Home emergency preparedness

[MEMCruiser]

In light of the earthquake in Japan, I was wondering how people have prepared their homes for long term loss of energy, water and waste removal. I have done nothing and need to get this fixed and am looking for ideas. And as always MUD is my go to place for info.

 

[inthewall]

I have a wood stove, stocked bar, an elk and deer in the freezer. I could make a ton of jerky if the freezer thawed out. It is still cold enough to keep the meat frozen.

 

[fsusteve]

in a sense I'm lucky, we're on a well so with a generator I can run the house and the well pumps, which I have done during hurricanes. You could stock up on a few cases of MRE's, they last like 5 years.

 

[KLF]

Same here, we're on well and septic, and my generator will handle pretty much everything, except the stove and clothes dryer. I hope to switch those to propane eventually. I have 4 grille bottles that I keep full, and the camping stove handy. We could probably go a week with no trouble, but I would have to start siphoning out of the cars to run the generator. As long as Verizon keeps their generator running on the local tower I can stay on the web, and there's always the Ham radio.

 

[MEMCruiser]

I am thinking of getting propane powered
generator hooked up to a large above ground
propane tank.

 

[craptabulous]

I have two gen sets, the diesel will run my stove and the house the other is only 5000 watt for back up if anything happened to the diesel , septic , well , two freezers , outhouse on the property and wood heat .

 

[KLF]

The problem with a propane powered generator is that most suppliers have a minimum charge on deliveries, so if you're only running the generator it can be very expensive. But the good side is you don't have to worry about the gas going bad sitting in the tank and gumming up the carb. I test run mine once a month, I try to swap out all the gas every 4-6 months, even though it has Stabil in it. A pain.

If I can get my stove & dryer converted over, then I may try to convert my generator to propane as well.