preparing for winter

[newfoundland]

I feel very feeble posting this topic when so many are facing an autumn of hurricane and tornado encounters. Last winter we had heavy snow. Well that is heavy for us. Many years we don't have snow at all, or very little. But there may be something in this global warming debate, or is it just the cycle of weather patterns that we have always had? We seem to be experiencing extreme weather patterns all over the world lately. There are the devastating floods in Pakistan and many places are having extreme drought by contrast. Getting back to the coming winter. Last year transport was paralised for about two weeks. We realised how dependant we were on electricity. Our water is pumped from an underground spring our central heating uses an electric pump, we cook on an electric stove, the last goes on and on. If we lost our supply, we would be helpless! We are getting a petrol driven generator, which i think will at least keep the water on. What would others recommend as temporary cooking equipment? Also, how much bottled water would you stockpile for such an emergency (drinking only)? Does anyone have any experience of insulating a mobile home (trailer) as our son, having battled to stay unfrozen last winter is getting down to the serious business of winterizing his trailer? Ours has certainly in my lifetime always been a moderate climate, but last year we had the most snow in thirty years and we must adapt ourselves to this type of weather. Last year we also moved out of our London home to a quite isolated spot and took on responsibility for many more animals. A dream come true for sure, but want to get it right for the animals as well as ourselves. All advice gratefully received.

 

[booker81]

I'm only guessing your locale based on your name (newfoundland), but is that correct?

As for a mobile home, one big thing is to make sure you have heat tape on all your water pipes. Plug it in

. Do a thorough inspection of the electrical and heating/furnace. There is plastic sheeting you can tape over the windows to seal them, and seals for doors are usually pretty inexpensive and easy to install.

If you have a large freezer, fill jugs with water and freeze them. For cooking, I've been known to grill out in the snow, just because I like to grill

Charcoal needs no electricity, nor do propane grills, if that's your thing

Of course, this is based on MI, USA - where I am, where can and will snow from October through April.

 

[Miltonchix]

A Coleman propane camp stove is essential. Don't buy the small one, get a larger one you can cook a meal on. The smaller ones are just that, SMALL. Propane lanterns with plenty of extra mantles. Then stock up on propane bottles, or you can buy adapters and such to run them from large propane tanks. If you own fancy cookware you may want to buy some inexpensive pots/pans. Cast Iron works great. Be careful with propane outdoors in extreme cold. Don't buy your propane in the summer as there are different formulations for cold weather. I learned this the hard way.
As for how much bottles water to keep on hand: you stated you were without electricity for 2 weeks last winter, so plan on at least a 2 week supply. Heck, I'd double that and have a months supply. (drinking water). As for bathing and washing water, melt some snow.
Best place to start winterizing a mobile home is underneath. Heat tape on all the pipes and plenty of insulation. Stop all drafts from blowing under the house. You can't make it airtight, you need some air exchange, but make it minimal. Most newer mobile homes have at least 6 in. exterior walls and are insulated decently. Not much you can do about ceilings in a mobile but, depending on the age of the home, most are insulated pretty well. Thanks to hurricanes, mobile home construction has improved drastically around here. Probably the same where you're at as the manufacturers tend to build them all the same. Its cheaper for them to have fewer designs and to build them assembly line style.
And by all means get out during the winter and enjoy the beauty of the season. There are tons of things to do in winter besides freeze. Always dress accordingly.

 

[Shaun]

If you can keep the well on with the generator, then I would worry more about keeping enough petrol on hand. If you put fuel stabilizer in it, it keeps pretty well. What we do is label the "generator" fuel cans, #1, #2, etc. Then, when we need fuel for the tractor or lawn mower, we use from #1 until it's gone, then refill it fresh and so on. That way, all the fuel gets used over a period of several months, and doesn't sit forever. All the cans except the one in current use are kept filled, as is the tractor. Make sure the generator is outside with lots of airflow around it - we open our big garage door and put it JUST inside so it doesn't get rained/snowed on. BUT, our garage is not attached to the house. If you have an attached garage, you can't do this.

We run the generator once every 6 months or so for an hour to make sure it's in good working order, and change the oil and such as the manufacturer recommends, at least once a year even if we haven't had to run it for much. Our generator is big enough to run both our furnace (it's a gas furnace, but the pump runs on electricity like yours) and the well. If yours isn't big enough, then switch between the two as needed: warm up the house with the furnace, then switch to the well. That's what we had to do when we had a smaller generator.

We use LED lanterns for light. The new ones are bright, and use very little battery power. Keep spare batteries on hand. We can also run our brooders/incubators on the generator, in fact, we had ours on this morning because I had new baby turkeys in the brooder, and the power went out again.

Check and see if you can get some food grade barrels - you can get 30 gal US ones around here for about $7-8. Make sure it's clean, clean, clean, fill it up, add a spoonful or two of Bleach (it keeps bacteria from growing), and put on the cover. Put it where it shouldn't freeze. It will stay good for a long time. It will give you water you can drink if the generator goes and you can't use the well. If you take some out and set the water on the counter in an open pitcher, the chlorine will gas off in less than a day if you don't want to drink clorinated water.

Propane stoves and lanterns are great,

BUT YOU SHOULD NOT USE THEM IN THE HOUSE

. Every year or so around here when we have a long power outtage, someone dies of CO poisoning. I work in emergency services, and it's a sad thing to see, believe me, when we go and find everyone dead..


Depending on the size of your generator, you may be able to use an electric frying pan for cooking inside without a problem. Keep lots of things on hand that don't take a lot of cooking. I always have home canned soup and such on hand.

Do you have the hookup so you can run the power through your home wiring? We do, and just flip the breakers off on the things are aren't vital. It costs a bit to get the hookup put in, I do a lot of wiring, but we got the electrician to do this, as it's more complicated and you need to have it RIGHT, or you can electrocute the guys working on the power lines trying to get your electricity back on.

Hope this helps - living in the country is great, but you need to be prepared to be self sufficient. It may be several days before we get plows through here. We have 3 families with small farm tractors on our road - each plows a third of the road at least one lane wide so an emergency vehicle can get through.

If you have elderly neighbors near by, be sure to check on them. If they don't have a way to heat ( or in the summer, cool off) or get water, get them and bring them to your house. It's all about helping your neighbor.

 

[sunflowerenvy]

Quote:
please state where you are living now> State, country, then more pple will reply. i will give my though when i know your general location

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Go to the bottom of the BYC forum and pop on over to sufficient self!!! Best place ever for learning this stuff.

Order a catalog from Emergency Essentials and/or Lehman'S http://www.lehmans.com/ . They are the people that have most of what you need to stock up on.

Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Stock up slowly as you can afford it. Each step is one step further.

To start I thought of it as what would I need if I was going camping in the woods for a week? Before storms fill the tub (for flushing), have bottled water for cooking, if you are not up yet for a generator get the camping meals. Emergency blankets (mylar) can be gotten very cheaply and really do help if you're facing lost heat for even a few hours. (I also used some for insulation of the chicken coop when the temps here got real low. Make sure there is air exchange)

There really are a ton of prep sites out there. Some are prepping for the mutant zombie apocalypse, some fear more severe weather, some just want to get further off grid. Take what you want and leave the rest - you don't have to agree with some one's motivation to learn from them!

 

[newfoundland]

First of all thank you everyone for your replies they are most useful. We are in Lincolnshire, in England, and I feel quite ashamed when I think of the depth of snow and the length of 'snowed in time' that many people experience every winter. We weren't without electricity last year, but we were the lucky ones and many people were. This is why we were determined this year to be properly prepared. We are situated in a little hamlet of three homes on a single track road about seven miles from the town. i know this is no distance to many, but none of us had any experience of driving on snow and we were completely unprepared for the weather that came. In fact, if i'm honest, we are completely unprepared for this way of life away from immediate shops etc. We are learning all the time about having a store cupboard that can feed us for a few days if needs be and we always make sure our animals have a back up supply of feed and bedding. I suspect like most of us on this forum, what ever else goes short, the animals are always taken care of! We absolutely love it here and to us it is a great adventure, but one that we need to learn from! Thank you also for your help regarding winterizing a trailer. Our son has insulated the roof and is about to begin insulating the underneath of the trailer, your suggestions were very helpful. Last year, to insulate our hens and ducks, we built straw bail walls around their houses and they were very cosy. We will do the same again. Thank you so much for your suggestions on cooking equipment we will get ourselves a gas fired grill for outside and a camping gas grill for inside. I think the idea of numbering the petrol cans is a great one, as you will always know which is in cureent use etc. We will certainly copy that one, although with petrol at £6 a gallon, approx $8 I think, we will not have that many cans I suspect!

 

[sunflowerenvy]

Quote:
iam no sure if you have LP gas over in england in the states they used it of outside grills, gas stoves, and wall heaters like this one in this picture
http://www.northerntool.com/shop/to...opane Heaters&cm_cat=Nextag&cm_ven=Aggregates
also if you can get firewood than u could put in a wood stove.

water you fill bottles 3/4 full and leave some outside or put some in your freezer and than u could take it out and put it in refrigerate or if you having camping cooler or metal garable can u could put the food in them if the weather is the same temperature has refrigerator [40 degree in the states]also if you have clean snow you could melt it for water too

this year could u get more hay to cover up your north side of the trailer and put them around your bottom of too. leave one fault open a dip then it goes below freezing.
keep enough food not refrig for at least 1 week for each person. you may have to eat can fruit or veggie for meal, crackers, peanut butter,
when the powers go out you eat the food in your frig first. and have one hot meal during the day so u save the fuel for heat,
ihave enough food in cardborad for about three weeks all the time. by things on sale and eating the older stuff first.

also have couple of thermos so u can put some hot drink in there all day long,

 

[newfoundland]

Thank you so much for your suggestions. Yes we do have LP gas here, in fact that is what runs our central heating, as we have no gas pipes out here and have a big tank in our garden filled by a tanker delivery. That does not work if the electricity goes off as the pump is electric. We have never stored water etc outside as we would not have had prelonged below freezing temperatures before, but I have heard this is the shape of things to come. Did you mean build a wall of bails of straw around the north facing side of the mobile home? This sounds a very good idea. I will certainly be buying a few extra tins each week to build up a supply. I wonder what everyone else's weather has been like this year as we have had a very strange one. Following our very cold (for us that is) winter, we had a very dry spring. Consequently the grass grew very slowly. When the hay was cut in June the crop was only a quarter of what it normally is. By July, grazing animals were having to be fed hay as there was nothing on the fields. When the second cut of hay was about to be taken in August we had nothing but rain. Farmers around here are talking about importing hay from Europe. We are having to supplement our horses grazing with haylage as we can't get hay. Hope everyone out there has plenty of hay for coming winter.

 

[sunflowerenvy]

Quote:
ok than your look into having a gas cooking stove n oven in your kitchen. i had one in my mobile home in florida i love cooking on gas and that heater and it work then the power went off,i also had a LP tank too. i gave you a url to can also work on LP gas to just have to run a line to your house for cooking n heating with small units[you may want to like into this in spring then they get rid of them].

you might think of growing some trees on your north side to break the north winds in the wind too.

here in tenn they did not grow enough hay or corn this year due to bad weather, flooding in the spring n summer drought. driving around see brown corn fields