What did you do today to prep?

[The Heretic]

Yesterday I just sat and waited for the "storm" to hit.

I know it affected a lot of people in Portland, but for me it was pretty much a non-event - so far anyway.

Just got a dusting of snow, not even enough to hide the grass.

View attachment 1334208

Now I wait for the snow to melt. Temps are well above freezing now and won't drop below again for more than a week.

Fortunately, the snow is very light powder, and almost none of it, much less ice, is on trees - so I don't expect any branches/trees to fall and cause a power outage near me.

So, non-event and I am glad, as much as I like snow, I prefer to have it without the power outages and icy roads. But I was prepared. In about 12-14 hours I will be having Xmas eve dinner with my kids.

My sympathies for those who were so fortunate.

 

[Pete F]

Now I wait for the snow to melt. Temps are well above freezing now and won't drop below again for more than a week.

Fortunately, the snow is very light powder, and almost none of it, much less ice, is on trees - so I don't expect any branches/trees to fall and cause a power outage near me.

So, non-event and I am glad, as much as I like snow, I prefer to have it without the power outages and icy roads. But I was prepared. In about 12-14 hours I will be having Xmas eve dinner with my kids.

My sympathies for those who were so fortunate.

The branches are falling here, 3-4" butts from 100+ ft fir trees, up to 20' long.. Lost my raised bed deer fence again and more damage to my wood shed. 2x6' wood bracing the fence on top snapped like kindling. I think this time I will let the insurance handle it. Way more damage than the deductible.

 

[The Heretic]

Amazon got the buckets on sale back in stock so I ordered 12 more for a total of 15.

They wanted as much for the lids.as for the buckets, so I ordered 20 lids from Home Depot (two cases of ten easy off lids - $1.40 each lid).

That should be sufficient for now.

 

[dingo97223]

Amazon got the buckets on sale back in stock so I ordered 12 more for a total of 15.

They wanted as much for the lids.as for the buckets, so I ordered 20 lids from Home Depot (two cases of ten easy off lids - $1.40 each lid).

That should be sufficient for now.

I usually get mine from a guy running a farm in Gaston, posting on Craigslist, for $3-4 each, round or square, complete with lids, food grade, used once and rinsed. He also have other different containers sizes. Not much difference in price, but I like to help local people out...

 

[MarlaSinger]

Keeping my eyes on diesel prices.

I have two diesel tanks sitting empty. The 250+ gal tank will remain empty until I sell & move.

The 106 gal aux tank for my flatbed truck? I will load that up into the back of the Toyota pickup, and fill it up - when prices come down to about $3/gallon - if they ever do. Considering whether to fill it with red dye fuel or not, since it will be emergency fuel.

Id definitely disguise it from Prying eyes, thats lots of diesel, to have for you to have to defend more than you need too..!

 

[The Heretic]

Id definitely disguise it from Prying eyes, thats lots of diesel, to have for you to have to defend more than you need too..!

Both tanks are sitting in my shop now. When I sell (hopefully next year) and move/build, the stationary 250+ gal tank will go into a lean to and the aux tank will go onto the truck and most likely not be visible with the camper that will go onto the truck too (along with a couple of 100# propane tanks).

 

[The Heretic]

I usually get mine from a guy running a farm in Gaston, posting on Craigslist, for $3-4 each, round or square, complete with lids, food grade, used once and rinsed. He also have other different containers sizes. Not much difference in price, but I like to help local people out...

The Amazon buckets were $3.83 ea. and the HD lids a $1.40, for a total of $5.23 per bucket/lid, delivered to my doorstep. Not bad and I don't have to burn gas to go pick them up.

There is a place in Gresham that sells all kinds of new & used containers/barrels/IBC totes/etc. on CL:

Freestanding Water Tanks:Standard Doorway Fitment - general for sale...

Specialty New Water Tanks that fit through standard man doors: 250 gallon to 500 gallons Food Grade 55 gallon plastic barrels with bung caps triple hot rinsed $30 ea NEW HOURS: Tuesday thru...

portland.craigslist.org

I just need to wait until I move before grabbing some of these. The buckets will do for now.

 

[Hummer]

Converted 50 M118 Match cases to 6.5 Creedmoor.

 

[Jbsheepdog]

The Amazon buckets were $3.83 ea. and the HD lids a $1.40, for a total of $5.23 per bucket/lid, delivered to my doorstep. Not bad and I don't have to burn gas to go pick them up.

There is a place in Gresham that sells all kinds of new & used containers/barrels/IBC totes/etc. on CL:

Freestanding Water Tanks:Standard Doorway Fitment - general for sale...

Specialty New Water Tanks that fit through standard man doors: 250 gallon to 500 gallons Food Grade 55 gallon plastic barrels with bung caps triple hot rinsed $30 ea NEW HOURS: Tuesday thru...

portland.craigslist.org

I just need to wait until I move before grabbing some of these. The buckets will do for now.

Can you post a link for buckets? What was the shipping?

 

[The Heretic]

Can you post a link for buckets? What was the shipping?

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B09KYFZ3KZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

$3.82 per bucket. Not the thickest plastic, but sufficient for my purposes.

Shipping will vary depending on whether you have Prime or not. I have Prime, so shipping is almost always free. In this case though, while free, it will be slow.

 

[The Heretic]

Third power outage of the year - one last month, one early this morning, and the third now.

UPS lasted for 30 minutes - it seems to be wearing out. Not sure what batteries are in it, but last month it lasted 90 minutes.

My EcoFlow EPS is kaput. I had not heard from EF for over 10 days so I started making moderate complaint comments on the sub-Reddit for EF and after a couple days of that I got an escalation and an RMA with a shipping label to send it back to EF while they are sending me a new one.

Right now I am using the GoLabs battery - hopefully it will last for 4-5 hours, but the other one (I bought two) failed after the first recharge - so we'll see.

I am ready to setup my external LiFePO4 batteries with the EF EPS when it comes - but I am not going to try that with the GoLabs as I think charging it while it is outputting thru the inverter might have been what killed the first one. I don't think it has a bypass mode like the EF EPS does.

No ETA on power restoration - PGE says it is due to high winds. I imagine the crews are very busy.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Moved my 5-gallon cans of Kerosene, lamps, and heaters out to a friend's garage. He has endless space. Trade off is I might not be able to get to it someday when needed, but if that is the case he can use them. Might move freeze dried 21oz cans (many) out there also, or sell them on here. Having limited space isn't great, but I guess it prevents me from turning into a hoarder.

 

[Tony617]

We are having our third power outage starting after 8:00PM PST tonight. Swapped out my UPS for OUPES which worked for more than an hour but whatever was keeping our cable modem coax up died. Probably a battery in some off premise device died. I am using my smartphone with a personal hotspot to keep my laptop's WIFI up. Works pretty well for email and using the web-browser.

We had a power failure on Monday as well but waited for the UPS battery to get low and swapped out with our OUPES but cable modem would not connect so fell back to using my smartphone as well.

 

[The Heretic]

Five minutes after I went to bed the power was restored

That meant I had to get up, plug the fridge back in (it was connected to the genset which I had turned off), turn lights off, plug the UPS back into line power and plug Starlink back into the UPS (I had unplugged it from the battery bank).

Now the UPS is charged back up. I think the reason it only lasted 30 minutes was the power outage in the morning and it had not recharged enough.

The one thing I have learned is that fast recharge times on battery backup systems is a good thing. Both the UPS and the Go Labs battery bank are slow to recharge - they take multiple hours, which means I need to run the genset for a lot longer.

The EcoFlow OTOH recharges at 600 watts and only takes a little over an hour - plus it has an EPS mode that bypasses the battery/inverter when there is grid power, and then switches in 30ms to battery/inverter when grid power goes down. Too bad it only lasted a couple of weeks in this mode for some reason. But EF is sending me a new one - I hope it lasts longer. I think we are going to have another winter of power outages - so far, three this winter.

 

[Burt Gummer]

Everywhere around my hood - Milwaukie - was out except my block. Got lucky. Power lines are underground here, that might be it.

 

[The Heretic]

Everywhere around my hood - Milwaukie - was out except my block. Got lucky. Power lines are underground here, that might be it.

The util lines on my private road are underground, but that is the last mile - the rest are aboveground on poles and vulnerable to trees/etc.

 

[The Heretic]

plus it has an EPS mode that bypasses the battery/inverter when there is grid power

I forgot to mention - that the GL battery bank is not only slow to recharge, but running something off it while charging causes the charging to slow down, even become nil. The GL battery bank charges at a rate of 45 watts, but Starlink takes anywhere from 30 to 100 watts, so even if plugged into live grid power, the GL battery bank can be run down to 0% charge.

I am not sure about the UPS - I am pretty sure grid power usually bypasses the battery/inverter, but I am not sure if charging is slowed by usage - I suspect it is, but I do not know for sure.

 

[Robert Hood]

Loading 9mm on the Horndy LNL for our new hole punch. Came with 10x 15 punch holders from PSA.

 

[The Heretic]

Ordered (subscribed for every 6 months) 8 pounds of Bob's Red Mill rolled oats from Amazon for $15

[Amazon] 4-Pack Bob's Red Mill Old Fashioned Rolled Oats, 32 oz. - $14.36 (was $20.76)

Jan 14, 2023

www.preppingdeals.net

Comes in sealed bags so I will put them in 5 gal buckets, the freeze them in then put them for a week, then store them.

We'll see if the subscription price holds - I can always cancel the subscription if not.

I do eat oatmeal mixed with farina at least once a week and it is a good filler for baking and meat loaf.

 

[Camelfilter]

Ordered (subscribed for every 6 months) 8 pounds of Bob's Red Mill rolled oats from Amazon for $15

[Amazon] 4-Pack Bob's Red Mill Old Fashioned Rolled Oats, 32 oz. - $14.36 (was $20.76)

Jan 14, 2023

www.preppingdeals.net

Comes in sealed bags so I will put them in 5 gal buckets, the freeze them in then put them for a week, then store them.

We'll see if the subscription price holds - I can always cancel the subscription if not.

I do eat oatmeal mixed with farina at least once a week and it is a good filler for baking and meat loaf.

LDS store / Bishops warehouse / Home Store is a close value & already canned for long term storage.

Case of 6 #10 cans at $31.50 ($5.25/2.8lb can in stores). Shipped is a bit more.

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