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The difference in electricity usage will be HUGE. The new one will probably use less than 25% of what the old one did.
The little things you may need one day that may not be available at any price, do you have them, can you get them?
- Thread starter Biggkidd
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I still have some Y2K cans of stuff in my supplies. Clearly labeled ... not to be eaten ... but as a reminder to not believe every prediction I hear, and also to remind me to keep my preps at reasonable levels and not paranoid levels.
Thats a thought as well. And I am planning to start working on a solar system to run our freezers and fridge from. That would be a big difference
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You could do what we did when we thought our 30 some odd year old freezer was about to go. Got a new one put it right along side of it filled it up and kept the old one filled up. I have been collecting canning jars just in case.
Ive been giving thought to what I could use the old one for, other than just spare freezer space. Good dry storage for sure
Buy one freezer as a spare, fill it up and buy another spare fill it up and buy another spare. Like chicken math, it never ends.
Is this the stuff with a 25 or 30 year shelf life? Why would you label it not edible? If it is truly not edible why would you waste space. Space is very short around my house. Why wouldn't you eat something before it went bad? How do you know it is bad? Did you try it or just put labels on it from guilt?
Why is prepping paranoid? If you believe nothing could ever happen then why prep. If you believe in the potential for disaster then prepping is not paranoid. Why would you feel foolish because a disaster didn't happen? I felt relieved after Y2K, and was pleased to have more preps.
I don't know what the shelf life is for canned chili, canned green beans, canned corn, etc. from the grocery store.
Because what I bought in my naivety was barely edible (to me) when new, and after about 23 years now, I doubt it has improved.
I have the space to store a few extra cans as reminders. I save a few cans of my Y2K stash (not the entire stash) as a reminder to NOT buy stuff for preps that I don't normally eat.
Because what I bought for Y2K doesn't even taste good to me before it goes bad. I did not know enough to consider that back when I bought it. Thus my graphic reminder to myself to not do that again. After Y2K fizzled, I did try to donate a lot of my supplies that I knew I'd never eat to my church, for distribution to the homeless and other people in need. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of that might have been throw away by the church or the intended recipients though, because part of it was past it's "best if consumed by" date when I finally got around to trying to give it away.
I don't. It may still be editable. I doubt it will be good.
The labels are not from guilt. They are to remind me not to do something stupid again.
I never said prepping was paranoid. What I alluded to is over prepping, or prepping with the wrong things, could sometimes be considered paranoid. Like trying to store 100 gallons of gasoline in your garage. The chances of me actually needing something like that that are very low, and the safety concerns of storing that much flammable liquid make it a "wrong thing to prep with" in my case. Maybe not for you, but for me it would be a bad choice.
I never said nothing could happen. Prepping is not an on/off binary thing. There are levels of how much you think you need to store. And what specific items you think you need to store. You could laugh at me for only storing ten cans of each type of vegetable because you have decided to store 100 cans each. But then the guy who stores 1000 cans might laugh at you.
I never said prepping was paranoid. But squirreling away 25 oil filters and 200 quarts of motor oil for your car might be.
I didn't feel foolish because a disaster didn't happen. I felt foolish because I prepped with the wrong stuff. Sure, if the lights had gone out at Y2K then I would have eaten my canned corn. But the lights stayed on, and I had no desire to eat my canned corn after that, because I don't like canned corn. These days I don't buy a lot of canned corn for my preps because I know it will probably go to waste. I do have some though. A small amount. One or two of those Costco packs. What is that, six or eight small cans per pack maybe? Nowadays I have less of the stuff I don't like, and more of the stuff that I will actually eat outside of an emergency situation. Rice, dried beans (also canned beans), pasta, canned tuna, sardines (I hate to admit that indeed I do eat sardines in non-emergency conditions!), etc.
If I hadn't already donated it to my church, I would have given you a boatload of canned corn if you lived closer.
I do like corn BTW. Fresh. Some frozen is OK in a pinch. But canned ... no.
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The problems with waiting snd keeping it till it dies are: the crazy inflationary mode we are in, terrible supply chain issues continuing, and potential loss of your valuable food.
Thanks for the offer but I already have a boatload of canned corn. Then again, I like canned corn and I cook with it quite a bit. I do not laugh at you for having more or less than I, on anything. We each must decide how much is enough for our situation. Where I'm living there are no farms. Everything must come in by barge through Seattle. If the people in Seattle are hungry not much will ever reach us. If growers don't grow enough we are at the very end of the distribution chain. I probably feel a need to store more than you do.
I read the prepper rule early, "Store what you eat, eat what you store." I took it as my own. It sounds as if you learned that the hard way. That is often the better way to learn. It certainly sticks with you.
I do not pay attention to expiration dates on most things. They are put there by marketers, who want to sell you more product next year, and attorneys that want to limit risk. I have eaten home canned fish that was 20 years old. As long as the can looks good and the product looks good when opened I'm fine with it. I always look for bulged or rusted cans. Bad color or smell is pretty obvious. My ears are not very good so listening for air intake is of little help to me. My food hasn't killed me, yet.
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Neither go bad, That is just a few years worth of oil changes.
But in prepping terms.....its not prep unless you have also squirreled away thousands of gallons of gasoline to go with them.
My BIGGEST complaint with prepping are people who prep out of balance. If a certain prep requires three things to be useful, buying one year worth of A and B but ten years worth of C just means you have spent three times more than you needed two for a one year supply.
Or in other terms, you could have prepped for three times longer for the same cost, or prepped a different system.
If you're not saving money in your day to day life by prepping, your doing it wrong.
The chances of using 100 gallons of gasoline are 100% unless you are planning on stopping using gasoline in the next couple days.
Safety concerns are simply an engineering problem, easily solved.
Now, depending on your circumstances, it could be a bad choice, but not because your chances of needing it are low. Your chances of needing it are extremely high.
Classic mistake. If its not something you will use anyway...why even have it?
All prepping is simply a matter increasing the 'buffer' you have, between supply and demand. The demand doesn't change. If you don't use it now, or don't won't it now, you won't want it later. You may be stuck with it later by why would you choose to be stuck with anything...while you have the choice?
We all usually have a small buffer anyway, a tank of gas, a frig full of food, a bottle of medicine. Prepping is just increasing that buffer by hundreds or thousands of times.
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Also a big project. If your up for it, more power to you.
In my prepping plan, freezers and refrigerators are just a luxury for the now times, I haven't invested anything in keeping them working past the day. Any food in them, which is a small percentage of my total food, will be preserved by other means after 'it' happens.
As for Y2K.
If I ever decided to take up con-artistry...grifting....or mass marketing...
I would target preppers. As a population, preppers are some of the most naive, easiest fooled people I've ever encountered.
The reason is simple: You have to have an opened mind to look at the entirety of the world around you, and say "Naw, I'm, I'm going my own way"
The problem is that the kind of people who have a mind open enough to accept the fragility of modern life....also very often have a mind so wide open, they accept everything else. Your average prepper is so easily conned, they will do it to themselves. As long as its 'not mainstream', they will swallow it, hook, line and sinker.
This makes it very very hard to actually learn anything of value from other preppers, as 90% are just re-gurgitating the scams they have fallen for, and for many, prepping is just a 'gateway drug' to other, even less credible practices. Really what they are is a healing crystal infused CBD oil colloidal silver salesman...but 'prepper' sounds more respectable than "Total Flake" does.
It's very rare to find the people who can accept the very real fragility of civilization, while also maintaining a critical, scientific 'reality' based approach.
If you really want to advance as a prepper, you almost have to ignore anyone who 'sells' themselves as a prepper, and instead focus on learning the specific disciplines you want to learn, from non-prepping experts in those fields, and figure out how to apply that knowledge to your preps.
If I ever decided to take up con-artistry...grifting....or mass marketing...
I would target preppers. As a population, preppers are some of the most naive, easiest fooled people I've ever encountered.
The reason is simple: You have to have an opened mind to look at the entirety of the world around you, and say "Naw, I'm, I'm going my own way"
The problem is that the kind of people who have a mind open enough to accept the fragility of modern life....also very often have a mind so wide open, they accept everything else. Your average prepper is so easily conned, they will do it to themselves. As long as its 'not mainstream', they will swallow it, hook, line and sinker.
This makes it very very hard to actually learn anything of value from other preppers, as 90% are just re-gurgitating the scams they have fallen for, and for many, prepping is just a 'gateway drug' to other, even less credible practices. Really what they are is a healing crystal infused CBD oil colloidal silver salesman...but 'prepper' sounds more respectable than "Total Flake" does.
It's very rare to find the people who can accept the very real fragility of civilization, while also maintaining a critical, scientific 'reality' based approach.
If you really want to advance as a prepper, you almost have to ignore anyone who 'sells' themselves as a prepper, and instead focus on learning the specific disciplines you want to learn, from non-prepping experts in those fields, and figure out how to apply that knowledge to your preps.
One would only consider storing gasoline if their plans are to use internal combustion automobiles after the apocalypse (or other things powered by internal combustion engines). And that may not be everyones plan. Also, lifting large heavy containers of gas to fill your cars manually when you are rotating stock may not be something everyone can handle. It would take five 5-gallon jerry cans (about 45 lbs each) to fill my truck, six to fill my van. And both of their gas filler tubes are quite high up in the air. I would struggle with that. Many people probably couldn't do it at all. So storing 100 gallons of gas is not a slam-dunk "must have" for every prepper.
Of course not. Prepping is HYPER local and HYPER individualist.
My point was not that YOU need to store gas, but if your a gas user, regardless of any prepping consideration at all, that 100 gallons of gas will not be wasted. There may be reasons not to store gas, but none of them are based on 'the chance of using it'. That chance, is virtually 100%.
Things that you use anyway, and do not expire in the period that you use them over, are never wasted. They are zero risk preps. They are just a larger buffer between supply and demand.
As for your other concerns, that just engineering. Once you get past the, oh, about 30 gallon stage, (this applies to water too BTW) you don't use portable containers anymore.
I personally, don't store large amounts of gasoline, because its not the basis of my prepping plans. Twenty gallons of propane a year is all I need to run my generator for what I need it for.
My neighbor on the other hand, did want to store bulk gasoline, so I helped him build one from a 200 gallon repurposed propane tank (propane tanks are very nice thick tanks because they are designed to hold pressure, and dirt cheap when old because you usually can't use them for propane if not re-certified) with a 12 volt, on demand pump and fuel nozzle. Its filled by a 55 gallon drum transfer tank and filling up there is just like going to a gas station, without having to swipe a card.
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I have 500 gallons of gasoline at one house and 250 at the other. The 500 gallons is in one tank. It is a gravity feed system. The 900 gallons of spare diesel can be put in our diesel excavator or into 5 gallon cans with a hand pump. At home I have a 12V electric pump for the 15 and 50 gallon drum's.
The oil truck can't get here if the road is snowy or icy. Having enough heating oil (diesel) on site is imperative.
I have a tad more than mentioned above. Not only will they not deliver until spring, but they have to wait until the spring road weight restrictions are off as well.
We also have to coordinate our fills with the other locals or pay a huge premium (hundreds) for the truck to come out for just one stop.
We also have to coordinate our fills with the other locals or pay a huge premium (hundreds) for the truck to come out for just one stop.
I haul my own diesel (for tertiary heating) no truck service will even consider coming up my road.
We had to go with 400 & 100 lb propane tanks so we could haul our own. They won't won't deliver propane at all.
The other fuel tanks are considerably bigger and the trucks deliver to the local res. so they are willing to do other stops along the way. I think the res. swallows the delivery cost for everyone on that day, which is right nice of them.
The other fuel tanks are considerably bigger and the trucks deliver to the local res. so they are willing to do other stops along the way. I think the res. swallows the delivery cost for everyone on that day, which is right nice of them.
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I have three Stainless Steel tables & a Stainless Steel sink for outside kitchen..
But what I really like about Stainless Steel is it will never rust away & that means that it can be use for processing & cooking & cleaning up, if needed.
But what I really like about Stainless Steel is it will never rust away & that means that it can be use for processing & cooking & cleaning up, if needed.
A couple of reasons I would swap them out. First, I am lazy. I have no way of disposing of the old freezer when it dies, nor do I have anyplace to keep it, or any other use for it. It is easier for me to swap the old one, and have it out of the way. Second, I don't want to have the old one die, and lose what I have in it. Do you have a way of knowing when it is circling the drain, so you can empty it before you lose anything? Just my 2 cents.
I have done much the same thing. One huge plus is that as each of these events is front page news my wife is more on board with prepping. She will ask questions, "Do we have this or that?" My response, "Yes, we do." She will show me an article she has read. " Yes, I know that. I have already done it." It used to be Dad's Hobby (insert eyeroll). Now my wife is much more attuned.
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When we first started stocking up on stuff we learned the hard way also: only stock what you actually eat! So for us no more SPAM, sardines, cans of corn either .
Now we only stock what we use: flour, rice, sugar, salt, pasta , oat meal, peas, beans and a variety of Asian food items that are already harder to get sometimes
We have 6 chest freezers, because we need them to store our meat we sell. One freezer can hold a lamb and a goat.
One freezer has all my frozen vegetables from the garden in it. One freezer is in an outbuiding and only has stuff that is not critical in it like frozen bottles, and dog food
We store enough fuel for the tractor , the UTV , ATV and stuff like the chain saw for it to get rotated before it goes bad, that's all. I figured where are we going to drive in our regular vehicles if SHTF? I am not going anywhere and neither will anyone else. The roads will all be blocked most likely or there will be no gas (like if the grid goes down)
Now we only stock what we use: flour, rice, sugar, salt, pasta , oat meal, peas, beans and a variety of Asian food items that are already harder to get sometimes
We have 6 chest freezers, because we need them to store our meat we sell. One freezer can hold a lamb and a goat.
One freezer has all my frozen vegetables from the garden in it. One freezer is in an outbuiding and only has stuff that is not critical in it like frozen bottles, and dog food
We store enough fuel for the tractor , the UTV , ATV and stuff like the chain saw for it to get rotated before it goes bad, that's all. I figured where are we going to drive in our regular vehicles if SHTF? I am not going anywhere and neither will anyone else. The roads will all be blocked most likely or there will be no gas (like if the grid goes down)
OK, here's Another 'small-but-Relevant Gem' - the Ultimate 'last-dropper getter-outter' for Anything you Do (or, Might, a-la Post #42: The little things you may need one day that may not be available at any price, do you have them, can you get them? ) Store in a Tube:
..Penny-pinching Artists (such as Moi use 'em for getting Every Last Drop of (Expensive..) Oil / Acrylic / Watercolor paint out of their respective Tubes - Which also translates to working great for Anything-Else-in-a-Tube you might want to 'squeeze to the Last Drop' (Toothpaste, 'JB Weld', Silicone, Neosporin / DIY ointments, etc, etc) and while "Right Now" (while near-everything's a-Plenty..) that may not seem too 'important', well...
..Methinks that Once yer, say, 'down to the Families Last 6 tubes of DIY Toothpaste' or JB Weld, or Whatever - For possibly Forever... You'll be more-than-pleased that you Can, at least, sack-out Every Last mL / drop, from what little ya've Got left.
(..and I'll bet you'll need more than 'Good Luck' to Find any of such-like, once the Balloon goes Up / Pop...)
Fwiw..
jd
..Penny-pinching Artists (such as Moi
use 'em for getting Every Last Drop of (Expensive..) Oil / Acrylic / Watercolor paint out of their respective Tubes - Which also translates to working great for Anything-Else-in-a-Tube you might want to 'squeeze to the Last Drop' (Toothpaste, 'JB Weld', Silicone, Neosporin / DIY ointments, etc, etc) and while "Right Now" (while near-everything's a-Plenty..) that may not seem too 'important', well.....Methinks that Once yer, say, 'down to the Families Last 6 tubes of DIY Toothpaste' or JB Weld, or Whatever - For possibly Forever... You'll be more-than-pleased that you Can, at least, sack-out Every Last mL / drop, from what little ya've Got left.
(..and I'll bet you'll need more than 'Good Luck' to Find any of such-like, once the Balloon goes Up / Pop...)
Fwiw..
jd
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my husband got some pumps...can to vehicles...we are only storing 4..5 gal containers...with stabilizers..for some outdoor equipment...but he does transfer after certain date.. he chooses...goes then to refill again..repeat cycle...so many things to keep up
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I have been storing gas and diesel in used home heating oil tanks for many years. They are cheap and designed for holding fuel.
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Here is a simple solution to transferring fuel. Better than sucking on that garden hose to start a siphon.
Right now $11 is cheap but if that boat doesn't get here from china.......
https://www.amazon.com/JDMSPEED-Uni...59&sprefix=motorcyclefuelpumps,aps,220&sr=8-4
Right now $11 is cheap but if that boat doesn't get here from china.......
https://www.amazon.com/JDMSPEED-Uni...59&sprefix=motorcyclefuelpumps,aps,220&sr=8-4
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I happened to buy one of those pumps but it was actually used as a fuel pump on a tractor.
For siphoning or transferring gas, I bought one of these.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00WZX9G8C/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
For non-gasoline (used for kero, diesel...) pumps, I have this one and I highly recommend it.
https://www.amazon.com/SPECSTAR-Diesel-Transfer-Pump-Electric/dp/B09KT9NC51
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I use an actual transfer tank 108g and gas rated pump for moving fuel around.
In my 'trucking daze' I kept a "Magic Siphon" in one sidebox, it was a siphon tube with a fitting at one end, and all you had to do was jerk the thing a few times for the flow to get started. You had to keep the receiving bucket or can lower than the fuel tank opening, of course, but the "Magic Siphon" worked like gangbusters! No actual pump either, just a tube with a fitting at one end... I think there was a ball of some sort in that fitting, it has been a long time since I had my siphon. Great little 'tool' though, I never had to taste gasoline or diesel again, lol. 
