Posted: 10/19/2008 6:01:17 AM EDT
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I've sort of decided that I want to start to stockpile food/water in the case of SHTF. I've got a little supply of canned goods going, about 1mo worth. I'm looking to be able to have enough supplies to take care of 2 Adults and 1 Child for 1 year if possible. Thankfully I do have a sams club close to where I live , so buying in bulk isn't going to be much of a problem. However, I do need to learn as to how to preserve the food for extended periods of time. At the time being I'm unsure how to keep the food for over 4-6 mo. From my understanding I could buy oxygen asorbers and then store the supplies in 5gal sealed buckets. This might work, but I'm looking at around 100lb or rice/beans and then 50lb of flour/sugar , 25lb of salt. That's alot of buckets. I would also LIKE to have a small supply of water, but do not know the issues associated with keeping water onhand. I also do not know how to store the water outside of 5gal containers that I have found (Ones similar to water cooler bottles, but are threaded for caps). I do have access to a well and have been thinking about building a marine battery backup system for the well to be able to power the well for atleast a little while, once the batteries were dead, i'd be in a bit of trouble BUT I know I can build a wind powered recharging system from scavanged car alternators and such. Any help/reading material would be appreciated. |
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couple of websites to check out. be prepared food storage starter kits these have some great ways to get supplies I use both.. I think at this point I have 2 years of food but I lack the other stuff like water and toiletries , hygene stuff If nothing else get the literature it will show you how to rotate your food storage and what to get and best how to use it. This was key for me I thought I need more of what I had but in reality I need diferent stuff |
| Could you hook up a solar charger to the well pump? If you want to store longterm w\o having to rotate, you're going to have go the 20 year shelf life stuff. Most canned foods can go 5yrs if kept in an indoor pantry and you can rotate it into your daily use quite easily. |
100lbs of rice or beans - 3.5 buckets at 5 gallons per bucket. 50lbs flour/sugar- 1 bucket each ( 2) 25lbs salt- 1/2 a 5 gallon bucket. so you have maybe 6 buckets total, not very much  if you get rice and beans( and not just rice) you may need 6 buckets just forthat either way it isnt many . 4/5 ft long, by 3 ft high will be 10-12 buckets stacked. inside of a small closet |
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back in the early 80s a secretary at the company i worked for and her husband decided the world was coming to an end or something, and went out and bought a garage full of freeze dried food on their credit cards. for all i know they may still have it because they tried some of what they bought and didn't like it very much. some supposed deal they got from one of the many charlatans operating at the time. i would urge that you eat what you store and store what you eat. and keep in mind that many things that are easy to come by these days may be a lot harder to come by when there is a crisis. you might want to set aside a bucket for things like spices, toothpaste, OTC drugs and antiperspirant (just for a few examples). buy what you normally use and put it in the bucket, and pull out the oldest when you need something. don't go overboard because these kind of things have a finite life. i used to buy TP by the case because it was much cheaper that way, so often had 6 months supply on hand. these days the price of a case is not especially attractive. but when you have to spend 2 weeks in the house because of an ice storm and there is no TP left, you will appreciate having some. |
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For instance........ Standard deep well submersible pump system - 240v @ 8a 1 12v 62AH marine battery (Under $100 in many places) If i'm doing the math right, the pump takes approximately 1920 watts to power, and the battery has right around 744 watt hours on it. With a invertor and proper power supplies, a full battery charge would last about 23 minutes, and at 12gpm flow from the pump, that would equal 279 gallons of water. Also, what is the lifespan on things like : Spices Toothpaste Purfume Antipersperant Cigarettes Booze (I'm almost certian I know the answer to this) All the stuff I've stockpiled so far would be rotated with ease, as we do eat ALOT of rice and are really starting to eat beans alot. |
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+1 The buckets are convienent, however, if you have room and don't need to move your stores around much, you also have the option of storing all of that in one 55 gal open head drum(steel or plastic depending on threat of critters) these can be found locally for around 15 bucks(i get mine off of craigs list). A years worth of food will take up alot of room. |
You are sort of doing the math right but there are a couple of things you are missing. AH ratings are typically specified at a certain rate of discharge (I think it is 20 hours) so the AH rating of the battery you are talking about is really only applicable at something like 3A, or only about 36 Watts). If the inverter was 100% efficient, 1920 Watts would be 160A out of the battery. A 62 AH battery will not sustain that load for anything even remotely like 23 minutes.
Mostly indefinite, although spices will lose flavor. toothpaste and antiperspirant will eventually dry up, and cigarettes will dry out. Booze (the hard stuff anyway) can last a very long time, but the taste can go downhill. I have spices that are as much as 5 years old in the cabinet in the original packages I still use sometimes. Not as good as they used to be, but not unusable, yet. packaging and proper storage can reduce these effects and lengthen the time they are usable, even if not ideal. |