6 Critical Preps to Survive a Short-Term Winter Power Outage

are you ready for a winter power outage hi i'm kyleen and i'm jonathan and we are the provident preppers we are recently asked to speak at the be ready utah webinar our topic was how to prepare for a winter power outage after some discussion we decided that this presentation was just too valuable not to share with our entire youtube audience so we've taken some time and put it in a video format especially for you so grab a paper and pen and let's get ready for that next winter power outage taking steps right now to prepare yourself for short-term winter power outage makes all the difference we are going to address six critical preps that you need to look at we were asked to be presenters at the be ready utah webinar and we were really excited we this is a definitely a cause that we support and originally we were going to speak on emergency cooking however utah experienced a large power outage and so instead of just speaking about emergency cooking they asked us to talk about the important things that you should do to prepare to survive a short-term power outage that might last up to two weeks or so so let's work together and get ready for a power outage the first thing we need to do is a careful risk evaluation really look at where we live what resources we have and what threats are around us and then take into consideration the special needs of different members of your family do you have somebody who's very old or very young or is compromised in some way that they really cannot tolerate cold or do they need special medical equipment we'll also go over lighting heating emergency water sanitation cooking and even a little bit on backup power if we're talking about a mild weather outage these are a little bit inconvenient but often they're just a chance to have an adventure however when we're talking about a severe weather outage things change this is a potentially life or death situation now our family is kind of crazy those of you who follow us know that we do crazy experiments and one of the first crazy experiments that we did was to turn off our power in january when our kids were just small and there is a youtube video that we created explaining exactly what we learned and what we did during that power outage that could be really helpful just look up on youtube how to survive a winter power outage and it should pop up for you whether we're talking about a short-term or a long-term outage the situation is very similar the difference is if it's going to be a long-term situation you need to prepare with additional fuel and supplies one critical area is power outage lighting being in the dark can be dangerous and having just a little bit of light can make a lot of difference it's important to plan ahead for task lighting area lighting and for just general safety lighting we are huge fans of solar powered lighting but you decide what's going to work best for you and then make it happen one of the things that i would caution you against is depending solely on candle lighting because of the fire hazard open flame can be very dangerous and we discovered this in our little experiment because the kids were trying to stick all kinds of different objects into the candle and light them on fire we have come to the conclusion that battery operated lighting equipment really is the best especially the solar rechargeable ones like we had mentioned before a power outage can be a very traumatic situation especially for young children so think about different things that you can do to provide comfort lighting for each one of the children in your home glow sticks are always a big hit but even a small individual flashlight that you can purchase at the dollar store can make all the difference we explore many of the alternatives that you might want to consider in the youtube video brilliant ideas to light your world in a power outage and after this is over look in the description of this video and we will provide links so that you can see all the stuff and you don't have to worry too much about it right now the second area we will address is emergency heating obviously what we need to do is keep the heat in and the cold out and a few weeks ago we created a video entitled six life-saving tips to keep warm during the power outage where we go into some of these in detail one of the things that we did to help secure our home is to cover our windows with plastic you can use bubble wrap or clear plastic you can even put blankets up but we found that dark is very depressing and so having something that will let some of the light in is really important and then using tape to seal up some of those gaps where you can feel the cold air entering can be very helpful now i would advise you against using duct tape because let me tell you duct tape is going to pull the paint off your wall and you will need to repaint but if you use something like painters tape it tends to come off with a lot less damage but if there's one takeaway from this video that we could give you it is about creating micro environments to be able to stay warm first when the heat goes out we want to confine any emergency heating that you have to a small space it doesn't make sense to use the fuel and the energy to heat the whole house we want to just bring everybody together in a central location and heat just that small area now if you create a micro environment by setting up a family tent in the in the family room it's amazing how much warmer you will stay back when we did that experiment when our kids were little i learned a really good lesson so we put the kids in these little pup tents they were 15 like winnie the pooh tents that we had picked up at walmart on clearance so they were no big deal tents but we had put them in zero degree sleeping bags they were wearing um blanket sleepers and i tuck them in bed at night but then being the lazy old person that i am i wanted to sleep in my own bed so we went into our bedroom piled on the blankets and went to sleep and in the middle of the night seriously i woke up panicked that i had killed my children that they had frozen dead death because of some stupid experiment that i wanted to do so i went running out into the family room and unzipped the tent and i was hit by this big whoosh of hot air and the kids were sleeping on top of the sleeping bags just breathing they were so hot it was so cool to learn how well this works now if you don't have a tent don't sweat it you can do this by putting a blanket over the top bunk and putting both kids in the bottom bunk you can just put a blanket over the kitchen table and create like a little play area or have people sleep under there one of our youtube viewers commented that he had taken rigid styrofoam sheets and he just taped them together to create this little styrofoam containment unit where he was able to stay warm i thought it was a great idea so don't limit the potential ideas right just because we said the tent but make sure that if you are cold create that micro environment you'll be glad you did okay the next step in emergency heating is to make sure that you have planned for some safe alternative heat sources carbon monoxide is so incredibly dangerous so don't do anything that will put your family at risk one very inexpensive option is a tea light heater you just take a small metal can and you put tea lights in the bottom and light them on fire tea lights are really small they are inexpensive they are very safe to store it creates a nice little place to warm your hands or have a little localized heat source it is not going to warm your whole room but it sure could help if you're really cold we talked about this a little bit more in the youtube videos candles as an emergency fuel source for warmth light and cooking yes it is an open flame so you must be very careful whenever you use an open flame i'm a big fan of safe heat because it's safe to burn indoors for the most part right it still has its open flame but for the most part it's safe each of those cans will burn for six hours so that's a long burn time remember these aren't just regular cans of sterno because some of those are not safe to burn indoors all we've done is taken a folding camp stove and put the safe heat underneath it then we've taken a terra cotta pot a small one and put it right on top that folding stove and then we place some type of non-flammable foil or something right over that hole to prevent the air from going up and then we put another pot on top of it and it creates something that's very similar to that tea light heater it's a localized heat source but you're getting 428 degrees so that's really nice and warm and my very favorite are the mr buddy propane heaters these are safe and portable they're rated for indoor use as long as you live below 7000 feet in elevation and they provide an excellent source of heat one of the things that i would note about these heaters though you've got the smaller one that runs off of a bottle of propane however that larger one also has fans so it's very efficient but you need to stock d batteries along with your propane to make it work i think the best solution is actually a wood-burning stove i love my wood-burning cook stove however that is not an option for everyone if you have the ability to install a wood burning stove i would sure do it and i would stock a lot of wood because it's a safe fuel but that's not an option for everyone an important part of any emergency plan is having sufficient water we recommend at least two gallons per person per day for at least two weeks store as much as you can reasonably for more information on water storage check out our youtube channel how to store water for emergencies and remember just because you're cold doesn't mean that you can't become dehydrated in fact believe it or not it's almost more important to stay hydrated because dehydration allows your blood to thicken which puts you at greater risk for things like frostbite and hypothermia and let's not forget about emergency sanitation now chances are your toilet's still going to be working and probably your water but you may not have those you have to have a backup plan for your family in case there is no running water or working sewer we're in the process of creating this really cool series for newbie preppers and newbie prepper step 3 is all about emergency sanitation and now what the bulk of this presentation is about is emergency cooking and back last november we did a grid down cooking challenge where we didn't cook using any electricity or natural gas for the entire month of november including our thanksgiving dinner including thanksgiving and some of it didn't turn out so well as you can see and now is a really good time to practice so that you don't actually have to eat all of that burnt cinnamon roll just the bottom that still tasted good we want to be able to cook indoors outdoors and you've got to practice one of the safest cooking fields for cooking indoors is alcohol this is a little alcohol burner and we just use it the same way that we do the safe heat in the little folding camp stove we did a really cool experiment where we compared different alcohol fuels and you can learn more about it in the video that we created alcohol fuel comparison best choice for campers and preppers but to sum it up we have four different fuels denatured alcohol which is about 16 cents an ounce everclear which is 96 cents an ounce isopropyl alcohol at 8 cents an ounce and then the safe heat at 17 cents and we compared all of these the isopropyl alcohol while it's cheapest there's a reason that it's the least expensive and it produces this yellow flame and it actually kind of makes the house smell a little bit i would avoid that one the everclear worked fantastically well however it was very expensive the denature alcohol was surprisingly a fantastic fuel it had a really nice hot flame and it's not very expensive and it was right there with the safe heat personally i prefer to store the safe heat just because of the way that it's packaged but either of those work really well now alcohol isn't a super hot fuel so it's not going to burn as hot as propane does but wow for indoor cooking it's a really good option and then here's the safe heat that we talked about just a minute ago as you can see you've got it in this little can and all you have to do is light it then when it's time to put it out you just put the lid on it just to smother it you want to make sure you let that can cool completely before you're screwing on the lid or it will be very very difficult to take off in the future if you look at those cans can you see how they you have 12 cans that come in those little flats that is 72 hours of burn time that is a lot of fuel and you can store it in your home very safely in our video safe and fun indoor cooking when utilities are gone you can learn a lot more about cooking indoors and see some of the fun things that we did when we were practicing such as having fondue as a family originally i was not a huge fan of the little butane cook stoves for a couple of reasons the fuel is a little bit more challenging to store safely because those little butane canisters can really become little bombs if you're not really careful about the way that you store them but let me tell you during our grid down 30-day cooking challenge this ended up being my go-to so i'm going to give you a couple very important hints if you are going to use this indoors first of all this is a sterno butane stove which means that it was designed to be used by caterers indoors if you are using a butane stove that's designed for camping those are not safe to use indoors unless you ventilate so make sure that you know what kind of stove you have and take the necessary precautions i recommend that you spend the money to buy one of these catering butane stoves so that it can safely be used indoors the least expensive place that we have found to purchase both the stoves and the butane fuel canisters is at sam's club along with the safe heat i don't have stock in sam's club but i have found that the catering section at sam's club is a really good resource for these items tea lights once again not only can they keep you warm but it is possible to cook with them this is titan ready's herc oven and you use tea lights to power this oven it's really well built it will not cook as hot as you would expect from other fuels however these are tea lights and we baked cakes and muffins and even that shepherd's pie that you see tea lights can also be used directly under a pot to warm or cook the food in this photo we have the pot a little bit too far away from the tea lights it did end up cooking the oatmeal but if you bring it closer it will do a better job propane stoves and ovens also do a really great job these are typically rated for outdoor use we did bring the camp chef stove and oven into the garage with the windows open because it was just too cold to be cooking outside this camp chef oven is really nice because most of the emergency cooking devices are things that you use on the stovetop and very few of them can you actually bake in so i gained an appreciation for this little propane oven and this is my absolute favorite cooking device the solar oven is just an amazing tool and you may say well that's not going to work in the winter time actually they can work very well it's based off the uv rays and on some of those clear sunny days the days where you get sunburns in the middle of winter you can do some impressive cooking we have cooked turkeys in here and all kinds of different things and in the summer it's actually part of our regular routine you're going to want to check out the video solar ovens cooking with the sun and emergency and it'll show you the really cool things that we have been able to do including cooking turkeys in that little sun oven i am a huge huge fan of rocket stoves because they use sticks and debris to cook the food and they do it so efficiently you can find rocket stoves in all kinds of different varieties right now we are actually testing that minuteman rocket stove that comes in an ammo can and it is amazing how well it works just this little tiny lightweight stove that your feeding sticks into and how well it cooks dinner the other one that i really like is a kelly kettle and the thing that i like about it is that it has this water jacket and it so you put the debris in the bottom you put that water jacket on there and within just a few minutes you've got boiling hot water from just a few sticks or a pine cone and then the helios is great for cooking large amounts but my very very very favorite is the bear river rocket stove i had seen this bear river rocket stove at one of the preparedness expos that we spoke at and i fell in love with it but it was out of my price range and so i wasn't able to buy it but when we decided to do this 30 day grid down cooking challenge i called dan on the phone and i said look dan i know i can't buy this but will you just let us use it for this month you'll get some good exposure and i'll get to play with it we cooked all kinds of stuff on this because you can see it has this grill top but it also has this huge oven and our turkey turned out so beautiful in this oven but when our cooking challenge was over i told john there is no way i can send this back to dan so we ended up having to buy it but now it's in my cooking arsenal and it makes me happy and we'll be able to cook for the entire neighborhood that's right bring sticks we'll cook charcoal is another great way to cook we commonly think about this when we think of dutch oven cooking or barbecuing but there's some other great ways to cook including a paper box oven an apple box oven you can see a cob cooker here an eco cue there's just a variety of ways that you can cook and you can see here we are cooking in the middle of winter with snow on our porch and things are turning out great and dinner is beautiful what you can't see is that on the very top layer of this there was a pumpkin cheesecake so it was a fantastic meal learn more about charcoal in the video that we created charcoal practical outdoor emergency cooking fuel it really is a very safe way to store fuel and that cob cooker is pretty fantastic too it can be used as a grill but it also has that frying pan and all you're using is just a few charcoals to cook an entire meal always remember this is only an outdoor fuel it produces copious amounts of carbon monoxide so you would not want to use this even in a fireplace indoors keep it outside and we're back around to the wood burning stove i love my wood-burning cook stove even though it turned the cinnamon rolls into charcoal which is why we must practice practice practice this is such a great tool because it warms our house and it cooks our food the tent was the takeaway from the emergency heating but retained heat cooking is your takeaway from the cooking aspect of this retain heat cooking you've got to learn more about it you make sure that you go to that video that we have thermal cookers powerful solution for efficient emergency cooking on the left here you see a thermal cooker and it has a really nice stainless steel cooking pot in the center of it and you pull that out you put it on the stove and you bring whatever you're cooking to a nice boil by the way this only works with things like that have lots of liquid in them so these carrots worked because they had a lot of liquid um stews chilis soups things like that work really well with retained heat cooking you bring that to a boil and then you tuck it back into the thermal cooker there's a lid that goes on it then we close the top and i always like to wrap a blanket around it for a little bit of added insulation but it's amazing without any additional fuel that will continue to cook the carrots or the soup or the beans whatever you have it takes about four times as long but it can retain that heat for a really long time if you don't have a fancy retained heat cooker you can use something like an ice chest and line the bottom with towels or a blanket put the pot inside and then wrap it in a blanket make sure there's no air space and then close it up if you don't have an ice chest use a box we even have somebody from our class that talked about how they used to do it in the bathtub and they just pile the blankets in the bathtub along with the pot and then cover it up you want at least four inches of insulation on each side of that pot and if you use fabrics that will melt they are going to melt because that pot is hot definitely check out that video now we're going to talk just a few minutes about backup power backup power can look like a variety of things including a gasoline or diesel or propane generator these of course you do have to store fuel for and of course they have to be used outside because of carbon monoxide not only that but they're really loud and so think about this the powers out you have a generator that's really loud kind of sounds like a lawn mower how long do you think it's really gonna stay outside another option is for you to use solar a lot of people have solar on the rooftop and yet a lot of those systems won't provide any power for you when the lights go out because they're grid tied some companies will offer you the ability to use a limited amount of that energy during the day when the sun's shining so if you're looking at rooftop solar make sure you know what you're getting and try and find a company that will provide you with some backup energy for a power outage another option that you have are these little power stations portable power stations come in sizes all the way from about 200 or 300 watts up to about 1500 watts which is the one that is in the picture here these systems can be charged using household power when it's available and then typically you will buy some solar panels to charge that with if the power is out these can provide backup energy for things like medical equipment lighting phone charging a whole variety of things and even up to refrigeration if you have a small refrigerator you need to understand what loads you need to run and then you can size a portable power station to match that okay and for those of us who don't speak geek the thing in the middle is a backup battery system you can plug it into the wall and it will charge and then if you need to run your cpap at night you can take that battery bank into your bedroom and plug your cpap into it it can be recharged by household power when it's available you can use solar panels and put them outside to charge it or you could even charge it using a generator so that it's one of those things that gets gets powered up but you don't have to use the generator all night long to run your cpap or your oxygen so really that's a really good thing to look at just to provide that little bit of emergency power especially if you can't do without it the prep steps for a power outage include getting appropriate lighting and making sure that you have the batteries that you need for it backup heating device along with storing the fuel safely you need water storage alternative sanitation plan and the supplies grid down cooking device and fuel we've given you lots of ideas for that today and then we want you to stock up on shelf stable easy to prepare foods and beverages things that aren't difficult to cook in fact it's really nice to have some that you don't have to cook at all and then consider a realistic backup power options that are designed to meet your specific needs and then practice practice practice you don't have to be total geeks like us and turn off your power for a long time but how about turn off your power for a couple hours one night and see how your family reacts to it it might teach you a lot power outage not a problem because if you're prepared you turn it into an adventure we invite you to learn more on our youtube channel that we've talked a lot about today and i feel a little bit bad for continually pointing you to these different videos but there's so much information there that there's no way we could pack into this short presentation so pick and choose what it is that you need and there is probably a video on our channel trying to help you be able to prepare and then we have a website the providentprepper.org most of the time when we create a video there is an accompanying post that actually goes into greater detail concerning that subject and always we have a book that we have written it's called the prominent prepper a common sense guide to preparing for emergencies and then you can follow us on all kinds of different social media platforms check them out we sincerely hope that we do not have a power outage this winter but it is very wise to hope for the best and prepare for the worst now for the question of the day what have you done so that you are prepared for a winter power outage comment below and thanks for being part of the solution

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 19,507

Rating: 4.9668202 out of 5

Keywords: Prepare Utah, Be Ready Utah, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Power Outage Preparedness, Emergency Preparedness, Living Off Grid, Alternative Cooking Solutions, No Power Cooking, Emergency Heating, Power Outage Heating, Backup Power, Power Outage Lighting, Power Outage Cooking, Power Outage Preps, Power Outage Sanitation

Id: -f6riZ5MCWM

Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020