09:55 – Work continues on the prepping book. At the moment, I’m writing about so-called strategic relocation. I’m considering titling the chapter Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire.
Too many preppers have romantic notions about upping sticks and relocating to a remote cabin in the mountains of Idaho or wherever. Those who actually do so are likely to find that reality bites. Other than those who have a successful Internet business or can telecommute, few people will be able to earn a living in their new remote locations. And that’ll actually be the least of their problems.
Then there’s the separation issue. For most men, that’s not an issue. Men will move across the state, country, or world without thinking much about it. We are the center of our own universes. Women, on the other hand, are all about relationships, family, and friends. Guys figure we’ll just form new relationships, if we need any. Women want to keep the relationships they already have.
About the only reason I can think of to make a major move is water supply. If I lived in densely populated areas of the Southwest or the Mountain States or southern California–areas where the water supply is insufficient for the current population–I’d relocate to somewhere with a nice excess of surface- and ground-water. There’s nothing anyone can do to prepare for long-term drought other than move.
Which is not to say that there’s anything wrong with relocating for the right reasons. But most preppers put far too many constraints on destination locations. There are lots of “rules” such as being 20 miles (or whatever) from the nearest Interstate or 4-lane, being no closer than 10 miles to the nearest town with a population greater than 1,000, being no closer than 100 miles downwind of a nuclear power plant, and so on. Ultimately, none of them make much sense, and if you try to follow all of them you’ll find that there’s literally nowhere in the continental US that meets your criteria.
I mean, who cares about Interstates? Even a minor emergency turns them into parking lots. An emergency on the scale that many preppers are worried about would make Interstates completely impassable within a few minutes. Wrecked, broken down, and abandoned vehicles would see to that. Same thing on the big city issue. Most people don’t realize that very few cities of any size have evacuation plans at all. Not because someone dropped the ball, but because it’s literally impossible to evacuate them. There are simply too many people in too small an area. In any large-scale catastrophe, city dwellers would simply die off in droves. They’re not going anywhere. They can’t drive out, and they’re sure not prepared to walk any distance.
Barbara and I live on the far northwestern edge of Winston-Salem, a city of about 250,000. We’re talking about relocating, but when we do it won’t be to a remote mountain cabin in Idaho. It’ll be to small-town North Carolina, somewhere to the northwest of where we are now, probably up toward the Virginia line. Maybe Dobson or Sparta, which are 30 to 60 miles from where we live now. During normal times, that makes it easy to do a Costco run every month or two, just as we do now, or to come into Winston to visit friends or whatever, or for them to visit us. If/when things do get bad, that 30 to 60 miles of separation from the underclass population of Winston-Salem should be more than sufficient to isolate us from the rioting, looting, and burning and other nasties.
About the only reason I can think of to make a major move is water supply. If I lived in densely populated areas of the Southwest or the Mountain States or southern California–areas where the water supply is insufficient for the current population–I’d relocate to somewhere with a nice excess of surface- and ground-water. There’s nothing anyone can do to prepare for long-term drought other than move.
In the next few months, we are moving onto a floating home on the Columbia River in Portland. That, combined with a water purifier, should solve any water worries. We’ll have our sailboat tied to the house if we need a quick escape. All I need is a good deck gun to fend off borders. There will be a good source of food in and on the river.
If it were my choice, I’d move to a place like Port Townsend, but, as Bob says, the female social network precludes that.
“Captain” Rick in Portland
Grab a Sawyer PointZeroTWO water filter. They’re around $120 on Amazon, filter out even viruses, and are rated for a million gallons. I got one in a couple weeks ago, and stuck it in our long-term supplies. Whatever you do, don’t use it until you really need it. It doesn’t survive freezing once you’ve put any water through it. Dry in its original package it’s good indefinitely.
The flow rate is sufficient to support 50+ people. You’ll also need at least two 5-gallon buckets like those sold at Home Depot, but five or more of those would be better. You’ll want to have what you need to set up a pre-filtering system (two 5-gallon buckets and a bag of two each of sand, pea gravel, and charcoal).
Don’t even think about buying a Berkey.
Grab a Sawyer PointZeroTWO water filter.
Based on your prior recommendation, the Sawyer is on my Amazon wish list. I’ll ask for one as a housewarming gift. I’m waiting until we’re moved in as we’re trying to move as little as possible. We have lived in our current house for 29 years and the houseboat is about half the size, so we’re in the process of serious downsizing. Moving is a royal P.I.T.A.
Rick in Portland
“… romantic notions about upping sticks…”
Did you mean “pulling up stakes” or “up and moving to the sticks?”
If not, I’ve never heard it expressed that way before.
“Then there’s the separation issue. For most men, that’s not an issue.”
There it is. The sibling wives, the two of them, plus my sister, will not EVER move outta eastern Maffachufetts, come Hell or high wottuh. And my brothers have evidently more or less resigned themselves to this. To that I must add that if I were thirty years younger, I’d seriously consider either moving way out West to the sticks or to someplace like Chile or Paraguay. Now it’s too late; I ain’t about to roll out very fah from here at 61. So we’re hunkering down where we are and with the devils we know full well.
Your other points are well stated and apropos. We’re only four miles from I-89 but yeah, any major shit-storm will shut that right down, ditto the railroad line. That leaves a small airstrip about ten miles north of here and the Green Mountain Boys ANG unit thirty miles south. But not our concern. Our main worry as far as gremlins and goblins is the local white underclass pop around here, some of whom are engaged in criminal activities, like running meth labs and selling oxy, etc., and/or otherwise boozed up and blasting around in their shitbox vehicles. A bunch of them may also have firearms, but as to how slick they are with them outside of jacking deer is unknown at this time. Or how many of them have been involved in combat or police-type operations. Not many, I reckon. I intend to at least be on civil terms with the local cops, sheriff’s deputies, staties and Border Patrol guys in the meantime.
“All I need is a good deck gun to fend off borders.”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/HN-British-4-inch-submarine-gun-3.jpg
Thanks for the tips on the Berkey gear; I’ve seen more good recommendations for the Sawyer line.
I didn’t realize it, but “upping sticks” is a Briticism, referenced in the nautical sense in OED.
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2007/05/to-up-sticks-to-pull-up-stakes.html
I guess that comes from a lifetime of reading lots of Brit books, watching Brit TV shows, and so on.
As to the Berkey, I just don’t trust it. Who would engineer a product like that? The most common failure mode would be a leak that produces unfiltered water at the outlet, without any indication that the source water bypassed the filters?
I’m also suspicious of some of the things posted on their website. They “refuted” a study of their product done by a state university lab by basically saying that the university didn’t know what it was doing. I wish I could find that again, because it’s a huge red flag for me.
I also mistrust claims of tippity-top secret proprietary filtration methods. I can’t find anywhere that Berkey specifies the absolute particle size it filters. They have a long description of why they don’t, but again I mistrust them.
Thought so.
Well, Dr. Bob, we live here in America now, and we said buh-bye to yon Perfidious Albion long, long ago. LOL.
In my considered historical view this is still, though losing ground, a British Protestant country, like it or not. And despite me being a Roman Catholic, I cling like white on rice to my 1611 KJV and 1559 BCP regardless. I also much prefer serious British and Irish literature to anything we produce here in North Murka. That goes also, apparently, for most movies and tee-vee shows.
Case in point: the Murkan version of “House of Cards” versus the original Brit series. No contest. The former stole blatantly from the latter, too.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/HN-British-4-inch-submarine-gun-3.jpg
That might be a little big for a 33 foot sailboat which displaces about 10,000 lbs. Any suggestions for something appropriate?
Incidentally, I’ve done some back-of-the-envelope modeling on evacuation during a real shitpot motherfucker of an emergency and I concluded that the tenth-value distance is on the close order of 15 miles. That is, only 10% of the original population would make it 15 miles outside the city; 10% of that 10%, or 1%, would make it to 30 miles, and 10% of that 1%–one in a thousand–would make it 45 miles.
I think most people think of 15 miles as no distance at all. Lots of them drive more than that every day. And 15 miles *is* no distance at all if you’re driving it on open roads during normal circumstances. Not a lot of people have ever *walked* 15 miles all at one go. I suspect most of them wouldn’t believe you if you told them that they probably couldn’t walk 15 miles in a full day if they were walking across open country or on clogged roads.
A 12-gauge Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 Marine version (in stainless steel) loaded with buckshot makes a hell of a deck gun. With slugs aimed at the waterline, it punches big pretty holes in fiberglass, too.
Agreed on that 15-mile calculation and the outward weeding out of urban refugees, which I’ve known for a real long time. Guys would wail to me about the inner-city gremlins swarming out to the ‘burbs, raping and pillaging, etc. and I used to tell them those peeps ain’t gonna make it that fah. They’ll fag out or be shot to shit in record time.
15 miles on a nice day on paved roads or flat ground is still a 5-hour hike for most peeps; factor in ditches, culverts, downed tree limbs, fences, wire, any elevations or water “hazards,” bad weather, hours of darkness, and other peeps shooting at ya and it’s a whole different ball game. I used to calculate how it would be for me if I hadda hump from my job site at Big Blue thirty-two miles south of here back home and even in summer it would suck. Two sizable rivers, countless creeks and streams, over hill and dale, fences and wire, bridges, culverts, and who knows what other hazards. And that distance would still take, at best, 10-12 hours. In winter it would really suck. Figure on a full day’s hump in summuh and two days in wintuh, maybe hauling a pack filled with stuff and toting a rifle. At my age it would kinda kick my ass but I could do it. How many average north Murkan chumps could say the same these days?
“That might be a little big for a 33 foot sailboat which displaces about 10,000 lbs. Any suggestions for something appropriate?”
True, that. Assuming you’re staying in U.S. territorial wottuhz your best bet, IMHO, is all-weather versions of good pump shotguns and semi-auto rifles. Make sure everyone on board is competent in their use. Have plenty of ammo. I’d want at least one rifle in .308, and good all-weather optics. A night vision optic would also be nice. Plenty of illumination flares and solid, backup-powered communications gear. And a heavier-caliber rifle would not be amiss, either.
If you venture outside of Murkan wottuhz, you may wanna leave the gunz at home or sumthin; foreign places can be a major problem for gun owners.
If all hell breaks loose, I can be in the river in about five minutes. I’ll keep a supply of ammunition, fishing gear and a Sawyer filter on the boat. That should suffice for most emergencies.
Looks like an additional item for my wish list.
How wide is that river, i.e., how far to each shore from yer boat? How populated the area? Possible hostile peeps along the way? Other boats potentially hostile?
As a minimum, one solid weatherized semi-auto rifle, preferably a major manufacturer’s AR, where you could also slap a different, heavier-caliber upper receiver on it. And of course the weatherized shotgun.
I think a lot of people don’t consider that they have no control over timing of TEOTWAWKI. People seem to assume they’re going to be at home with their spouse and children when/if it happens. What’s their plan if it happens when they’re at work, their spouse is on a business trip, and their kids are in school? Disasters could care less about peoples personal schedules. It doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good to have a basement full of supplies if the Zombie Apocalypse happens when your 500 miles away at an IT conference or 30 minutes across town in a cubicle. There’s a lot of assumption out there that people are going to be at home with their supplies when the shit hits the fan. Best to have plans for the very likely possibility you’re not at home when “it” happens. Not that this reality should stop you from prepping and stockpiling at home, but plan for the possibility that you may not be home, be able to access your home, or even still have a home (fire, flood, etc.).
All good points, Mr. Chad. Forty-plus hours of the week a lotta peeps are away at work somewhere. When 9-11 hit, I was at work downtown from where we lived at the time, only about three miles on foot but all uphill. Other peeps lived many miles away, even tens of miles. If a similar event occurred while I was at Big Blue or the other dump where I worked recently, that woulda been 30-40 kinda rough miles, depending on weather. Meanwhile Mrs. OFD travels all over the country now and could well be 3,000 miles away when the chit blows up. Not to mention far-flung son and daughter and grandkids.
Hassling today with intermittent net issues; sites getting blocked at random with SSL errors no matter the browser. Seems OK right now after router and Winblows reboots, though. This has occurred since I put the Windoze machine on wired Ethernet and plugged all the net/phone/tee-vee stuff into a new multi-outlet surge protector downstairs. We also had phone outages on the landline while Mrs. OFD was talking with her biz manager long-distance to Mordor.
And 15 miles *is* no distance at all if you’re driving it on open roads during normal circumstances. Not a lot of people have ever *walked* 15 miles all at one go.
I have walked 60 miles in 4 days back when I was hiking at age 20. Just about killed me. Dropped 20 lbs, mostly water.
One word though, bicycle. I have ridden a bicycle 15 to 20 miles many times. A mountain bike at that. Not hard to do in a hour or two.
Ayup.
I’ll be going into that in significant detail. There are a lot of non-trivial considerations. Most people are not aware, for example, that schools that are in lock-down mode may very well refuse to turn children over to their parents. That means parents must be prepared to use lethal force or the threat thereof to get their own children back.
A bicycle is a great idea. Of course, if you’re evacuating on one you might as well paint a target on your back.
It doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good to have a basement full of supplies if the Zombie Apocalypse happens when your 500 miles away at an IT conference or 30 minutes across town in a cubicle.
Walking home from Houston to Montana after EMP: “77 Days in September: A Novel of Survival, Dedication, and Love (The Kyle Tait Series) (Volume 1)”
http://www.amazon.com/77-Days-September-Survival-Dedication/dp/1499616015/
Walking home from Tallahassee to Orlando after EMP: “Going Home: A Novel (The Survivalist Series)”
http://www.amazon.com/Going-Home-Novel-Survivalist-American/dp/0142181277/
Always have a bug out bag with you with food, water, guns, and ammo. Even if you are only 30 minutes away from home.
Now I need to practice this.
And, you can turn a bicycle into a push cart to walk 1,400 miles according to the 77 days in September book. Lots of people gonna want to see what is in your cart though.
How wide is that river, i.e., how far to each shore from yer boat? How populated the area? Possible hostile peeps along the way? Other boats potentially hostile?
About two miles wide. The Columbia is a big river. It is about 50 feet from the boat to the river. See https://www.google.com/maps/place/45%C2%B036'08.7%22N+122%C2%B037'38.2%22W/@45.602446,-122.6271111,113m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0
The building with the blue roof is the houseboat and the sailboat will be tied to the north side. The moorage is right in the river. The entrance is the opening just north of the houseboat. Any hostiles will be coming from the south. My main worry would be from the land, not other boats, but Bob’s suggestions of slugs should allow me to disable any hostile boats. In the event of unrest, I can head upstream as far as Bonneville dam (about 50 miles). I can’t count on going downstream far because there is a railroad swing bridge about three miles downstream and there’s no certainty that it will be open.
I put the collapse of society low on the list of probabilities. A major earthquake is more likely. Any weather related problems are likely to be short lived.
Rick in Portland
It doesn’t do a whole hell of a lot of good to have a basement full of supplies if the Zombie Apocalypse happens when your 500 miles away at an IT conference or 30 minutes across town in a cubicle.
If I’m not at home, I’ll improvise based on the situation. I should have a bug out bag in the car. Something else to add to the list.
Incidentally, I’ve done some back-of-the-envelope modeling on evacuation during a real shitpot mother****** of an emergency and I concluded that the tenth-value distance is on the close order of 15 miles. That is, only 10% of the original population would make it 15 miles outside the city; 10% of that 10%, or 1%, would make it to 30 miles, and 10% of that 1%–one in a thousand–would make it 45 miles.
Where is your 15 miles counted from ? I live in a county with 700,000 people and a city of over 100,000 people (the infamous Land of Sugar). Of course, there are 8,000,000 people in the ten county region and I am 30 miles away from downtown Houston. Sounds like I am dead meat. I do live in a suburban neighborhood with LOTS of guns though. Not sure about the food and ammo though.
I put the collapse of society low on the list of probabilities. A major earthquake is more likely. Any weather related problems are likely to be short lived.
The more I read about an EMP event, the more that I am convinced that a bad actor, North Korea or Iran, could pull this off.
BTW, a customer, an engineer, and I were talking about Stuxnet this morning. They are still in the middle of removing all internet access from their equipment controllers. Given that they have thousands of controllers, this is a non-trivial task for them since most of their controllers are in remote unmanned locations.
Out of curiosity, how will they control things in the future? Surely they still need the control.
“… but Bob’s suggestions of slugs should allow me to disable any hostile boats.”
Just bear in mind you may not be the only guy out there with a shotgun and slugs, and who views YOUR boat as hostile. Yeah, dat’s a big ol’ ribber out there. Damn. I do see a lotta boats and cars, no idea what the local pop is. We got us a 130-mile-long lake here, with outlets to the Atlantic, north and south, and which borders the Vampire State and Quebec, but we’re not really equipped for a lake-borne bug-out, not with just two canoes and four kayaks. Again, as in your case, potential threats are more likely to come from the shores, much narrower at those north and south outlets to the ocean.
But I put societal collapse at a higher likelihood now than a major earthquake here in North Murka. Picture post-Katrina coupled with 9-11 multiplied. Maybe not the whole country but enough of it, esp. the cities, to make life real exciting for a while.
“…the more that I am convinced that a bad actor, North Korea or Iran, could pull this off.”
Ditto, Mr. Lynn. Or a bad local actor, some disgruntled wannabe hadji type or loner teen boy gone mad as a hatter.
It was 9 here this morning and the temp has now rocketed to 16. Princess is expected back at some point tonight so Mommy can drive her to Montreal “first thing in the morning” for the New Year’s festivities up there tomorrow night. Guaranteed they won’t even leave here until tomorrow afternoon, when the traffic will be a mess. Then she’ll take the bus back down for more time off, after which I have to drive her back up next week at some point with her harp. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that: a few months ago she got interested in the harp and learned it in about a week and now performs at various public sites up there and down here with it. For a laugh Ima gon tell her to learn Swahili or Korean by next week and also the bagpipes.
Out of curiosity, how will they control things in the future? Surely they still need the control.
I guess that they will have to drive out to the plants to change the setpoints if needful. We did not talk about that.
On topic, sorta, from a FaceCrack post earlier:
“I wouldn’t doubt we see civil unrest in North Dakota in 2015. The collapse in oil prices has left the Bakken mighty unstable, and there will be a lot of very angry multiethnic vagrants around there looking to ignite a powderkeg.”
(I normally ain’t on FB much anymore but was checking into chit this week to see if anything new or interesting was going on, not much, except this.)
I get so frustrated with the complete lack of user control over Facebook and their repeated undoing of privacy settings, that I only go on when I get an email that somebody has sent me a personal message. That ends up being about once a month. Less than that, recently.
On that Stuxnet front, a friend who worked in broadcasting way back when I started while getting his double-E from Purdue back then, ended up spending a career at the power company maintaining all their 2-way transmitters, which included radio systems that control things relating to their distribution paths. He retired just a couple years ago, and said they still use radio control, having never moved that to the Internet, although they talked about it a lot.
Of course, these days, just about every radio and TV station in the US controls transmitters and some studio equipment via Internet. In our case, although we have more than one studio, the main control point for studios is in somebody’s house, thus that is occupied about 90% of the time by a human who can intervene if something goes wrong.
I have now spent a couple weeks playing with the automation software. It is not a toy, like Winamp. In fact, it is so complex that, if we adopt it, it is going to have to be phased in over a long period of time. “Ingesting” material (as they call it) is a painfully slow process. Each event (mostly songs in our case) after being imported into the system, must then be opened in a ‘marker editor’ where the exact beginning, end, vocal start, segue start and end, all have to be set for each and every event. With 50,000 songs in my library alone, and 2,000 CD’s in the station library, this is beyond a daunting task. No wonder the big monopolies controlling 90% of the radio stations in our country do all that work at the home office, then just clone hard drives and send to the individual stations. Duplicating that work at each and every station would require more than one fulltime person. Can’t have that in today’s America!
It is pretty spooky watching the automation interface do its thing. Kind of like watching the invisible man at work, as various buttons blink and change color at the appropriate time, and you hear the consequent results while watching that invisible man punch buttons. Not at all like watching Winamp or iTunes play songs.
“Duplicating that work at each and every station would require more than one fulltime person. Can’t have that in today’s America!”
Au contraire, Mr. Chuck! Immigrants, legal or otherwise; remote from Bangladesh, Slovakia and Madagascar! No problemo, Senor! Ordinary Murkan schmucks and dawgs need not apply.
Tuesday, -2 January 2015
I just realized that our host does not use a zero day in his personal calender. So, Wednesday will be -1 January 2015 and Thursday will be 1 January 2015. Interesting.
Lynn, if your customer’s actual task is to remove the controllers from the internet, I imagine that they’ll still have remote access by telephone and modem. Possibly some kind of “private internet”, though that’s usually much more expensive. I used to write software for industrial controllers, and dial-up was the most common way of dealing with remote operations.
I used to use 0 January, but then I realized that 1 BCE was followed by 1 CE.
That’s what I figured the reasoning was. If it’s good enough for myth-makers, by golly, it’s good enough for you!
BTW, a customer, an engineer, and I were talking about Stuxnet this morning. They are still in the middle of removing all internet access from their equipment controllers. Given that they have thousands of controllers, this is a non-trivial task for them since most of their controllers are in remote unmanned locations.
As Charles Stross put it:
It is believed that Stuxnet got into the Iranian computers via an infected memory stick brought in by a foreign contractor engineer. Whether he knew he was doing this is unknown. Given that it has been demonstrated that a memory stick can be programmed to do damn near anything to a computer by emulating a mouse and keyboard input, they can’t be trusted. At secure sites, the USB ports are generally disabled (epoxy works well) or inaccessable. CD-ROM drives are read only.
You have to do things like they do at mission control at NASA. If possible, you give the IT staff the source for your program. They take a look at it, compile it, then send the source in if it passes vetting. If compiled, they run every virus scanner known to man on it. They install it on a freshly imaged system, run it, and then look for abnormal behavior. They pass it to you inside MCC after a week or so if it looks good and they install it for you. The intranet there can’t get data from the outside. It had a send only ethernet connection to a server that sat on the JSC intranet feeding telemetry to local users.
It’s damn insane that the control systems for the electrical grid are on the internet. For god’s sake, there’s a lot of dark fiber out there that could be used to set up a private net for them.
If the first happens on Mon thru Thu, then by ISO standard, it is the first week of the new year, even if it contains days of the previous year. So this is week 1 of 2015, even though it is only day 364 of 2014. ISO weeks start on Mon, consistent with the Christian week, but the US seems always to have been on the Jewish calendar. Or the Seventh Day Adventist’s.
Down to -3 windchill in Tiny Town tonight; my boiler is already working overtime. Highs for the next 8 days are to be well below freezing, but above zero. No sign of the jetstream retreating back up north as far out as NOAA projects it.
“It’s damn insane that the control systems for the electrical grid are on the internet. For god’s sake, there’s a lot of dark fiber out there that could be used to set up a private net for them.”
There it is. Grotesquely and fantastically insane to have been operating, and still operating this way. It’s almost as though they actually WANT to have it crash…oh wait…
“No sign of the jetstream retreating back up north as far out as NOAA projects it.”
Our two cords of firewood arrived right on time this morning; we’d used our last logs overnight. Now we know for sure when and how much to order in the spring, and the new windows make things a lot easier and less expensive.
Princess and I watched “Michael Collins” together and it is remarkable how little she knows of history, particularly this history, which is close to her cousins over in the Vampire State; her great-uncle’s dad and his brother were IRA guys who hadda bail outta Ireland back in the day and come here to avoid being snuffed. In any case, the flick is a romantic puffball; the real history was rather brutal, cruel and sordid, replete with the treachery and nightmarish deceit on all sides over there through the centuries.
Lynn, if your customer’s actual task is to remove the controllers from the internet, I imagine that they’ll still have remote access by telephone and modem. Possibly some kind of “private internet”, though that’s usually much more expensive. I used to write software for industrial controllers, and dial-up was the most common way of dealing with remote operations.
At my previous employer, we had a private network over microwave towers between all of our plants (all 120+ power plants and over 1,000 electrical transmission lines). We had a custom built real time combination control and historian to run the entire system. Worked well and was secure to boot. We had a terminal in the main office in downtown Dallas and could look at all power plant current generation and/or power lines. Did not tell us fuel though and that was critical when we were burning 300,000 barrels a day of diesel. I left them in 1989 and I suspect that it all got moved to the net to save money. Of course, they are in bankruptcy nowadays and little prospect of making it out in the next year or five:
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/20141103-judge-allows-efh-to-continue-with-oncor-auction-but-with-greater-oversight.ece
I can tell that I am easily entertained. We got the new clothes washer today, an LG WT5680HWA top loader, from Lowes:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_543812-49317-WT5680HWA_4294857976%2B4294801527__?productId=50157910
It has a glass lid and you can see everything going on inside. It is like a TV with only one channel. Mesmerizing!
And it is blessedly quiet! The old whirlpool cabrio washer water valves were screaming like a banshee. And the tub bottom bearing was going out and seemingly causing the entire house to vibrate in sympathy. All in all, not worth fixing in my opinion.
The delivery guy told Pam that people are swapping their front loaders for top loaders due to the constant mildew problems with the front loaders.
The LG does require the new HE detergent and prefers liquid. So I bought two gallon jugs of Cheer HE liquid over at HEB for $8 each tonight. There is not an agitator in the new washer so we shall see how that goes over time.
I wonder, why would mildew be more of a problem on front loaders? It must be what people are used to, but top loaders are completely unknown here. They just don’t exist. We certainly haven’t had any mildew problems, but then, with four of us plus a business, the thing is pretty much always in use.
The feature I would like to have on our next machine is automatic soap dispensing. The newer machines will use as much soap as they think they need, whereas people tend to always put in the same (maximum) amount regardless of what’s actually in the machine. Actually, it ought to be the same for dishwashers, come to think of it. I mean, why not? Why should you have to scoop out the soap every time? Even if they just auto-dispense the same amount every time, it’s just a trivial mechanical actuator.
Lots of people here still hang up their laundry to dry. We moved to a tumble dryer (my American roots showing) years ago. Which dryer died two days ago – so we’re hoping the repairman can make it through the snow sometime soon, as we were in the midst of catching up on accumulated laundry frenzy. It’s likely to be something really stupid – the machine acts like it has no electricity at all, but there’s no obvious fuse to check on the machine, and there is definitely electricity at the wall socket.
I had a mildew problem with the top loader when it was in the basement, which here at Tiny House is very, very damp during summers. I think the fact that washers of both descriptions do not empty out all the water, but hold a gallon, adds significantly to the problem. I have been told that the reason they do not empty out completely, is so the gaskets will always be wet; otherwise, they would dry out, crack, and leak all over the floor. Same with dishwashers, but they retain less water than a clothes washer.
Europeans are way ahead on washer technology. In fact, a friend from Chicago who worked for Whirlpool back early in the century, spent a couple years with Bosch in Germany, supposedly helping them make washers quiet. What was really going on is that Whirlpool was learning how to make their washers quiet, because they previously had no motive to do so.
Except for the spin cycle, our front-loader in Berlin was dead quiet. If you really want a front-loader, I recommend getting a European brand. The Bosch I was looking at requires 240v, but I have that already for the dryer, which will be natural gas and will not need the 240 outlet.
When I was in Germany we were the only people around who had a dryer. But it is a much dryer climate in northern Europe, so things hung on a line dry very quickly, inside or out. With 5 kids and 4 adults, the washer was running at least 2 loads a day, sometimes 3 or 4.
@brad – have you checked and cleaned the dryer’s vent line regularly? Particularly this time of year the high humidity exhaust condenses in the vent line and deposits a lot wet lint on the vent walls causing air flow restriction. This restriction can cause your dryer to overheat and there is a high temperature cut out, usually a fusible link that will need to be replaced. Keep an eye on the repair person, they should check the condition of the vent and the fusible link first. On some newer dryers, and washers, there is an onboard diagnostic module (like in our vehicles) that displays problem codes so any monkey can now be an appliance repair person.
“…that displays problem codes so any monkey can now be an appliance repair person.”
Hey, I resemble that!
And usually these codes provide more intel than the ongoing Winblows error codes, by fah.
@DadCooks, yes, I checked for stoppages. The repair guy came today, and… the dryer worked flawlessly. He tried ots of different things to get to fail, but no go. We’ve now used it all day with no problem. Weird…
That dryer is probably possessed by an evil spirit. I’ve notified Witch Doctor Bob in Carolina accordingly. It is toying with you. We been there and done that. Like with the internet and phones here yesterday.
As with any project I have to set a target. For my initial prepping I chose to get ready for what I call a “Very Serious Disruption”. That is 3 months of survival in place for me and several others with services and supplies spotty or completely cut off. 3 Months should cover most major emergencies (societal, weather, EMP, infrastructure, monetary) before things start to work again. Once that is in place I will build upward to the “Major Disruption”, 6 months.
I have been able to work out most details but I am stymied by one thing, heating my house in the winter. I have gas heat but no fireplace or wood stove. No way am I going to store enough fuel for a generator for 3 months. I don’t think I can afford enough solar panels and batteries to electrically heat my home through even a mild eastern Massachusetts winter.
Suggestions from the brain trust?
Looking forward to buying the prepping book.
In your situation, my first choice would be to install a freestanding natural-gas log fireplace. They run unvented and are available in various outputs. The largest probably puts out as many BTU/hr as your home furnace.
I’d expect natural gas to be the last utility to fail, but if you’re concerned about that you could install a wood/coal stove, which also covers you for cooking, and buy a couple/few cords of firewood or a couple tons of coal. Don’t buy a pellet stove unless you can find one that doesn’t require electricity to run.
Alternatively, you could buy an inexpensive adapter kit that lets you turn a 55-gallon drum into a woodstove. Add some stovepipe and flashing, and you can run the stovepipe out a window. Here’s an example:
https://www.lehmans.com/p-4707-barrel-wood-heat-stove-kit.aspx
You can probably find a used 55-gallon drum for $20 or so. You can also add a second drum as part of the chimney, which increases heat output significantly. The one-drum version of the kit costs $70, and the supplementary kit to add a second drum is another $45.
I’ve not used this kit, but back in the 70’s I knew several people who used drum stoves to heat their homes. Unlike cast-iron stoves, the drums burn through eventually, but IIRC they got at least a year of full-time use out of drum before they had to replace it.
It’s likely to be something really stupid – the machine acts like it has no electricity at all, but there’s no obvious fuse to check on the machine, and there is definitely electricity at the wall socket.
Gotta be a fusible link problem but I see that it is working already.
How can you afford the electricity to run it? Does Switzerland not tax the hound out of electricity for the Children’s health funds like all other European nations? I thought that the going rate for electricity across Europe was the equivalent of 35 cents/kwh?
I’d expect natural gas to be the last utility to fail, but if you’re concerned about that you could install a wood/coal stove, which also covers you for cooking, and buy a couple/few cords of firewood or a couple tons of coal.
The natural gas grid will fail as soon as the electric grid fails. The morons at the EPA have required that all of the compressor drivers at the large compressor stations be electric motors instead of the common gas turbines since the middle 1980s in non-attainment areas. Such as the Houston metropolitan area which curtailed those 50,000 hp electric motors a couple of years ago during a cold snap which forced rotating blackouts.
Plus FEMA’s new instructions require shutting down the natural gas grid for any localized weather disaster such as hurricanes or tornadoes. For fire prevention.
Sigh. “I’m from the government and here to help you” is becoming a swear phrase for me.
In your situation, my first choice would be to install a freestanding natural-gas log fireplace. They run unvented and are available in various outputs. The largest probably puts out as many BTU/hr as your home furnace.
Unvented? Please no!
Our two cords of firewood arrived right on time this morning; we’d used our last logs overnight. Now we know for sure when and how much to order in the spring, and the new windows make things a lot easier and less expensive.
I thought that you were moving to an automated pellet stove?
Geez, I wasn’t aware of that. I thought the natural gas grid was independent of electricity. I suppose it makes at least superficial sense to shut down natural gas in localized weather disasters, although that obviously makes life harder for those affected.
“Unvented? Please no!”
Why? We’ve been running our natural gas logs unvented since we had them installed 10 or 15 years ago. They’re 100% efficient. No concerns about carbon monoxide.
“I thought that you were moving to an automated pellet stove?”
Just the opposite, Mr. Lynn; we HAD the “automated” pellet stove here when we moved in two years ago; in short: it sucked. Noisy, ran on electricity with a circuit board; only blew hot air into the immediate area in front of it; and was persnickety as hell with its operation: you have to be sure to always brush out every speck of pellet from the hopper lid and hinges or it won’t run. We sold it for $200 and then spent $3,000 on a solid and reliable wood stove; we also ended up spending another couple of grand because we had to change out the chimney liner and rear vent to the stove. It has already paid for itself, with greatly decreased heating oil usage. We have two cords in the back yard now and in the spring will order four more. The top of the stove has a burner plate so we can actually cook on it or as now, just heat up a teakettle with aromatic stuff in it that Mrs. OFD likes.
Highly recommended, in vast preference to pellet stoves, oil heat or gas. And Nova Anglia is *covered* now with forests, which was not the case a hundred years ago; look at old photos of the Northeast states from the 19th-C and you will notice that the landscape is bare from horizon to horizon.
My other recommendation is to get the hell outta eastern MA ASAP, but I’ve said that to my four siblings and sisters-in-law and they don’t wanna hear it. Plus it’s “too cold” up here and there’s too much snow and ice and “there’s nothing to do.” Okey-dokey.
Actually, it ought to be the same for dishwashers, come to think of it. I mean, why not?
The amount of detergent to use in a dishwasher and a washing machine is not (strictly) a function of the amount to be cleaned. It’s, from what I have seen, a function of the amount of water to be used. You need the detergent concentration to be high enough to clean well, especially in the dish washer. If the clothes are really dirty, you might need more detergent. It’s the same for cleaning dishes in the sink. If the concentration of soap isn’t high enough, washing doesn’t go well.
Why? We’ve been running our natural gas logs unvented since we had them installed 10 or 15 years ago. They’re 100% efficient. No concerns about carbon monoxide.
Carbon monoxide is bad news in small quantities (100 ppm?) as you well know. Please tell that you at least have a digital CO monitor in the same room. And CO2 can cause headaches at 1%?
For any liquid (kerosene, etc) combustion, you are going to get CO formation. Natural gas combustion will get some CO but not a lot as long as you have excess air. If you are running 100% excess air, then probably very, very little. But, still enough to worry me if you are not venting the combustion gases.
No, they’re completely safe to run unvented. All natural gas logs available are required to have oxygen sensors, which automatically cut off the gas flow if there’s any risk of CO production.
We do have a CO sensor. The only time it’s ever gone off is when I puffed my pipe right next to it.
“get the hell outta eastern MA ASAP”
I won’t say it’s never gonna happen, but it won’t happen soon. Job and family will keep me here for the time being. There just isn’t much call for a biochemist out in the sticks. So for now my 1/2 acre in humble Plainville is where I will survive in place.
Good suggestions on heat. I especially like the barrel wood stove. Affordable, which is important right now. I have always thought that the failure hierarchy would be electric then water then gas, with substantial time between each domino falling. Maybe it will be all three at once if things are so interdependent, which is a stupid way to set things up. Stupid seems to be the rule these days.
Is your house loose or tight? I still would not run unvented combustion in the house, especially 100,000 btu/hr or more. Just too dangerous if something goes wrong.
I googled unvented heaters and got many complaints about CO accumulation over time and condensing water vapor around the windows, etc.
On another note. I’m taking my niece (20yrs old) to the range on Friday. It will be her first time ever shooting a gun. She approached me about doing this. I’m coming across more and more women (young and older) who want to learn to shoot. I get the impression that they just don’t feel very safe anymore. Those that are thinking logically realize that it is in their best interest to provide for there own well being rather than rely on the police.
When hurricane Ike happened in the Houston area in 2008, we had pretty much 100% grid power failure across the Houston metropolitan area after the eye passed over. Most was even out before the eye passed over due to falling trees and grounded lines. 30-40% of the power was restored within 24 hours. 70-80% of the power was restored within a week. Took six weeks to get 100% of the power restored, especially the outlying areas with a single feeder line.
The water started failing within 24 hours as the backup diesels started running out of diesel. If the backup diesels even started when the electricity failed (was a frequent problem so much that the state water commission issued many fines)! It does not take long for the pressure tanks to drop pressure. My water here at the office (240 gallon tank that is 40% air for pressurization) usually only runs the well pump once per hour and we are very low demand. Nothing compared to the water systems for 5,000 to 20,000 homes.
The natural gas never ran out here in the Houston area. Probably one of out of a thousand homes has a natural gas backup generator and they ran the entire time that they were needed. But I wonder if FEMA will shutdown the natural gas system when the next hurricane occurs.
“Those that are thinking logically realize that it is in their best interest to provide for there own well being rather than rely on the police.”
Exactly. As is the case here, but Mrs. OFD also travels all over the country and can’t be packin’ heat for each trip. We need to figure out her best options while bearing in mind she’s always losing stuff, doesn’t pay attention to things like she should or watch where she is going sometimes, i.e., keep an eye on her “6.” She’s also 5’10 and 180 and pushing 60 so not your usual perp target, and has also lived in some tough ‘hoods but that was decades ago before the kids.
“…in humble Plainville…”
Ah yes, P-Ville, right on the Road-Eye-Lun bodduh. Used to pass by or through it on our way to visit grandparents in New Beffa and Fairhaven. You would understand my accent totally, as I first learned to speak English in New Beffa and Whitinsville. A brother lived in Mansfield for a while, and my g-g-g-g and g-g-g-fathers lived in Assonet.
“…pass by or through…”
That is pretty much everyone’s experience with Plainville. I have deep roots in the area (attleboro, Rehoboth, Pawtucket), some of the stones in the old family burial ground have dates in the mid 1600s. Somtimes I’m referred to as a “Swamp Yankee”.
Yes, OFD, you and I definitely speak the same language.
Our family referred to itself and its friends in that area as Swamp Yankees, too. We came up from the first Euro settlers on Nantucket (1659), and went on to settle Martha’s Vineyard and the New Beffa area. Pilgrims and Puritans at first, they mostly became Quakers later. I was born in the latter, along with my parents and next-younger brother, at Saint Luke’s Hospital, within sight, smell and sound of the hahbuh. Mostly whalers, fishermen, blacksmiths, and then eventually soldiers and gummint workers. My paternal grandpa, a Great War vet, later became the Water Commish for the City of New Beffa.
My middle brother and I used to drive down to see Paw Sox games in Pawtucket and had a ball; six-dollar seats and a family crowd that coulda been blood relatives by their looks and speech. I had the same kinda eerie experience while sitting on a downtown bench in Saint Andrews’, New Brunswick some years ago. Those woulda been descendants of Loyalists from the War of Independence era; my ancestors then were Quakers on Nantucket.
Our family burials are mostly in New Beffa and Fairhaven; I’ll probably end up somewhere around here with Mrs. OFD, most likely the Catholic cemetery a couple miles up the road toward the “city.” No room for me now in New Beffa, LOL. And the city went down the toilet when A: they built that damn “hurricane barrier” out across the hahbuh and ran Route 6 smack through the historic district, and B: the Glorious Sixties riots, when parked cars were being torched with highway flares on Court Street, where my grandparents and great-aunt lived.