Letter Re: Generator Experiences During a Recent Nor’easter

Greetings Mr. Rawles,
I just wanted to pass along a quick reminder to your readers who took the time and expense to buy a backup generator, but haven’t taken the time to periodically test and maintain it. Here in southeastern Virginia, we are still recovering from what was called the “Atlantic Assault” by the hyperventilating reporters on the Weather Channel. To be fair, though, this was indeed a whopper of a Nor’easter that gave us flooding only a foot or so less than Hurricane Isabel in 2003. We lost power the evening of November 12, but luckily got it back 29 hours later even though we were told to expect several more days of grid-down living. But here’s the kicker: on my street, only two of the four houses with generators could get them started. Of three other friends I checked with after the storm, there was one other [like me] that could not start his generator. So what’s going on?

As many boaters unfortunately have also discovered, infrequently used engines are suffering significant damage to their carburetors from the ethanol in our gasoline supply. Extra precautions to completely drain fuel tanks, fuel lines, and carburetor float bowls are absolutely essential before putting the generator away for storage. Ask me how I know…

I was also guilty of insufficient testing and maintenance, but I discovered my mistake well before this storm. In early June I pulled my generator out for its yearly testing at the beginning of hurricane season. Yes, I know. Testing my backup power source only once per year was pretty stupid. Anyway, no amount of cord-pulling or carburetor cleaning would induce my generator to start. The gasoline had stabilizer in it, and even draining the old gas and using fresh didn’t help. I eventually got tired of messing with it, and I bought a replacement carburetor via eBay for $70. After installing the new carburetor, along with a new in-line fuel filter from the marine parts store, the generator started on the second pull and ran like new.

I now have a standard monthly testing cycle for my generator that runs it under load for about half an hour. I also have a standard routine for servicing my generator after each use. This routine includes draining the fuel tank, pulling and draining the fuel lines, and fully draining the float bowl of the carburetor. I even leave the lid off the fuel tank for a few hours — in a well-ventilated space — to let it completely air dry. And I also have a new schedule for changing the engine oil. During heavy use, I change the oil every once three days (about 50 hours) of operation. Otherwise, I just change it once per year. Remember that oil is cheap and it’s the life-blood of a small air-cooled engine.

So my generator was one of the ones that worked during the recent storm, and I was able to run 12-gauge extension cords to two of my neighbors to keep their refrigerators running, too. It was nice to be in the position of being able to help others rather than needing help myself. I hope your readers can learn from my mistakes and how I corrected them. – Mike in Virginia

Letter Re: A Tip on Egg Organization

Good Day JWR,
My prayers continue daily for you, and for your son’s hearts healing at the loss of Memsahib. May you find some fraction of reciprocal solace and warmth from the Thanksgiving Blessings from God for the many hundreds of thousands of lives that you have enriched with your blog and books. Thanksgivings to you JWR for what you have done and do so very well, by providing this valuable multi-national information highway of connectedness on survival and preparedness!

Here is my organizational tip of the week I would like to share. We have free range poultry and very rogue ducks and geese. The chickens and guineas are pretty reliable about returning to the coop for their egg “layoff”. However, our many hen ducks just roam and lay where ever they get the urge to do so. Most of their eggs are used for baking and if I don’t check the property for newly made nests with eggs every day or so, I end up with occasional bad, rotten eggs in my mixing bowl, because I have lost track of the age of the eggs. This is a smell you are likely not wanting inside your kitchen! Phewy! Always break eggs, one at a time, in a separate bowl before adding them to your other ingredients.

To help me organize and pull these piles of eggs for sorting in this order for my use: for eating,(the freshest), for incubating under a surrogate brooder, (the next in oldest date and these get marked with the date with a wax china marker pencil before getting placed under the surrogate), and then those which are past hatching (after 35 days) and end up in the compost pile. What I use now as nest place markers, is a saved and placed used and cleaned styrofoam plate or used aluminum pie pan (these are long term reusable) which have been marked and dated with a fine tip marker onto a piece of masking tape on the outer rim of the plate where it can be seen easily once filled with eggs, the actual date that I set it on the ground and place it under the surrounded pile of leaves and plucked out down and pin feathers. Then when I am scratching my head, two or three weeks later, wondering when this pile was layed, I have a reference to refer to and do not have to toss all the eggs in the composter. Those eggs that are freshest, by the way, are usually on the top and to the back, and are still warm to the touch hours after being laid.

Those eggs that a broody hen has pushed or rolled away from the nest, you can go ahead and remove and place in the compost pile. She knows that the egg is not viable for hatching.
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Also, another tip for barnyard time savings: Keep your old egg cartons out by the hen house. Instead of transferring the eggs twice, from the nest to the basket and then to a bowl or carton, just pull the fresh eggs and place them straight into a carton, mark the date on a piece of masking tape on the end of the carton for easy viewing. Eggs that I donate to charity, or sell to neighbors and friends, I ask them to please return my cartons cleaned for reuse and recycling again. May all Have a Blessed Thanksgiving Day! – KAF

Letter Re: B&M Baked Beans and Canned Bread

Jim,
Being born and raised in Maine, I was introduced to B&M baked beans at a young age. Beans and brown bread were our standard fare on Saturday nights for many years. Over the years, I have grown increasingly fond of them, although harder to find in the Midwest – they seem to get crowded off many grocery store shelves in favor of lesser rivals.

In particular, I love B&M brown bread (with or without raisins) – rich, moist dense bread made with molasses and packaged in a can. It is heated inside the can (hint: slice it cold, before heating). A pat (or two) of real butter melting on it makes the meal complete.

From a preparedness perspective, both the beans (available in glass jars or cans) and brown bread are a treasure. The manufacturer confirms (below) that their standard freshness shelf life is three years from date of manufacture (longer is still good, I’m sure). Given that we regularly eat it, there is no problem adding this to our “rotation”. And in the case of distress, we have the ability to heat the meal right in the can – the original MRE.

When I had trouble finding B&M at my local grocer, I wrote the B&G Foods and purchased several cases directly from their distribution group.

Blessings and love to you and your family. – BeePaw

Economics and Investing:

GG sent this: A Mad Rush as Gold Bugs Get the Boot

FAF sent this from Fox News: Economic Growth Revised Down in 3rd Quarter

From El Jefe Jeff E.: Stocks, Oil Drop After U.S. Consumer Spending Trails Forecasts

Items from The Economatrix:

Crude Prices Sink Down Near $76

Reports on Consumer Confidence, GDP Tug at Stocks

Banks Earn $2.8 Billion in 3Q, Insurance in Red

Reports on GDP and Consumers Signal Modest Rebound

Fed Under Fire as Public Anger Mounts

Goldman Sachs and US Demise

Wall Street Plays Hardball

Restaurants Brace for a Sour Season as Consumers Lose Appetite for Dining Out

PBS: Ten Trillion and Counting

Most Global Banks are Still Unsafe, Warns S&P

Odds ‘n Sods:

Real estate bust opens doors for parties at vacant houses. (Thanks to GG for the link.)

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Reader Ken S. wrote to mention: “I have also been diving construction dumpsters at various construction sites for excess building materials. You’d be shocked at what a construction hand will throw away. It’s just another way to survive this worsening economy and put stacks of building materials in my storage shed.”

   o o o

Courtesy of reader HPD comes another Nanny State Britannia Update: British police arrest people ‘just for the DNA’; More than three-quarters of young black men are on system, watchdog says

Note from JWR:

A reminder that the special two-week 25% off sale on canned Mountain House foods at Ready Made Resources ends in less than a week. They are offering free shipping on full (“unbroken”) cases lots. But because of the higher handling costs, if you “mix and match” cans within cases, shipping will be charged.

Letter Re: A SurvivalBlogger Reviews Roland Emmerich’s 2012

Jim:
I saw [Roland Emmerich’s new movie] 2012, the movie and must say it failed to live up to my hopes. It depended little on Mayan predictions and the coming of Planet X or Niburu but instead on some very iffy particle physics, the rapid heating of Earth’s interior due to an intense neutrino flux from an immense solar flare, the “largest ever recorded.”

Never mind that a flare that size would have fried all grids, chips, and transistors and reset civilization back to the early iron age due to Carrington Effect. Nobody would have known what the hell was going on because communications would be kaput. But in the movie cell phones, Internet and television were fully functional until the earth gave way beneath them or volcanic blasts engulfed them.

I wasn’t looking for good science fiction though, just stunning special effects, and I thought the inclusion of Niburu would have presented some great possibilities: approaching extra-systemic planet causing miles-high tides, polar ice fields deposited on Europe, supersonic winds stripping Earth’s surface down to bedrock, and so on. It could have been downright Velikovskian. And the material was right there for the taking; Niburu is the Web favorite of the more ardent 2012 speculation.

Instead we were treated to one car chase after another, except the chasing car was the fragmenting, tilting, erupting landscape/seascape and the fleeing vehicle was alternately a limousine, a motor home, a small prop executive plane, a Russian cargo jet, and finally a Chinese-built “ark” that narrowly escapes going accordion on the north face of Everest.

The massive inundations for which the arks (4-6 of them maybe) were presciently and speedily built were not caused by the slippage of the Earth’s crust mentioned in the movie, but instead were giant tsunamis produced by powerful earthquakes. Fill a cookie sheet with water then jerk the cookie sheet across the counter. Inertia will keep most of the water where it is, flooding the counter. That’s crustal shift; oceans stay where they are while land mass moves, causing wholesale landmass inundation. The 10.5 magnitude undersea quakes blamed in the movie would be woefully insufficient in my opinion. A very large region of ocean floor would have to experience sudden, huge, tilting uplift to move the amount of water required to flood the Himalayas if crustal shift were not the cause.

Well, I suppose on the bright side there yet remains the opportunity to produce a film based on Velikovsky’s “Worlds in Collision” with all the effects I was hoping for. They had better hurry it along though. 2012 is not far off . Regards, – Jim McC

JWR Replies: Upon seeing the promotional trailer for 2012, My #2 Son’s droll comment was “I don’t think the script writer likes America’s landmarks.” Prepare to munch some popcorn at this blockbuster thrill ride, but don’t expect to learn many practical survival tips from this film. For that, get a copy of the Jeremiah Johnson DVD.

Letter Re: Preparing Your Spouse

I really liked the post about preparing your spouse but saw one thing missing or at least not stated explicitly. Your spouse needs to know how to do these things and the only way to really learn most of these practical tasks is to do them with your spouse. Binders [full of information] are great but unless you know how to execute all the steps, where all the necessary tools and pieces are and how to use them binders are not going to help much. To illustrate the importance of actually doing something I will relay a recent tale from my house.

A while back I tried to make Spanish rice from the recipe Wifey always uses. Every ingredient and step was there but I didn’t know what a couple of the steps meant. I was able to get her help me figure them out but if she wasn’t here I definitely would not have had Spanish rice with dinner. Now that I know how to do all the steps I could probably look back at that same recipe in a year or two and make it.

That same point could be easily applied to getting the chainsaw ready for the season or making soap or any other task which is done (even almost) exclusively by one spouse. Think of it like an Infantry Platoon. You are probably never going to be able to shoot the M240 like the gunner or program the radio as fast as the RTO but everyone should at least know how to use both of these essential tools. An added benefit of making sure your spouse is at least somewhat familiar with all of the household/ preparedness tasks you do (and visa versa) is spending time together doing productive things. Spending a weekend afternoon doing something together that is normally done alone can sure make another boring chore into a fun day. Also as always many hands make light work. – TheOtherRyan (of Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest)

Letter Re: Mountain Money Isn’t

Mr. Rawles-
I’ve seen it repeated everywhere that an item of big importance in survival preps is toilet paper. I do not understand this, myself. While I do use the stuff, I grew up as the son of immigrants from an impoverished nation, and learned a bit about the bathroom customs of the old country. Basically, my progenitors would use a small bucket of water and their hand to wash themselves post-elimination. Frankly, I think it gets the area cleaner than the best 3-ply can. It would put less of a load on a septic tank, if you’ve got one. It certainly costs less. It’s far more gentle on your skin than wiping, and less likely to irritate or exacerbate a hemorrhoidal condition. And you can store a lot of food and ammunition in the space that a 1-year supply would occupy. It’s even a more “green” solution to that particular problem, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I understand that there may be a bit of a “blech” factor in getting used to this manner of post-BM cleansing. And in areas where water will be difficult to obtain, this may prove less convenient than storing a pallet of hind-end wipes. I think, though, for a great many people, this would be a superior hygienic solution.

Sincerely, – E.B.G.

JWR Replies: This method is not appealing to most First Worlders, but I must admit that it is pragmatic, if the requisite sanitary measures are taken. Just be sure to to store lots of soap, and in the long term, be prepared to make your own soap. (Regardless, be sure to get a copy of Anne Watson’s book Smart Soapmaking.)

Letter Re: Which Items Need a “Cool Dry Place”, and Which Don’t?

Mr. Editor,
It seems that when we have to store anything it is always recommended to store in a cool dark area with low humidity. What things can we store in less than favorable spots like attics or outside sheds where the temps and humidity varies greatly? Thanks for all you have done for us. – Bill H. in Delaware

JWR Replies: Humidity can be problematic, but some items that can tolerate fairly high temperature inside a shed include salt, ammunition, paper products, and many cleaning supplies and lubricants. (But do your homework on potential leaks and fire danger, especially for items in liquid form, or that are packaged in aerosol cans!) If you live in a humid climate, then be sure to keep your eyes peeled for airtight containers–the bigger the better. Five and six gallon plastic buckets with gasketed lids have become ubiquitous. If you are creative, you can store a surprising variety of items in these buckets. For example, I found one brand of meat butchering paper that come in 10″ diameter bulk rolls, that when turned on end fit perfectly in a 6 gallon bucket, with just an inch to spare at the top.
Also note that in addition to the tried-and-true milsurp ammo cans, some military surplus stores sell airtight shipping containers that were originally made for military electronics–made variously of metal, plastic, or fiberglass. I’ve see these up to nine cubic foot capacity! In the “Rawles Gets You Ready” family preparedness course, I describe using silica gel desiccant packets, as a well as Golden Rod Dehumidifiers. OBTW, these days, the least expensive source of bulk silica gel, is the new variety of “crystals” unscented odor -absorbing cat litter, such as Tidy Cats Crystals and the Amazing Cat Litter brand. (OBTW, these cat litters are often sold in three or four gallon rectangular HDPE buckets, which can be re-used for storing non-food items.

Letter Re: Seeking Advice on Safe Food Storage, and Recommended Sources

Mr. Rawles,
My test indictor for properly functioning Oxygen Absorbing Packets while packaging bulk storage in food grade buckets is the downward pull on the lid. If a good seal is formed by the lid (which is imperative for any method of purging the Oxygen) the packets will cause a vacuum to be created in the bucket and the lid will be concave. It may take up to three (3) days for this to happen. I have had one bucket so far not seal properly and it did not display the concave lid. I replaced the lid and absorber packets and the lid then showed that a vacuum had been created. This is also how I determine if the seal is holding over the long term.

A good source for the absorber packets is Walton Feed [in Montpelier, Idaho, near the Wyomimg state line]. They sell packets of 100 at a very reasonable price along with buckets, lids, and bags. Not to mention all the other bulk foods at good prices for those of us located in the Pacific Northwest. I drove from Montana to their location in Idaho to pick up my first large order and saved twice what the shipping would have been over what I spent in fuel to make the drive. I also liked not having to explain to anyone about a large delivery of food. – K.L. in Montana

Economics and Investing:

GG flagged this: The Debt Bomb: Uncle Sam on teaser rate

Randy F. sent this: Payback Time – Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

Items from The Economatrix:

Stocks Climb on Report Showing Jump in Home Sales

Late Payments on Credit Cards Drop in 3Q

IMF Chief: Global Economy Still Fragile

AP Survey: Debt Stress Turns Shoppers into Scrooges

Gas Prices Fall to Begin Busy Travel Week

Bets Rise on Rich Country Derivative Defaults

Gold Hits New High Among Rising Political Tension

Couples Turn to “Shift-Parenting” to Stay Afloat

End of the Checkbook: Bankers Drawing Plans, Could End by 2018

Dollar Slump Persisting as Analysts See No End

From that oft-quoted French Think Tank: Red Alert: The Second Wave of the Financial Tsunami. It could hit between the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2010

The Great Stimulus Debate of 2009

Letter Re: Preparing Your Spouse

Mr. Rawles,
Several years ago I took a serious fall and was out of commission for several months. My husband had to completely take over the household responsibilities during that time. Fortunately, he was working at home and I was available to give him direction and information. Had I not been, he would have really struggled to figure out just how I got things done. As he was buttoning up the house in preparation for winter this year it occurred to me that, if he were suddenly unavailable, I too would be at a loss to remember all of the details that go into his part of household management. Realizing that each of us has a critical role to play in running our mini farm put me to work on putting together a plan that will provide each of us with a guide for taking over should we be thrust into managing alone.

I started with two simple three ring binders, a sheaf of notebook paper and twelve pocket dividers for each notebook. Each divider is a one month plan. I use the notepaper to jot down what we each do each month. November would include things like planting the seed garlic, getting my daughter a birthday gift and ordering the turkeys (for me) and getting the cider press under cover, turning the compost heap and replacing furnace filters (for my husband). I use the divider pockets for things like business cards of businesses we use or to hold index cards with instructions for various tasks. This month, we have to get new tires put on the truck so the pocket will hold the information on tire size and the contact information for the business we use. In December, when I usually put in a big wheat order, I will include the recipe I use for the bread we all like, the contact information for the farm I order the wheat from and directions for how I store it.  My husband knows when to order a load of compost for the garden and I know when the fiddleheads will be out. He will note when he orders new queens for the hives and I will jot down where the best place is get the kids new sneakers.

These may seem like small things but they aren’t. They are the details that make this house run smoothly. It is very easy to lose sight of the contributions of a partner, especially when they are done so well as to be invisible in execution. For instance, I expect that no one in my family actually notices when I make up a new batch of laundry soap. It just appears. I never see my husband sharpen the saw blades. I just know they are always good to go.

If we are both diligent in keeping our notes, in one year we will have a comprehensive guide to what needs to be done, when and how it is managed. An added benefit is that it will be kind of gratitude journal. We each know the other works hard but to see it on paper will probably be an eye opener. I know my husband had a new appreciation for just how much I accomplished when he had to do it.

If a crisis catches one of us away from home, the other is going to have to do the work of both. How much easier it will be with a guide. – A Prepared Wife