What Preps are you doing this week? Part 11

[pseudonym]

Ok I’ve been following all this with great interest (we don’t have a generator and still debating the solar options etc) and I’ve, just about, managed to keep up with this but you lost me at ceiling lighting from USB sockets …?

Just type in usb light bulb into google many varieties pop up.

https://www.winfieldsoutdoors.co.uk/out ... Real+Group

There's a few options most simple is a very small "net curtain hook" screwed into the ceiling centre another near to the wall.. hook light on central hook use a usb A extension cable to turn light then hook cable close to the wall and down to the power station/ bank

That's the idea Andy, still running through conduit though.

[pseudonym]

https://www.winfieldsoutdoors.co.uk/out ... Real+Group

There's a few options most simple is a very small "net curtain hook" screwed into the ceiling centre another near to the wall.. hook light on central hook use a usb A extension cable to turn light then hook cable close to the wall and down to the power station/ bank

Here's mine:

[Adjee]

Not sure if this should be posted here or elsewhere I will leave up to the moderators to decide.

Stocks of fuels for emergency use.

I realize this may not apply to all members but here due to the extremes of weather and being snowed in is not an infrequent event we have to cater for this (along with any possible fuel shortages due to the various events that may arise). We maintain a small quantity of fuel here at home and some distributed/stored at a few locations in the vicinity for emergency use.

Today, with the snow having not left the mountain tops for a week I have been topping up and rotating our stocks.

We keep a supply of Butane gas, petrol and diesel along with several bottles of lamp oil (not forgetting wood which is our main fuel supply).

Butane gas, we have 8 full cylinders stored plus two always connected ready for or in use. These we refill at a gas station about 90 minutes away. They can be used for various things, cooking, heating etc. (all our pressure canning is done on gas but water bathing food preservation is done with wood).  

Petrol and diesel we store @ 200 litres of each in various sizes of jerry cans (metal and plastic) obviously these fuels deteriorate so we mix in an additive to extend their estimated life expiry time. Petrol is estimated to last 3 months and diesel 6 months before their quality starts deteriorating. The additive we use is meant to extend the life of the fuel to 12 and 24 months respectively. However we have yet to fully test this as the fuel is normally rotated out before these storage dates. (This summer we set a jerry can of each apart to test the manufacturer's claims so we will see how they work out).

Wood wise we keep various types, separated for their different burning properties but for general use we use oak. We store @ 3 years supply and replenish it as it is used. We also collect all the dead wood from the forests around us for use in the outside petchka and fire pit. It is surprising how much you can gather in over the course of a year.

So that is a brief insight to our fuel storage/preparedness situation. What do others do?

[GillyBee]

We keep cooking gas on hand in the form of bistro cartridges & Camping Gaz cylinders and have a couple of cooking stoves that will run outdoors on almost any other fuel between them.
Fuel for the car is not stored for 2 reasons. One is lack of a suitable storage location and the other is bitter experience. We are city based & I have no confidence that we would be able to keep the car running, fuel or not if supplies were constrained. We have had the fuel lines cut to steal the fuel a couple of times now. The first was during the 2001 fuel crisis which forced us onto cycling pronto.

[mcprepper]

Quite a relevant post for us as we’re not on mains gas and have frequent power cuts.
Cooker is electric oven and gas hob - we have 3 large bottles of propane gas at any one time - lasts ages! We’re on oil central heating so always top up when it gets to half full (though to be honest it’s so expensive that we avoid turning it on - just once a day to keep everything ticking over).
We have two wood burners so we keep a hefty supply of logs and grab any deadwood when we’re out and about. We burn primarily hardwood - oak, beech & ash.
We have a variety of lanterns, head torches, solar/wind up torches etc and enough ikea candles to light up most of the rest of the Lake District.
The one thing we don’t store is fuel for our cars - one petrol and one diesel- we always keep them topped up between 3/4 and full but have never really gone down the road of storing fuel - not sure why really …

[pseudonym]

Added to my Sovereign stacks.

[Frnc]

Just spent all morning on the phone to HMRC. They kicked me off the Rent a Room scheme, because one lodger works from home one day a week. It's going to cost me £1,000 a year. Bummer. I can deduct two thirds (because of two lodgers) of council tax, water, insurance, gas, electric and repairs. I put re-slating the roof down, and got a warning saying 'this is unusually high, please amend', so hope they let it go through. Their website says a new kitchen counts as a repair, so it should be ok. But improvements don't get allowed, as they count as capital.

[ForgeCorvus]

Added to my Sovereign stacks.

For me read "Silver"

[Yorkshire Andy]

Quite a relevant post for us as we’re not on mains gas and have frequent power cuts.
Cooker is electric oven and gas hob - we have 3 large bottles of propane gas at any one time - lasts ages! We’re on oil central heating so always top up when it gets to half full (though to be honest it’s so expensive that we avoid turning it on - just once a day to keep everything ticking over).
We have two wood burners so we keep a hefty supply of logs and grab any deadwood when we’re out and about. We burn primarily hardwood - oak, beech & ash.
We have a variety of lanterns, head torches, solar/wind up torches etc and enough ikea candles to light up most of the rest of the Lake District.
The one thing we don’t store is fuel for our cars - one petrol and one diesel- we always keep them topped up between 3/4 and full but have never really gone down the road of storing fuel - not sure why really …

If you've got a big kerro tank (heating oil). Id look into a Chinese diesel heater or two. They run of a 12v battery and sip fuel the bigger units give out 5kw of heat run on about half a litre of fuel per hour on max power probably more economical than running the oil heater to keep the house warm few installation options but they belt some heat out

[Yorkshire Andy]

Picked up a couple of first aid kits in Lidl £4.99 each din approved (German standard) for cars

Ones in our cars are out of date no massive drama if I use it on myself but using out of date kit on a third party as a qualified first aider won't go down well if someone gets an infection etc .. plasters loose their stickiness bandages loose their elastic properties for the sake of a fiver each