Wind Storm 11-17-15

  Some of my friends have expressed concerns over the windstorm we recently had so I thought I'd write about it for everyone.



  We had significant wind.  It blew about 45 mph with 70 mph gust in our area.  Many lost power, though the town of Priest River, ID did not.  Much to my amusement, several contacted me to see if we had lost power.  We are off grid, so had someone not told us of the widespread power outages we would not have known.  The most significant loss we experienced is that the wind blew the storage building door open and two goats seized the opportunity to escape and get inside to the feed.

  I recently took down a few dead trees around the place so they wouldn't fall on any buildings in a storm just like this one.

  While I found it amusing that some would think I had lost power, I was not amused at the devastation caused by the storm and the many that suffered as a result of it.  I hope that this was a wake up call for many to prepare in the event of a disruption of services that so many have become accustomed to.  There are many things that can cause disruptions and it is good to prepare.

  Our life we live has built in resiliency to events just such as this.  We have a 275 gallon water tank that we fill that we draw water from for the house.  We have running water:  Can someone run out and get some water? :)  There is no running water in the house.  We also have an outhouse, so no worrying about toting water to flush a toilet. Our lights are LED for very low amp draw, our refrigerator is a freezer with a thermostat to turn it into a refrigerator for much less electrical usage, and we use laptops and cell phones which can be charged from batteries.  Our electrical system consist of a few solar panels, 4 L-16 batteries, and a 700 watt inverter.

  We buy our food in bulk, so if the grocery store runs out in the event of a disaster we may not have fresh milk but we can certainly get by for a while.  That has had a side benefit of saving a lot of money on groceries!  My wife fixes a variety of meals from scratch.  No microwave or other short cuts.

  Our heat is propane that requires no electricity.  (Some propane heaters DO require electricity, but we have the radiant heaters which work quite well.)  We also have a heater below the valve on our water tank in the event we get below freezing for a few weeks at a time.  Otherwise the temperature of the water drops slowly in the insulated closure.

  In an extended emergency, we would put our cold food down in the ground to keep it cool but above freezing.  In the summer I'd drop it in a basket down the well which stays around 42 degrees year round.  Speaking of the well, our well has a 12V Simple Pump that can be converted to hand pump in about 10 minutes.  If the seals failed, we can drop a bucket down the shaft.

  I still want to build a root cellar and install wood heat, but all things in due time.  I've been collecting the materials to build a rocket mass heater which I consider to be THE most efficient wood heater out there.