When the memes hit.
In September, when the rest of the country begins chugging pumpkin spice lattes and preparing for Christian Girl Autumn we, here in Los Angeles, enter into a month when our mild Mediterranean climate becomes more like a desert. This past weekend the temperature hit 111ºF (43.8ºC) and our neighborhood had almost 48 hours without power. It didn’t cool down at night as it reliably does the rest of the year. And Kelly came down with COVID.
It was a trial run for how prepared we are for an earthquake and we did poorly. I was especially upset to observe my own crankiness. I think that crankiness could have been prevented with a few simple comforts such as a fan and better food. I know from camping and backpacking how looking forward to a meal can go a long way towards elevating your mood.
Two lessons from the weekend come to mind:
- While Kelly kept the house reliably lit with solar charged LED lanterns, it would be nice to have some kind of battery backup at least so we could run a fan. Keeping the fridge going would be nice but a battery large enough to do that is prohibitively expensive. If any of you have recommendations please leave a comment.
- As friend of the blog Johnny Sanphillippo discusses on a podcast appearance in early 2020, it’s better to rotate through bulk food than stockpile it. If you just stash it away odds are it will go bad or you won’t know how best to prepare it. Rotate through your food stocks and you’ll know what foods you like and save money while you’re at it.
The weekend had a Road Warrior vibe when it became obvious that many or our neighbors had evacuated to somewhere with power, either relatives houses or a hotel. It felt like a preview of future climate uncertainty and a sober reminder of the tasks we have to prepare. At least we have kind neighbors who are motivated to make sure we look out for everyone and we’re going to talk to our city council office about what happened.
Up here in coastal British Columbia, we often experience power outages, especially in winter when trees fall on the power lines. One winter, there was an outage on Christmas Day in the evening. For several hours, we sat there drinking vintage port and eating whisky-infused Christmas cake by candlelight. Oh, how we suffered!
It’s surprising how nice candlelight is and it definitely has a very calming, soothing effect. The port helped too!
That sounds like a lovely Christmas. After I wrote this post I remembered that cold places exist (I really do need to get out of this bubble) and that people in these places have ice storms and blizzards.
We have a couple of Bluetti battery backups for our chest freezer. We are going to get and Ecoflow backup for our well. A fridge uses about 4K watts a day and you can get backup to provide that much. If you generate enough power with solar, you can more or less provide indefinite power. Solar during the day batteries at night. If you really want to get into it Hobotech has great reviews and discussions of the different systems. The batteries have become quite powerful. Several EV are also capable of providing home backup.
Thanks Chris!
How about a generator? You can get a used one for about $300. It will easily run your fridge and pretty much everything else, except an electric stove and water heater. Be sure to have your electronics run through a surge protector, since generators’ electricity isn’t super smooth. As an added bonus, most have a 220V outlet. That’s handy to have for welders and other big shop equipment.
Thanks Suzy–I’ve been pondering this among many other options. So many choices that I’m thinking of doing a spreadsheet to compare!
If you are already in any tool ecosystems then that could be a quick (and pretty cheap) option. We have two small Ryobi inverters which are perfect for charging cell phones, running our daughter’s sound machine or other little things. We use those in combination with a couple Ryobi camping lanterns. Overall it works well for a hundred-ish buck solution using things I already had.
Thanks Goot, I’ve actually been thinking about this option. I have a Ryobi string trimmer and blower so an inverter is a great idea.