a battery backup.

The small UPS that folks use under desks and such work well with a large/bigger battery to power 120Volt things like Direct Box/LED TV. I am going to do a run time test on a 18/26/trolling motor battery one day. I have two Samlex 3 bank chargers and a Iota somewhere to charge 12VDC batteries while Genny is running and the EU has 12V out as well.

I have 2 tower K1 heaters, 4-5 Mr buddy type and 2 Coleman catalytic heaters, gas logs,etc for heat. I keep 4-5 full grill tanks. I keep a window AC unit for summer outages.

LED rope lights,lantern's, Christmas lights are low wattage. Looking in to cheap LED 12V stuff now. Nice to see lessons learned and ideas being shared.

Thanks for the AAR.   Thankfully, we didn't lose power.  But many folks around here were without power for up to 10 days.  Being a minimalist (i.e., cheapskate), I have only a small generator that puts out 120V and a single circuit transfer switch that can operate only the furnace.  I plan on using extension cords for cycling refrigerators and minimal lighting.
 
My backup plan is to use a 23,000 btu kerosene heater in the basement with a window cracked.  The basement is warmer than the upstairs floors in the winter and has a drop ceiling, which is handy because the drop ceiling panels can be thrown out and replaced if they get smelly with kerosene exhaust.

If the newspaper trick doesn't work, a propane torch warms up the flue pretty quick.

I have a 2 element Mr. Heater propane heater . It uses 20 pound bottles of propane and no electricity . It is an older version of the MH-30t   8-28,000 btu's