Grid Down Realities

In a grid down situation you are entering the unknown as the Government say prepare for three days but we all know there will be a run on everything and nothing will be back to normal in three days and there is a likelihood that in three days rampant looting will have started by desperate people and possibly the military will be deployed and they will possibly become targets for their weapons by certain people.
It is this unknown which becomes the problem by virtue of it being unknown and while the Government “suggest” it will only be three days, we all know it will be much longer as if electricity goes down you don’t just switch it all back on again as many systems have to be bought back online in a pre determined manner and to specific requirements and a sewage filled street won’t be cleaned up and the backlog of filled dustbins will take time to clear, just to name two things. All the supply chains will collapse and this means no food or other items we take for granted, no toilet rolls and other paper products and even animal food and baby milk; and these supply chains will take weeks to return to normal.

Many of us do not have infinite resources and we have to be extremely economical with what we have and if we have taken our own advice and got at least two or more methods of doing something we can be resourceful and economise with most things and economies with one thing has a knock on effect; we could start with food and this is a good place to start.

If we can prepare and cook food in one pan we save gas if we have a gas cooker, save wood of we have a rocket stove, or save logs if we have a log burner and we also save water on the washing up and washing up liquid as we have finite reserves of water and we don’t want to waste it washing up when drinking it and hydration are more important than washing pots. Getting into a routine is beneficial as on a rainy day we can collect rainwater in bowls and containers and if we light our log burner at night for a couple of hours we can fill the kettle with rainwater and heat it on the log burner while it is heating the room and if we put our evening meal on it the pan will be at least part heated and save more gas or timber. It is basically doing one thing and multiple others at the same time to use up what you have.

If you cook on a rocket stove and have one family meal cooked in one pan you have minimised the washing up; but, if the rocket stove still has fuel and is running you can put some water on it and if you have obtained water from a non traditional source you can boil it to kill the microbes in it before filtering it; or simply warm some rain water up for pot washing.

If you have a generator you can go into your freezer and get out what you want and then run the generator to power the freezer as most will remain frozen for over 24 hours anyway, but wait, if you have spare capacity why not plug a digital battery charger in and charge at least one of your batteries as a digital charger will charge it much quicker than a basic solar system and you can charge other things, basically the previously mentioned inverter generator uses 1 litre per hour and the non inverter generator uses 2.5 litres per hour. This means running a generator for 1 hour will consume around 1 litre of petrol or around 2.5 litres of petrol, but why is this important? Because a standard 5 litre petrol can will last for 5 days in the inverter generator and only 2 days in the larger non inverter generator and as most local authorities limit fuel storage to around 20 litres it will last the smaller generator for 20 days or nearly 3 weeks, or the larger generator 8 days or just over a week.
The stark reality is you have power so why squander it, if you run your generator for 1 hour per day and maximise its potential by running only the essentials you keep your freezer and its contents frozen and you charge your batteries and you run lighting off them at night, if you followed my advice on designing and building 12volt lighting you know it will last for at least 20 hours and this assumes you run with all your designed lights on, switch those off you aren’t using and they last longer and this is critical information. With 5 hours of lighting a night your battery will last at least 4 days and this is 4 hours of charging time from your generator and the reality is that very few batteries need 4 hours to charge them up so you will be on top of your power batteries charging and if you have more than 2 batteries and a basic solar charging system you can pre charge a battery before putting it onto your solar system and lessening the solar requirement and give yourself a margin.
If you have a freezer you can fill it as you empty it, let me explain; a fridge or freezer are at their most efficient when they are full so as you take something from your freezer you replace it with a container nearly full with water as water expands as it freezes and your freezer remains full and works less, but if you take that frozen container and put it in your fridge your fridge will remain cold and all you need are two containers and as the one in your fridge thaws out you swap it with your frozen one and your thawed one refreezes.
Replenishment is totally necessary as you need water and go without water for more than a couple of days then you die, you can last for over a week without food and a system meltdown and no fast food will mean many slimmer and fewer obese people, so it may not be so bad for people’s health but it will hurt Muckdonalds and Burglar king and other fast food outlets; BONUS.

Don’t throw essentials away and things like glasses can be a godsend and if you get new glasses then keep your old ones as the risk of damaging your new glasses is much higher so have spare pairs as most people replace glasses for reasons of vanity and no other reason, put them in a case with cleaning cloths and a small bottle of lens cleaning fluid and a small piece of tissue and you have spares.

What have you got? Maybe you are a tradesman and use power tools, maybe you use one of the top brands and instead of sticking to a specific voltage battery you opt for one of their flexible voltage systems as these often come with 18, 21, or 24 volt battery systems and if you have the batteries you have power and with a basic solar system you can recharge a 12 volt battery and you can get 12 volt battery chargers for these batteries. Why is this important? Because many of these manufacturers try to outdo each other and they want bigger batteries which last longer and this means their tools are the most efficient they can be and with a 12 volt charger you can connect it to your 12 volt system and charge the batteries; they all have some form of work lighting within their range which ranges often from ambient area lighting to spot lights, area lighting large and small areas, and even rechargeable lighting; so while they may be expensive an area light which lasts 12 hours is two nights lighting for a room. This is where you integrate your systems and give yourself options and if you have a basic solar charging system you have either a PWM or MPPT charge controller and the type is irrelevant as the point is does it have a USB port? If it does you can charge a phone or plug a USB battery charger in and charge rechargeable batteries and if you have a lantern requiring rechargeable batteries you have light and save your disposable batteries. If you have a Lithium powered lantern or torch it may take several hours to charge and you now have time to recharge it as it’s all about flexibility and options.

Do you have a vehicle and is it petrol or diesel and if the answer is yes you have a fuel store and if you are astute and keep a minimum level of fuel in your vehicle you potentially have that amount; let me explain! I have a company car and fuel card and I never let my car drop below ½ a tank of fuel because I am also on call and I can get to the office/works on much less than ½ a tank of fuel. I may have to rush to site to deal with a problem and I usually have sufficient fuel to get their and back and generally I can pick up diesel as many fuel stations locally are open 24 hours so I can reasonably fuel up somewhere fairly easily, and failing all else I carry a 10 litre can of diesel in the boot so if I get stuck in snow and ice I can run the engine to keep warm, even if the car won’t move. I also have a tractor and telehandler and these are designed to run all week on a tank of diesel so they have large fuel tanks which are also kept full, so what does this mean; you may have a 20 litre fuel capacity storage cap but that applies only to fuel storage and not fuel in vehicular fuel tanks and with two huge fuel tanks on two machines, another large diesel tank on my own 4X4 and another on my company car I have a lot of fuel stored. This means I can syphon some out of my machines and put it in my car or run my emergency diesel generator which also has a full tank of diesel

I also have a gas tapping point for my gas cooker and this means I can shut it off from the mains and connect bottled gas and use the home cooker fairly normally but I also have a double burner multifuel stove and several fuel bottles and they will run from diesel which I have plenty of diesel to use as fuel, and this is the point, give yourself options.
If it’s raining and you set a tarpaulin up and catch the rainwater in a barrel and you light your rocket stove to cook you can use the remaining heat to boil your water so you utilise every last ounce of heat and kill the microbes in the water, or, if you have a log burner and light it for a couple of hours per night you can boil water on there.

Why two or more ways of doing something? Because if one way fails you have another and if you have a generator which you run you also have noise and this tells people you have a useful resource which is the generator and if they hear it running they also know you have fuel which is a second valuable resource and they wonder how many other resources you have. You have just made yourself a target.
If you have a solar system you have a second option and if you have a basic solar kit with a 100-200 watt panel you have a means of battery charging and if you add a second solar panel you have doubled your battery charging capacity and with an inverter you can run your freezer which means ice which you can use to keep your fridge cool and have no noise to attract the wrong people. If you have a power tool system and this is a cordless system it means you have batteries and if you have batteries you can buy a tool such as a reciprocating saw and with a stock of blades you can go out periodically and cut wood into transportable lengths to bring home.

Remember that in a meltdown there will be a lot of ambient noise from vehicles during the day as people scramble for things and at night this noise will die down; as people run out of fuel the number of vehicles on the road will also dwindle and this means the ambient noise will drop and any generator will be much easier to hear, hence the solar back up system. What happens if it is winter or bad weather and the solar system doesn’t produce anything? You use your generator as you have saved fuel by running off solar power until now and you haven’t attracted any attention and hopefully the wrong people won’t notice you running a generator for an hour periodically and if this is once per week your 20 litres of permitted stored fuel will now last for 20 weeks. Now we get creative and if we have bought or made some oil lamps we can light these and save on batteries and battery charging or merely save the batteries and give them more time to fully charge. If we do away with as many electrical powered items as possible we need less electricity and if we have limited usable wood we need to look at being more creative, or specifically look at other off grid which is camping and our acquired camping gear. Many camping lights are gas lanterns while many others are petrol and some are the old hurricane lamps, so why is this useful to know? Because all these types of lights give off heat so we may not need the log burner for the night, and save that nights wood, and all three give off plenty of heat and the hurricane and petrol lanterns will easily heat a room, so they may serve multiple functions and be an asset to our meltdown planning and preparation.

One inescapable fact is electricity has to go and we need a manual back up and if we use a reciprocating saw to cut wood into lengths to transport it home then we need manual hand saws to but the lengths into logs and an axe to split the logs so we can use them once dried, and again a bow saw or green wood saw is an indispensable item as it can be used if our power tool batteries are all flat.

This is why we never miss an opportunity and a couple of 1 tonne builder bags filled with seasoned timber and stood on top of each other gives us a reserve of fuel and if we have a couple of hurricane lamps we need paraffin and a couple of gallons stored means light and heat and we need methylated spirits to light the burner and running a hurricane lamp for a couple of nights gives light and heat which saves on disposable batteries or gives rechargeable batteries longer to charge and saves wood on the log burner. Integration and options are the key.

Keeping warm is essential and there are many options and key to this is to insulate and heat a small area and basically create a micro climate which is warm and one simple way to do this is to confine one room and this must be the one with the log burner or open fire as this is a source of heat in itself and can heat one room easily and quickly with the minimum of wood. Begin by sealing all joints up around doors and windows and this is best done with low tack masking tape or cling film as this will prevent any draughts and remember the key hole, then cover them with plastic sheets to make DIY double glazing and who cares what it looks like if it is warm? As the room cools you can cover up with multiple thin layers of clothing and NOT a few layers of thick clothing as this keeps you warmer than a couple of layers of thick clothing and if you get hotter you can remove a few layers a little at a time as the one thing you don’t want in colder or freezing weather is to sweat as the sweat cools you down and can freeze.
If you are not warm enough or have someone within your family who needs to be warm then create a micro climate and if you heeded my advice about collecting camping gear you should have a small tent so set this up in your room and create a micro climate as 3 or 4 people inside a modern tent will soon warm up the air and retain it so you have your micro climate.
If you have a designated room to keep warm and you have a gas cooker then cook in your designated room to be heated as cooking is heat and heat is needed and as well as cooking it heatsyour room; if you have gas you have the option of a gas heater and this is another option but be aware of the carbon monoxide and get a battery powered monitor in the room. If you have a shed or other outbuilding built of wood this may be warmer than your brick house and if it has a log burner and you have the wood it may be be prudent to move into their during colder spells and light the fire for an hour just to heat it up and you have somewhere cosy to live for a few hours and you can rotate round or simply leave those requiring more heat to live in there.

The key is flexibility and options and having a back up means you have these options.