lets discuss preps for disasters

[LittleBill21]

My spring is 1300' from the house. The storage tanks are about 100' below the spring. Ran two lines down from the storage, one for supply off the tank bottoms, and one off the tank top to take the overflow....spring feeds the tanks constantly. The overflow runs to a fish pond, and the overflow from it drops into another fish pond, which supply us with catfish.

We've run literally miles of pipe around the place, supplying buildings, greenhouses, animal feeding areas, and so on......so much that I made a map of buried water/electrical lines on large sketch paper with photos of critical points that now runs 5 pages. Told my wife if I die and she sells the place, the map is $5,000 extra if they buy it now, and $10,000 if they want it later !

how do you guys deal with freezing and bacteria for water that is not moving?

 

[TnAndy]

My storage is two 1500gal tanks, inside an insulated, 10x20' building built back into the mountain below the spring. Freezing isn't an issue.

For sterilization, we use a Sterilight brand UV light, the stainless upright tube in the far end of this photo.

 

[Garycw]

TnAndy has it ALL together. I could only hope to do 1/2 as well. I've only been at it 6-7 years though so far. We do also have a good spring the house used to run off of for years. prior to us owning. It still flows and has a 5' dia concrete ring with concrete lid & 18" square access hole & spillway It's set about 4' down in ground.
Also have city water another spring & pond on property.
TnAndy could write a book on this stuff !

 

[GPintheMitten]

TnAndy, what do you do for power outage?

 

[TnAndy]

TnAndy, what do you do for power outage?

We have an 11kw grid tie solar power system that in normal mode backfeeds the grid, and provides us with a slight credit each month (currently about $900 for a year or so). 6kw of it (I built sort of a split system) has the ability to go off grid with the flip of a 100amp transfer switch. The battery backup to this is a 1200amp/hr @24v AGM battery.

12 two volt cells, each cell weighs around 200lbs.

The solar doesn't cover every use on the place, but it does do most of it. We use wood for heat (fan on the wood stove requires power), propane for cooking (with wood cook stove backup), propane for water heating (planning to incorporate solar in with that this year to pre-heat the water). We use a pressure booster pump on the spring water, but gravity gives us 25psi, which we used for 30 years before I got around to putting the booster pump on last year (but we really enjoy that extra pressure ! )

The main things I was interested in was lighting, refrigeration, and some power tool use if needed. The 6kw covers that. Assuming the grid were going to be down long term, I'd rewire the remaining 5kw into the system and we'd have plenty of power for a very long time.

I also have a couple of generators, more for use around the farm: A 5kw Coleman, an 8kw Miller welder/generator, and an older 4kw Onan that runs at 1800rpm I plan to convert to propane....and maybe wood gas down the road (another one of those 'round to it' projects).

 

[TnAndy]

Fool software here is bad about double posting, so I deleted the 2nd copy of the SAME post

 

[GPintheMitten]

Very interesting what everyone does.

 

[MossRoad]

....
Before you say: "just siphon the gas out" try doing that. You do not want a snootful of gas in an emergency.....

Get yourself one of these tiny squeeze bulb siphons. They work great and no sucking fumes. However, some cars are difficult to get a siphon tube down into.

 

[Egon]

Siphoning gas from vehicle tanks gets more complicated when they have the blowback ball in the line.

Don't have to suck. Just put ones thumb over the end of the tube and pull up. Release the thumb and push down and repeat the process. Works well.

 

[Garycw]

Siphoning gas from vehicle tanks gets more complicated when they have the blowback ball in the line. Don't have to suck. Just put ones thumb over the end of the tube and pull up. Release the thumb and push down and repeat the process. Works well.

That's good info to know. Those little $3 bulbs work good too for small stuff.
Newer vehicles are a challenge