Tag: fuel

March 9, 2023 – Life Without Fuel

March 9, 2023 /

I was born in the mid-1970s. I do remember the gasoline shortage of 1979 vaguely. I remember asking my mom if the water could run out. My dad purchased a bicycle and started riding it to work everyday. He rode a bike to work and back from 1980-1983 (until we moved too far away). My mom rode a bicycle to the grocery store and around town.

Whether people realize it or not, our lifestyle revolves around fuel. One type of fuel is electricity. In my house that is the stove, the refrigerator, the freezer and the furnace. I would say that it is pretty important. A small amount of electricity can be stored in batteries and another small portion of electricity can be made with a generator but that doesn’t run without fuel.

We have all seen the Walking Dead where gasoline all runs out and the entire planet switches to ethanol. It’s a fun fantasy for sure but not really realistic on a large scale. Some preparedness minded people have made a huge investment in solar but this also assumes the outage is not caused by something like an Electro Magnetic Pulse. This is essentially a high level nuclear detonation that fries anything electrical. If you think that it is not possible, think about military escalation with Russia and a Chinese balloon that flew undiscovered along with who knows how many others.

I really don’t think that it is possible or practical to prepare for catastrophic events. What is smart is to deal with the typical, short term problems we see in everyday life. An ice storm knocks out power for a week or the government shuts down society for a month. You can’t leave or you don’t want to leave how is this going to work?

Can you actually stay home for two weeks? I know that examining what happened during the pandemic we didn’t. Sure, we had lots of food and we were fairly well prepared for survival. On the same hand, none of us knew what was going to happen so we went out in search of more while we could.

I remember standing in an hours long line at Costco on one of the first Saturdays of the lockdown. We waited for an hour and eventually decided that it wasn’t worth it. We ended up going to a scratch and ding kind of place called Wheeler Dealer because there were no lines. We got everything we wanted at scratch and dent kind of prices without the wait. It was mostly snacks and comfort foods, not something we stock a lot of. The truth is, we didn’t need to go out. It was a shortage fear that triggered us to react.

Leaving woulda/coulda/shoulda of that era behind, fuel is not much different the food. We may need to leave to get it, the prices are generally going up, it has a shelf-life, we can never have a lifetime supply at any one time and we use it daily. I am going to take the next couple of Thursdays talking about fuel storage, redundancy and alternative solutions.

End Your Programming Routine: This was going to be a single post but I couldn’t get my head around exactly what I wanted to say. There was too much and the topic was too broad and I wandered too much. I think I changed the title ten times before I settled on this one. Fuel is always something on my pantry list. It’s not sexy or fun but boy are you glad you have it when you need it.

November 4, 2021 – What Has Changed Since the Ice Storm in February

November 4, 2021 /

Yesterday, I had a conflict that left me away from home a large part of the day. I am also going to be travelling for business next week and I am not sure that I want to take a second laptop or not. Since I cant get this to work on iOS, I may be AWOL next week.

February 16, 2021 I wrote about lessons from a winter storm. One of my biggest holes were things related to energy. I didn’t have a lot of supplemental heat for comfort or electricity to protect my freezers for an extended outage. March 31, 2021 I wrote about the shortage of everything which now seems to be common knowledge. The linkage between those two was that I was having a hard time finding fuel storage namely propane tanks and fuel cannisters.

It wasn’t until mid-summer that I saw both of them come back. When they did, they weren’t at the prices they were before they were gone for months. So, as a good prepper watch the availability and price and buy when both are optimal and not needed.

The propane is flexible. With my little heater, it can run on 40 hours per cylinder. I also have adapters that can run the stove and other things. Combine this with my kerosene restocked (around 200 hours) and the fireplace we have way more supplemental heat potential.

I have been buying gas cans when they go on sale. This is to power the new generator that we have which was unfortunately part of Olivia’s inheritance. I really don’t have a clue about runtime here, but the strategy is all about rotation. The idea is to store the gasoline up to one year and then pour it into the vehicle and replace it. I have enough gas to swap it out every two months throughout the year.

Looking a little more long term, I still have on my list a couple more items. One is another inverter for converting vehicle power into energy. The idea is to have one inverter per vehicle so that they can be used as makeshift generators. I would also like to add a suitcase type generator because they are light and portable.

Also, I would like to build up a better supply of firewood as well. But, since we mostly burn in our firepit, most of my supply is actually garbage. Meaning, I largely burn off cuts and smallish branches from pruning. I am on the look-out for some inexpensive wood supply That takes planning and effort, so that will largely be an opportunity where I have the time to do it.

When thinking about a longer term outage, there are other considerations. For instance maintenance. The generator that we have was supposed to have the oil changed after five hours and then every hundred hours afterward. I am pretty sure the first change never happened and supplies are needed to run as long as you have fuel. I drained the fuel and then changed the oil so it should be ready to go.

End Your Programming Routine: “Two is one and one is none” is the preparedness mantra. In many cases I had one or none when the ice storm hit when it came to energy. Now, I am in the space of one at least. Flexibility and options rule the day when the cards are down. Fortunately, we have largely been fortunate when it comes to power outages over the years, As the saying goes, Fortune Favors the Prepared.