tco-lincs wrote: ↑Sat Jan 17, 2026 2:29 pm
More of a safety prep weekend for me, fitted fire alarms in the children's bedrooms (already have nest ones in hallways).
Very important between a 4 year old been curious with a lighter they've found, or a 15 year old with ruddy hair straighteners left powered on left on the bed by whilst they raid the fridge they will probably test them for you at some point
If the bedroom doors shut the room would be a raging inferno by the time the one on a hallway or landing finally detects the smoke....
From the daughters bedroom fire it went off very quickly but she'd already alerted me
If your roughing it, Your doing it wrong
Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine
tco-lincs wrote: ↑Sat Jan 17, 2026 2:29 pm
More of a safety prep weekend for me, fitted fire alarms in the children's bedrooms (already have nest ones in hallways).
Very important between a 4 year old been curious with a lighter they've found, or a 15 year old with ruddy hair straighteners left powered on left on the bed by whilst they raid the fridge they will probably test them for you at some point
If the bedroom doors shut the room would be a raging inferno by the time the one on a hallway or landing finally detects the smoke....
From the daughters bedroom fire it went off very quickly but she'd already alerted me
Oh wow, you managed to get it under control I take it?
tco-lincs wrote: ↑Sat Jan 17, 2026 2:29 pm
More of a safety prep weekend for me, fitted fire alarms in the children's bedrooms (already have nest ones in hallways).
Very important between a 4 year old been curious with a lighter they've found, or a 15 year old with ruddy hair straighteners left powered on left on the bed by whilst they raid the fridge they will probably test them for you at some point
If the bedroom doors shut the room would be a raging inferno by the time the one on a hallway or landing finally detects the smoke....
From the daughters bedroom fire it went off very quickly but she'd already alerted me
Oh wow, you managed to get it under control I take it?
The 4 yo was me set fire to the lounge carpet any my mum stamped it out there was still the burn mark when we moved out when I was about 10 ... The hair straighteners was my sister fortunately no fire just melting synthetic insulation of the duvet and the smell....
But about 2 years ago a lazy Saturday night here was shattered by the shrill shout of DAD FIRE! as the middle child's led bedroom light decided to demonstrate why we prep ....
LEDs should not be catching fire. Closest I got recently was a kettle plug which was making a slight sound. I found slight melting on the back of it. Ditched the kettle.
Recently I saw a spark once when plugging something in. Also thought I heard a slight crackle. I've changed that extension lead for one with individual switches, so I can have the power off while plugging and unplugging things. I do that with the other extension lead in my room too, which I also changed, and the wall sockets in the kitchen. In fact pretty much everything. My doorbell plug is too wide for switched extension leads though. So it has a lead of its own.
Had a knee give way today quite suddenly on the stairs. Good job I wasn't carrying a brew. I always hold the bannister. Will have to be extra careful the next few days.
Got a delivery coming from Amazon, but it's not really prep. One item is a digital fridge freezer thermometer to check my frozen stuff. I have an analog one, but by the time I've wiped the frost off and read it, it's jumped up. The digital one shows minimum.
Anyone else turned their heating down? I figured 4-5 mild days, so turned my flow from 61 to 58. I'm also having to turn the central heating OFF at the thermostat, around 4pm, to meet budget. The other reason is my wool duvet was a bit warm the other morning. I've figured out that I need to make sure my room is below 19.3 when I go to bed, with this duvet. In between, I can use my electric radiator, but I only used it for 15 minutes yesterday. I've also set my heat to go off an hour earlier every day, for days I don't manually turn it off. I may have to turn that back if it gets really cold.
Got AAA batteries coming on Thursday on Amazon Subscribe and Save, to replace some old ones in my emergency grab bag/BoB. I get NiMH rechargeable Amazon Basics, and charge them once a year. I have at least 16 in my BOB. They fit my main head torch, my hand torch, two mini hand torches, and a magnifier.
Frnc wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 7:47 am
Anyone else turned their heating down?
With temps of -5c during the day and -15c overnight not taking into account the wind chill it will be a while before my thermals, handwarmers and log burners are mothballed this year!
Frnc wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 7:47 am
Anyone else turned their heating down?
With temps of -5c during the day and -15c overnight not taking into account the wind chill it will be a while before my thermals, handwarmers and log burners are mothballed this year!
Where are you? Here is south Manchester, most of last night was 7-8°. That would be normal in the middle of May!
Frnc wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 7:47 am
Anyone else turned their heating down?
With temps of -5c during the day and -15c overnight not taking into account the wind chill it will be a while before my thermals, handwarmers and log burners are mothballed this year!
Where are you? Here is south Manchester, most of last night was 7-8°. That would be normal in the middle of May!
Out in the sticks, Borderline Central/North East Bulgaria.
Adjee wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 9:36 am
With temps of -5c during the day and -15c overnight not taking into account the wind chill it will be a while before my thermals, handwarmers and log burners are mothballed this year!
Where are you? Here is south Manchester, most of last night was 7-8°. That would be normal in the middle of May!
Out in the sticks, Borderline Central/North East Bulgaria.
Ah, yes, you are getting Arctic air due to a polar votex distruption and a low pressure system. Currently it's missing the UK. We must be getting warm air from the south.
Phew, a prep that was almost too late! Backups found wanting.
The laptop died with the failure of it's 'v' key which locked down. I.e., laptop quite useless. Now the amount of stuff I could have lost access to is enormous. Gazillion passwords to all sorts of finance and business related stuff.
I pulled out the spare lappy, with the hope of transferring drives across, but that had a duff battery and power brick. Fortunately, my techy friend talked me through disconnecting the internal keyboard to use an external one on the original lappy.
Within minutes I'd ordered a replacement keyboard and a replacement spare lappy off the bay. When they arrive, I'll be setting up full standby redundancy.
Passwords live in lastpass, but with no proper access to the internet, I would not have had convenient access to anything, not even the ability to order off ebay.
2 is 1 and 1 is none..... and I came that close.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought
set fire to the lounge carpet any my mum stamped it out there was still the burn mark when we moved out when I was about 10 
... The hair straighteners was my sister fortunately no fire just melting synthetic insulation of the duvet and the smell....