In March of 2012, I was shopping at Sam’s Club doing some food prepping when a tornado struck my rural northern Kentucky community. We were asked to go to the center of the store until further notice because a tornado had been spotted in the area. After 20 minutes of nervous waiting, we were able to continue shopping. On our trip home there were several roads closed due to mobile homes being in the road as well as a tractor trailer turned over on my main route home. Seeing the destruction so close to home I started to get this sickening feeling in my stomach but I was finally able to make it home after the third route attempted. After arriving home I quickly assessed the situation and I felt very fortunate to arrive home to a basically undamaged house other than some downspouts ripped off and all my newly built greenhouse panels missing. The tornado had missed my house by approximately a quarter mile taking out the electricity to every house in sight. The house I could see from my master bedroom window was now a basement with one wall only standing on top.
I had been prepping for the last year or so and was quite anxious to see how things would turn out in my first trial run of when the SHTF. I quickly pulled the propane powered portable generator out of the basement to the transfer switch on the side of the house. I had to strap the generator to a dolly in order to move it and that took time. I think I should have invested in a wheel kit. I realized it was getting dark quick and I needed to work fast because my lighting preps were less than ideal. (I have recently purchased headlamps). I was able to hook up the generator just before it turned pitch black out and fired it up with no issues. I had wired the transfer switch into some key breakers, namely a room or two on each floor for lighting, the main refrigerator and extra refrigerator in the basement, porch lights with motion detectors and outlets in the living room for the wood stove blower. After getting the generator all set up and finding flashlights, candles and trying to get things arranged to make life as easy as possible running on the generator with only half the house powered, I sat down to relax and thought, not too bad…not that much has changed…we have electric (well at least partially), city water, food and guns. I did pretty well at this prepping thing.
The next day consisted of cleaning up the fallen trees out of the driveway and gathering up everything that wasn’t secured all over the yard and out of the tree line. There was the main path that the wind carried the majority of stuff, but things were located 360 degrees from where they started. I was surprisingly able to locate all but three of the panels from the greenhouse. The basement doors were pushed in and jammed and needed much convincing to open but I was able to get them working again without too much effort. The following day, I went to help a neighbor/friend who had completely lost his house. We worked all day cleaning up fallen trees. There was quite a crew of volunteers and that was good to see. About two days passed with no major complaints from the wife and two young kids, and then the third day came. After three days without a shower for the wife and no bath for the kids, things were starting to unravel. My wife was very irritable and frustrated with living so primitively (in her mind anyway). This was a rude awakening for me. I thought things hadn’t really changed that much other than I had to take a very fast, cold shower and carry a flashlight around or candles in certain rooms. When my wife started crying and threatened to go stay in a hotel until the electricity came back on, I suddenly realized the importance of hot water in SHTF. At first I was frustrated with her and told her how fortunate we were and that things could be a lot worse. She wasn’t so convinced that all was as great as I had thought. I contemplated running electric to the existing hot water heater and started to regret buying my [inadequate] 4000 Watt peak 3500 Watt continuous, propane powered 110V generator.
I did some brainstorming and even considered heating the water on the wood stove, but then I remembered my Dad had offered me an 110 volt AC 6 gallon capacity water heater some time ago which I couldn’t think of a use for at that time. I went and picked up the heater and did a lot of complaining to the wife about how hard it was going to be to hook up because I would need to install it downstream of my existing water heater and install 3 valves so I could bypass it when the grid power came back on. With all the cleanup and repairs in order, I didn’t feel like the water heater was a priority. But after taking a closer look, I realized that the fittings on the inlet and outlet looked familiar. I checked them using a garden hose and it fit. So after some contemplation, I decided to place the heater on my washing machine, unhook the hoses from the washer and hook the cold water to the inlet on the heater and the hot water to the outlet. Please be careful and don’t place it directly on the lid of a top loader without some kind of additional support like a piece of plywood. Remember, 1 gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs so just the water in this tank is 50 lbs. Add the weight of the tank and you will be approaching 100 lbs. I then turned off the valve to the inlet of the existing hot water heater in the basement. I wired in a plug to the romex cable connection of the water heater and ran an extension cord to the nearest outlet powered by the generator. I will wire the washer outlet to run off the generator in the future so it can be used for this purpose. I filled the heater with water by turning on the hot water at the closest faucet and both washer hookup valves. It is very critical to make sure the heater is completely full of water before turning it on. It will burn the element out almost instantaneously if there is air in the tank. The water heater tag says 1650 Watts and the generator bogged down somewhat when the water heater kicked on along with the refrigerator, but it worked just fine. Now six gallons isn’t a lot of hot water, but I cranked the water temperature all the way up and it was enough for a quick shower and hot water for dishes was no longer a problem.
The electricity was out for a week and I burned through several tanks of propane which reminded me that I needed to increase my supply of propane. Storage is not an issue for propane luckily, unlike gas which does not store very well, which is exactly why I chose this unit. I was able to hook a garden hose to the drain of the heater and run it outside once the electric came back on. I was very careful to drain all the water and leave the valve and pressure relief valve open to let it air dry to lessen the chance of corrosion and the rotten egg smell of stagnated water the next time I need it. I then hooked the hoses back up to the washer and it was ready to go again.
The lessons learned were very valuable and it was an under pressure moment where I was able to brainstorm and come up with an easy way to have hot water. I didn’t realize the importance of hot water in an SHTF scenario. This is not a convenience item especially where women and children are involved (at least not for my family anyway). Sanity quickly disappeared with the lack of hot water for a basic shower. Now I know others may think she is spoiled and things will be much worse when the real SHTF. I agree that they could get much worse than the way my situation unfolded, but my philosophy is to take care of everything I can possibly take care of to keep life as normal as possible. When it really hits us hard, the more we can do to maintain our current lifestyles, as luxurious as they may seem in the future, the easier it will be to maintain sanity. I have to imagine how great a hot shower will feel after cutting wood all day to heat the house in the winter when it’s no longer optional to burn the wood stove, but a necessity. This method is sure going to be a lot easier than heating pots of water on the wood stove, not to mention less dangerous.