Category: Home Power

Lessons From Hurricane Helene – Part 1, by A.F.

The following recounts some Hurricane Helene lessons learned from Western South Carolina. Our power went off for the final time around 5:30 on Friday morning. It had blinked on and off twice earlier in the night, but I didn’t pay the warnings any attention. In the end, we were without power for nine days and only tonight as I’m writing this, 26 days post-storm did we get our regular Internet service back. I am fully aware that these are First World problems and compared to so many, Helene took it easy on us. Beyond ensuring that our vehicles were fueled, …


Hurricane Milton After Action Review – Part 1, by Soyez Ferme

Date and Location: October 9, 2024 — West Coast of Florida, under the eye of Hurricane Milton, inland from landfall. Hurricane winds howled outside, and the rain pelted the windows when the lights flickered for the final time and died. On the darkest of nights as Hurricane Milton unleashed its fury on our rural Florida bunker, my mom confidently stated, “I feel safe here.” After a long, and mostly sleepless night, we rose before dawn to walk the property. What follows is a breakdown of the good, the bad and the ugly of our preparedness strategy for weathering a vicious …


Our Hurricane Experience in South Carolina, by K.U.

We live in a rural county about 60 miles from Augusta, Georgia. The night of September 26th, 2024 was one we never thought we’d experience so far inland. A full-blown hurricane was upon us (winds were recorded at 80-100mph in our county). We awoke early on the 27th to no power and 1 bar of very spotty cell service. We built our house on a hill and made sure that no trees were nearby, so our house had minimal damage. We had some water come in and down a wall from the chimney, but plan to fix that with a …


Lessons Learned from Hurricane Helene, by N.C. Ham

I really did not give a lot of thought ahead of time about the approaching storm. I spent time at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo in Cuba growing up and I have lived through several hurricanes in the Southeast. I won’t make that mistake again. I now see how we can get way too comfortable with the daily situation live in and not see the forest for the trees. My work location is several hours from my home which is in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I work from home about half the time and was in the mountains when …


The Final Countdown: Last-Minute Readiness Checks – Part 2, by Michael X.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Water List This is an item for the first three days. This is super important and needs to be one of the first items confirmed. Check locations and condition of water sources: Bottled Water/Stored water containers Well water (power dependent) Lake water – are there containers to carry and larger containers to store lake water? Is there a rainwater collection option available? Is the Berkey/Filtered water system ready? Can the tub be successfully filled with water from the system before the power goes out or the line pressure is gone? Can I …


The Final Countdown: Last-Minute Readiness Checks – Part 1, by Michael X.

Hypothetically, (of course), assume for a moment that the proverbial fan has been hit. Now you have three days….or two weeks….or two months…until the consequences of the event hit where you are. Good luck guessing how long it takes to hit you. Are you as ready as you can be? Are you sure? How do you know? How and when it hits you, whatever it may be, may be based on three key things: the type/cause of disaster, your proximity to the disaster or populated areas, and the stability of your systems (electricity, water, fuel, and human support systems). THE …


Learning From My Amish Neighbor, by 3AD Scout

In February of this year, our neighbor sold his two houses and business. One of those houses was sold to our new neighbors. They are Old Order Amish who still do not use any electric lights on their buggies but rather use Kerosene lamps. It has been an interesting few months watching them transform their new-to-them home to their off-grid Amish lifestyle. I was wondering how the new owners would heat the large old farmhouse and get their water since the old neighbor used electricity for such things. The previous neighbor had an outside wood furnace that supplied both heat …


Weather the Storm with Backup Power – Part 3, by E.R.

(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.) Inverters Most of us are interested in running a few 120 volt AC appliances. The fridge, the furnace, the shallow well pump – standard AC devices that we want to keep alive during a power outage. For these we will require what is known as an inverter. Inverters take DC battery power and invert it into standard 120 volt AC household power. Inverters are available in all shapes and sizes these days. You can get off-shore-manufactured modified sine wave inverters that plug into the cigarette lighter plug in your car, rather cheaply. …


Weather the Storm with Backup Power – Part 2, by E.R.

(Continued from Part 1.) Charging Overview At a high level, the stages of charging a battery include: bulk, absorption, and float. On batteries that have been discharged deeply, there is also an equalization charge required. Bulk charging demands high current. Absorption charging requires less current but a slightly elevated voltage. Float is your trickle charge which has low current at about one volt above the stasis voltage of a charged battery. As covered in a recent SurvivalBlog article, the charge levels of flooded batteries can be determined accurately using a hydrometer. Each cell should have an equal level of charge. …


Weather the Storm with Backup Power – Part 1, by E.R

This adventure begins with a windstorm after which it took crews days to repair the severely damaged power lines. At that time we had been using a pair of old end-of-life batteries rescued from a Cummins diesel pickup truck connected to a conventional marine battery charger as our backup power. We waited all day as our freezer continued operations, powered by these old batteries. Towards dusk, I finally dragged out the generator to power the rest. Surely, there was a better way. That summer, I finally made it a priority to get solar panels installed up on the roof and …


Extending The Life of Flooded Lead Acid Batteries, by Tunnel Rabbit

The following described method is for those of us with more time than money. But this may be an increasingly valuable skill in a prolonged austere environment. Note that this pertains only to 12 VDC flooded lead acid batteries, including semi-sealed or “maintenance-free” batteries. This will be a succinct tutorial. This is an old-school method, a technique of a bygone era. It is nothing new, but old school and time-tested. I have more than 40 years of experience in the automotive world. I’ve known about this since the early 1980s. My success rate is now at 70 percent, yet how …


Providing For Your Family During Power Outages – Part 2, by B.S.V.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Unfortunately, there isn’t a good level of sun available during heavy rains. We were also beginning to lose sunlight so solar wouldn’t be all that helpful even if the skies were clear. Evaluating the EB70S powering the television, I could see that it was going to lose power overnight. We didn’t need it for information any longer, but as we were still trapped inside from significant rain, it was now our primary source of entertainment. Of course, in a dire situation we could ration that power consumption to make it last multiple …


Providing For Your Family During Power Outages – Part 1, by B.S.V.

For the last several months I have been thinking of writing an article for SurvivalBlog, but there have been so many great articles by so many knowledgeable people that I have spent most of my time learning from SurvivalBlog rather than writing for it. That changed last week (as I write this). I live in North Texas and was impacted by the storms that came through. A lot of news has, rightfully, focused on those areas where tornadoes caused damage – and there were enough of those to keep the news cycles busy. However, the news coverage was virtually non-existent …


A Glimpse of Armageddon, But Not For Me, by T.M.

Having lived in the American Redoubt for 26 years gives me hope that I chose the right place years ago to spend my final days on earth. In this article I will relate my upbringing, a story that happened on May 27, 2024, and two other incidents that occurred around this location in April, 2024 and July, 1996. These happenings demonstrate how ill-prepared the general populace is for any coming catastrophic event. We all know that absolute chaos will ensnare all major and minor urban enclaves when the SHTF. I am a 79-year-old, somewhat crippled. I have had drop-foot on …


Why I Bought a Pluggable Hybrid EV Car, by R.G.

I live in the high desert in the Southwest on a 20 acre homestead within a small farm/ranch community of 200 hardy souls. My homestead includes all the typical accouterments of a homestead including wells, septic, gardens, greenhouse, tractor, barn, and animals. I recently installed a 8,000 watt off-grid solar system. A good-sized county seat town is 20 miles away with WalMart, drug stores, grocery stores, local hardware store, courthouse, and regional hospital within that 20 mile range. An extra five road miles gets me to a Costco and big-box hardware stores. A major city is 100 miles away with …