What are your backups?

From another thread:

I love backups. We have flashlights all over the place. We have candle lanterns, and also candles. A Coleman lantern is at the ready. I don’t know how many Svea 123, Primus, and similar stoves I have (including a Svea 1 kerosene stove). Plus a Swedish Army surplus alcohol stove and a Coleman two-burner camp stove. The propane grill has a side burner; and of course, the grill is there for cooking. Our main heat is a propane furnace. We also have electric space heaters and a wood-burning stove insert. For electricity we have a Honda 3,000 Watt generator. Coffee? The Mr. Coffee, of course. And two Vietnamese coffee makers. And a French press. And at least two moka pots. And a percolator.

So light, heat, cooking, coffee… I think I might be more or less ready.

You?

I have a Coleman two-burner propane stove and spare gas. I have a couple cans of Sterno.

I’m really set for lighting. About 25 years ago, I was doing everything I could to get out of debt. I found one thing that gave me some cheap amusement was to occasionally go to the Dollar Tree and buy a flashlight. I amassed a small collection. All of those are gone now, but I have a slew of the newer LED kind from there now. They include little lanterns, the kind that look like light switches, and others. I also have a few from Harbor Freight from back when the catalogs and flyers had coupons for “free” ones. I still have a load of the HF “free” batteries. I can really light up the house during an outage!

We have a few of those.

Small gas generator that will power the house’s heating system along with fridge/freezer. Our well has enough pressure that it will flow slowly without a pump.

Siphons to get gas out of the two cars at need.

Coleman stove and lantern with fuel, wicks.

Candles, fireplace that can be cooked over, with utensils to do so. TONS of firewood.

Modern flashlights that last a loooong time with AA batteries.

We make cold brew coffee.

Flashlights all over the place. And candles, though those are mostly for ambience rather than lighting, but they’ll do in an emergency. Lots of spare batteries.

An old fluorescent-bulb lantern with a rechargeable battery that has lasted practically forever.

A Li-ion power pack that has been useful on multiple occasions. When we had a lengthy power outage (several days, due to a severe storm) I used it to recharge my phone and also my Kindle. On a different occasion, when my car’s battery was getting old and I let it sit for nearly a week, it wouldn’t start. This power pack – not much bigger than a cell phone but thicker – has a jumper cable accessory and easily started the car. No wonder malfunctioning Li-ion batteries can be a fire hazard – those suckers carry an immense amount of power!

Also a big UPS for my main computer (and internet modem). It will only last for a couple of hours at most, but as long as the internet is up, it would help know what’s going on.

I used to go camping pretty regularly (haven’t since Covid for… well, I dont really know why not) so we have lots of camping gear that can/does serve as backups as needed.

We have ready in the garage a very bright propane lantern, a Coleman propane stove, and all the requisite cooking gear (plus, of course, everything we have in the house). For a backup of that we have a little pocket rocket backpacking stove and a little pot that goes on it. It wouldn’t work for a big stock pot but a 2-quart saucepan should be fine. Certainly adequate for heating up some water for a Mountain House meal and a cup of tea.

If we need extra warmth for sleeping or if the power goes out we have military surplus 3-piece “sleep systems,” each basically a 3-layered sleeping bag, the outer layer being a bivy sack. I don’t know what they’re rated down to but I’ve tent camped at -5°f in them and was… well, not exactly comfortable but I wasn’t noticeably cold. Of course we have lots of extra blankets and pillows and a couple of inflatable air mattresses as well – handy for when we have company. As long as we have a roof and walls we should be mostly comfortable.

For power outages we have lots of candles and one kerosine lamp. We have multiple flashlights including a couple of big D-cell MagLites (the old ones with incandescent bulbs which I understand aren’t as bright as the new LED models but since those things are pretty indestructible and I see no reason to replace them).

We also have several rechargeable battery packs for charging cell phones in the event of a power outage. I got them for camping and man alive those things have came in handy so many times. I want to get a few more to have on hand fully charged just in case.

We have a fireplace that we have only used a couple of times and have now made the decision to permanently abstain from using idue to concerns about smoke coming through a defective heat exchange system in the chimney. But its not going to burn the house down and we still have ½ a cord or so of firewood out by the back fence (under cover even!) so we could, in a real emergency, have a fire for heat.

We have a oil-filled radiator space heater that’s been used maybe once in the last decade. If our furnace ever dies but we still have power that heater would make at least one bedroom comfortable.

I have a backup car. Considering my primary car is currently parked in the garage waiting to have some collision damage repaired I’m incredibly grateful to have that backup car available. It’s so thirsty you can almost hear the dead dinosaurs being sucked straight out of the ground and into the engine (not good on my 35 mile each way commute) and the stereo doesn’t work but its a clean and straight car that is perfectly capable and willing to be a reliable daily driver.

If Covid taught me anything (well, besides the fact that people can be irrationally stupid simply as part of their political identity) it’s that one can’t be too prepared. We had posters on this very board telling those of us who were concerend about the TP supply in early April 2020 that we were all a bunch of morons who were overreacting and that Amazon would always be an option when the local Safeway ran out.

Yeah. Ok. That certainly worked out well, didn’t it?

It was by pure luck that we didn’t run out of TP or cleaning supplies as I had just done my big shopping run a few days before the insanity started and had heard rumors of TP starting to get scarce so I picked up a couple of extra packages. My wife thought I was crazy. There had been no sign of a shortage when I picked it up so I was secretly wondering if she was right. Two weeks later she conceded I had actually been smart. I’m damn lucky I did err on the side of caution as it was probably 4 months before I could find it again. Now I will always, but always have a minimum 6 month supply on hand. Also we’ll have a few months worth of pretty much anything that I saw go scarce or missing during the pandemic: pasta and pasta sauces, yeast, canned beans and chili and soups, dried lentils, flour and sugar. Light bulbs and mouse traps and other little things that we seemed to have on the list for weeks or months before we could get the larder resupplied. And of course cleaning products: Lysol wipes, Clorox, Pine-sol, Windex, laundry soap. Dish and hand soap. We’re keeping a ~year supply of all this on hand and rotating through, using the oldest first. We made an effort to stock up slowly so we weren’t depriving other shoppers of whatever stock was on the shelf. Each bi-monthly grocery shopping trip, pick up another canister of Clorox wipes and a package of TP. A bit here and a bit there. It took a while but we’re pretty well provisioned now.

I dunno how much of that difts away from the concept of “backup” and into “prepper” territory but we felt that covid taught us the importance of food security as well as having a good backup supply of household consumables. I remember someone on the board – QtM maybe? ‐- had a tenant who they discovered had buried several years’ worth of dried goods in a basement or something similar and then abandoned/forgot them, only to be discovered by the landlord years later. We aren’t that crazy, not by a long shot but we do have a couple of months worth of the basics on hand if needed.

I have two USGI cold-weather sleeping bags, and a North Face down bag. Mrs. L.A. carries a sleeping bag in her car.

We use ours a lot, even if we do have propane for the furnace.

The Missus uses hers all Winter. I used to use mine, but now I use an electric blanket. More efficient.

Yup. Though my '99 Jeep Cherokee is a bit thirsty.

I posted before I read the thread and some other comments reminded me of a few things I forgot. Of course we keep a big supply of batteries on hand – Lowe’s carries 100-count packages of AA and AAA and we resupply whenever a package gets below 50. We usually have a couple of dozen D batteries available for the MagLites.

I have a 14" Weber Smokey Joe charcoal kettle, a 22" Weber kettle, and a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker. The smoker is a bit too purpose-built to be a backup cooker but the 22" kettle gets used throughout the year. Of course it doesn’t have a propane burner but in a pinch it will do fine as a backup for the oven.

We have a miniscule amount of lawn to mow so we just have a 1-gallon gas can, so no backup gasoline supply. But I try not to let the car drop below ½ tank before refueling so I’ll alawys be able to drive at least as far as Eugene if necessary. When my Mercedes was sitting in the garage with no real purpose other than to wait for some time when I needed it, I kept the tank full with the prescribed amount of fuel stabilizer in it. After I hit that damn deer in the Civic I was glad to have it ready and available.

This thread did remind that one of the backup items I specifically wanted and sought out – a battery backup system for my garage door opener – doesn’t work. The battery is there, it’s plugged in, and the unit is less than a year old. But that particular functionality just doesn’t work.

Now that I’m thinking about it I don’t think I have any charcoal. Whoops. Better add it to the non-grocery shopping list.

Oh, yeah. We have one too, still in the box (since I bought it just before I bought the propane grill).

Our gas can is two gallons. Pleanty to run the genny for 18 hours.

We don’t have a proper garage, so…

I’ve got - count 'em - five backup power bricks for my phone and laptop. The phone can be backup internet connection for the laptop or tablet. A couple of gallons of water in the garage. A flashlight and battery lantern.

Ready for nuclear war, not.

Honestly, I don’t see the point of more than that.

A whole house NG generator and my backup to that is panic and despair.

Camping gear, camping stoves, quite a bit of long term shelf stable food. A couple of 10 litre bottles of water.

Not sure if this counts as ‘backup’ exactly, but I do practice being able to navigate my own house with my eyes shut, by touch plus dead reckoning, and find things like clothes, keys and lights (which is partly about being able to find my way around if the lights go out, and partly about keeping important things in consistent places)

We live rurally in a harsh climate so things like firewood for the wood stove (currently about 8 cords), a whole-house generator, battery lanterns, extra blankets, and plenty of non-perishable food, diesel and gas, are just normal winter prep. We also have equipment for camping so, say, if all our appliances went down, we’d still have coolers, several camp stoves, etc.

A good wood stove is almost all you need to survive – you can heat food and dry clothes as well as keep yourself warm and have enough light to at least move around without bumping into things. I guess it’s impractical for city life but we keep it going all winter.

We have oil lamps and have played chess with them when the lights went out. It was nice. We play a lot of chess anyway.

Propane tank for heat running a very nice comfortable stove.

I have a stream that runs year round that I can use the water to flush the toilets.

What I discovered on Monday was that if the line to your septic tank gets clogged, you are pretty much SOL. Out of luck, but plenty of shit.

I’ve called 6 companies. 5 won’t come to my house or are two busy. One said they would call me back yesterday. Still haven’t heard from them.

I know and have done plenty of plumbing, what I’ve never done is snake out a drain line.

I recycled a contractor’s desk into a 6x3x3 wood shed. It’s full, and I have half-length firewood (‘chunks’) outside of it on the face and one side. There’s a small pile of split wood next to the shed, under a tree, from when I smashed my hand in the log splitter. And there’s a 8x4x1.5stack of firewood on the deck. So I’m guessing we have… ⅔ cord?

I would love to have natural gas. I don’t like relying on propane.

A cord is 128 cubic feet (or 4 x4 x 8). Since there’s math involved I’ll let someone else do it.

We heated with wood for years. 6-8 cords a year. IMHO though it’s a real pain in the ass. From the gathering, to the stacking to cleaning out the chimney to the mess it created in the house.

We now have thisEnviro Berkley propane stove

I’m getting off topic though.

Winter prep is well underway here. Following ice storms the past two winters I’ve now stockpiled 270 pounds of ice melting compound to keep the steps and key parts of the driveway clear.

A portable generator gives us enough juice to keep the furnace, stove or cooktop, TV, some lights and personal electronic devices running during a power outage - and of course to maintain a heater in the garage/garage apartment so the dormant fig trees and other overwintering plants can endure.

I’ve looked into solar generators as a possible backup, but they mostly seem useful for road trips and camping as opposed to house power applications. And they’re quite expensive once you get into higher wattage output models.

My backup is my travel trailer, fully equipped for just about everything. The only thing I don’t have at home is a way to hook up the waste tanks to the sewer system so using water is out of the question. I have 2 full 30 gallon and 4 full 20 gallon propane tanks in my shed so that shouldn’t be a problem.

I bought a big pack of non-rechargeable batteries for an emergency flashlight but then wondered if I need to replace them after, say, ten years if they’re still unused.