Showing posts with label Preppers Meeting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Preppers Meeting. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

College Kid

I am a college kid again. Yea, no kidding.
Yesterday was the re-start of what I started so many years ago but never finished. After reading what all I have to do I am now second guessing and wondering what in the world have got myself into.
It's not like I had nothing to do or was bored. I have plenty to keep me busy and that's if I never even left the house. This just added another eight to ten hours of work on me a week.
Never the less, if I can keep the reason why I did this in the back of my mind the whole time then this should be okay.


The rains kept me from working on the taking down the old house this weekend so that has put me another week behind. Maybe this coming weekend I will get something done down there.

I got my fan hooked up to the Solar Beer Can Heater and Sunday with full sun and 37 degrees outside, it was a nice 60 degrees in the shop. Not bad for free heat.

That "Preppers" meeting I told you about has turning into a full fledged deal now. Saturday I did two consultations with some of the group by going over to their houses and helping them set up a "Too Do" list on getting started. The one thing I have to say is that I am not an expert on anything and I told them there are hundreds of different ways to do everything I do. I share what works for me and what I have had success with in North Texas. What works for me will not work for the guy living up North. I have spent a lot of time and money doing it wrong.
This has turned into a monthly thing now. I enjoy talking with these folks and sharing what I know.

That's all I got for now

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Guess, Just Guess

The rains set in Tuesday afternoon and that meant no work for me Wednesday. Even though I needed the hours, it did give me a chance to get some little things done in the shop.



First off I got the return air box done for the little DC fan I found in the back of that guys truck I talked about last time. This will sit under the bench and a flex hose will go through the wall and into the bottom of the Solar Beer Can Heater to increase its efficiency and heat the shop quicker. Now to hook it all up.




Like I said, the rain came in and I had to drain the first flush on the rain water harvesting system. I almost forgot about it because it has been so long since it really rained back to back.
I took a quick video of the process, but decided not to put it on here because I sounded like a dork so I found this frame in the video and snapped a photo of the gunk coming out of the pipe. Technology is amazing.
The photo is right when the cap came off and you can see how nasty the water is. If I didn't have a first flush on my rain water system then all that stuff from the roof would end up in my tanks making it where I would have to take them down once a year and clean it all out. If it was a small system it wouldn't be that bad, but draining and wasting almost 4000 gallons of water and then crawling inside two twelve foot tanks with only an eighteen inch man way would be tough.
Anyway, now you can see how important a first flush is on your Rain Water Harvesting system.

Guess what me and the wife did Tuesday Night. Oh come on, guess......
Nope,
Nope,
I would have liked too, but nope,

We went to a prepper party. Yea no kidding!
Some folks here in town held a quarterly preppers meeting and me and the wife got invited. How exciting is that?
I told myself on the way there to just sit, listen, smile and don't say much. The reason why was because I didn't want to come off as a know-it-all because after all, I don't know it all.

They had two different speakers. The first speaker hit on food storage and bug out bags and the other speaker was on EMP attacks, gun control and how all that ties into Fema camps. Great knowledgeable speakers and it was a wonderful time. I even picked up a couple of useful tips along the way.
See there, you can teach an old dog new tricks.       

After a hour and a half I just could not stand it anymore and had to start asking questions. They were harping on the one year food storage pretty hard at the end and I had to ask, "What will you do after that?"
With blank looks from the crowd the wife and I went on the explain how you have to have a way to restock your shelves when your one year runs out. Of course that led into how to use alternative energy to cook with, which led to water storage from the rain and so on. Before I realized it, me and wife had the rooms attention and questions were getting fired at us right and left about growing your own food, water filtration and so on. 
So now we are scheduled to be the speakers at the next meeting. Look what we went off and done. I really was going to stay quiet.

Got to meet some really nice folks and I look forward to the next one.

Other than that, that's all I got for now.