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we've been snowed in for almost 3 weeks now. got out 1 day between snows and freezes. the weather is suppose to break on sunday and next week should be warm and Very wet. Almost all of the Greenhouse components have arrived, there was 1 day warm enough to paint the PVC poles. PVC can not come in direct contact with the UV/radiant/thermal coated greenhouse plastic or the plastic will deteriorate faster, voids warranty if you have one. we got a deal instead of a warranty. greenhouse plastic of the size we are using would have cost 200 bucks To Ship on top of the 3 to 400 price tag. The folks at Gritt's Greenhouse happened to have an ancient roll that no longer fit their Ginormous greenhouses it was a considerable savings. thanks Gritt's Greenhouse for hooking us up with the plastic for our greenhouse and a bunch of used coconut hull hydroponic grow bags (to be used for seed starting soil amendment/potting soil) the solar food dehydrator is finally complete, waiting for assembly. after analyzing the cost & time of building a cabinet style dehydrator box we were pleased to find this double shower tent that should serve the purpose by hanging our collapsible dehydrating racks from the roof and injecting the solar can heater air at the bottom of the tent. we're mid process on bottling 2 batches of blackberry wine and a gallon of elderberry. h's producing a low budget infomercial for a friends product. it was suppose to be finished by now be we got snowed in. mouse over the image for caption - click to make it huge The electric went out for 9 hours yesterday. It goes out frequently throughout the year, especially in fall, winter and early spring. I started a log of outages. This is one of the main reasons we decided to dehydrate and can as much of our harvest as possible this year. Last year we froze most of the bounty (it was much smaller last year). As people who are seeking to get off the grid anyway and having taken some of the necessary steps. I was not too worried about communications and internet or cooking some food we got that covered in our bug out bus. So I decided to skip doing anything that required opening the fridge or freezer and went about my day.
By the time I got off the hill my phone had lost power. The electric was still out so I rounded up the WiFi, laptop and phone charger and headed out to the bug out bus. The solar panel charged batteries were fully charged so I plugged my phone into the 6000 watt pure sine (house sized) inverter and started setting up the laptop and WiFi.
The phone wasn't charging. The inverter was reading "protect" instead of "power". I checked all the connections. Checked the water level in the batteries and found 1 of the 4 was dry, filled it. Still says "protect". I disconnected the one that had gone dry. I had thought that that battery had been disconnected for a long time. It wasn't. Still says "protect". The batteries still said they were fully charged. Then I noticed that the inverters Ground cable was missing, gone, not fallen off, gone. So I hooked up a new ground cable. Still said "protect" and would not power anything. At this point I remembered the 12volt dc (cigarette lighter) power system installed on the bus during it's maiden voyage to Burning Man. I found and attached the accessory to that power outlet and plugged in the car charger inverter. It didn't work. Checked the wiring to the power outlet. Nothing obviously wrong. The electric had been out for over 7 hours at this point darkness was coming and I was without communication to the outside world. I ATV'd the mile to the neighbors. They'd been told it would be back on at 2, then 4:30... it was 5:30. I decided I'd better use the rest of my daylight to hook up the propane gas camp stove on the bus so I could cook some food and if it was still out in the morning I could start cooking everything that would be going bad in the fridge and freezer. The propane tank to stove connecter would not attach properly to the stove. Each time I turned on the gas, it spewed out through the connection. I'd had this problem a few times before but after a couple times of reconnecting I had been able to get the connectors tight and safe. Not today. It was starting to get too dark to see the connecters even with the solar shed light (which did work) so I pulled out the flashlight that I had found earlier while looking for ground wire for the inverter. It had worked when I found it but that must been the last of the battery life. It wasn't working now. I quickly raided my stash of batteries; there were exactly the 4 AAA's that I needed in the bag. I popped them in. They didn't work. After about a half hour of connecting and reconnecting the hose to the stove; I gave up. Having totally failed as a prepper with a electric outage, I sat in the powerless, foodless bug out bus and contemplated what there was in the closet that I could open with a can opener and eat as is... As I started back into the dark house with a candle, the lights came on. |
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December 2015
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