Building a Power Outage / Blackout Kit

hello this is vince welcome to my channel today we're going to talk about blackout boxes basically this is a box or kit that you set aside with the supplies you would need in case there's a power outage this is an important topic because unlike other events power outages are fairly common you probably know somebody that's been through power outage recently or you may experience them we seem to experience them a few times a year and in fact we just went through the texas power outage which was a long-term power outage so this is why i'm making this video just to kind of give you some ideas for creating a kit i think it's an important item to start with as you're preparing this is a good place to start so let's get into the video okay so my kit is in a plastic storage bin it's just an inexpensive bin that i got at target or walmart and i put a label on on two sides that way when it's sitting on a shelf anyone can read that label and easily tell what's in the in the kit and a couple things i want to mention about it is that you want to let your family know where your kid is located in case you're not home at the time of a power outage uh i keep mine in my laundry room on the top shelf so everyone you know it's kind of a central location and everyone knows where that's at so let's kind of get into the kit and i can show you what i got maybe get some good ideas from it so the basic items you're going to find in in a blackout kit and in my kit is flashlights uh lights maybe a radio things like that so let me set this aside and then we'll just kind of go through some of the items and hopefully give you some good ideas for what to put in your kit so one of the first items i have in my kit is a lantern i think it's important to have a few different lighting options so this is just a lantern that we got at costco it's collapsible and it has a few different settings as far as light modes and a flashing mode but basically you want to have lanterns and flashlights and we do have a few flashlights in here but the basic difference is the reason why you want to have both of these is because a lantern will provide lighting to an entire room it's going to provide lighting in 360 degrees and if you're eating dinner or you're cooking or you're going to use a restroom or something you're going to want a light like this that provides light throughout the room lights up the room allows you to do you know many tasks at once you know you're not you can set it down and it provides you with lighting the difference between that and a flashlight which is more directional is this is more for a focus task and you're going to need to hold this and if you're trying to look at something in the dark and or look for something in the dark you're going to need a flashlight that can shine in that direction while you're searching for it versus a lantern which is not going to be as bright in the direction you're pointing it but it's going to provide that 360 degree lighting to provide lighting throughout the room so i think it's important to have both and in fact you probably want a lantern for every room so if you have you know kids or guest room and people over they're gonna need a lantern in that room so they can light that room and see what they're doing and then also so that if they need to go to a restroom or something they could take this lantern with them and then they're going to want a flashlight in case they need to look in a purse or look for something in the closet you're going to want to shine a flashlight in so that's why it's important to have both types of lights the next item of course is that you'll need is batteries um i happen to have these duracell batteries and i like to get them because they have a 10-year warranty on them they're guaranteed for 10 years that means you can keep them in your kit for for years and they should still be good that being said i still like to rotate these out every couple years because i just like to you know make make sure they're keeping their charge and staying fresh so even though they have that 10-year warranty and i could keep them in there for you know a pretty long time after a year or two i like to rotate them out and put in a fresh set and use these um around the house the other thing i want to mention is when it comes to batteries everything in my kit i have is double a or aaa i try not to get anything that requires type c or d batteries or any other kind of batteries because they're just it's just easier if you have one or two sets of batteries that you require that way you can borrow batteries or switch batteries from other items and you're not trying to find oh you know an odd size battery like a c or d plus these batteries are lighter when you put them in a flashlight or lantern it's going to be a lighter item to carry lighter item to have around so i just feel like these items are easier to store you can store a lot of batteries in a small place so i really like double and triple a and i just try and avoid the larger size batteries because of that and another thing i want to mention is that when you have your items stored in your blackout kit um you should always store them without any batteries in them for a couple of reasons the first reason is that if you have batteries in here there's a chance that they could start slowly being drained by the device they may draw a small amount of power and then when you need them your batteries are dead the other probably more important reason is that batteries over time will tend to corrode the terminals of a device so if you keep your batteries in there this has happened to me several times when you come to use it it doesn't work you check the batteries and there's corrosion on the terminals and the device is damaged at that point and probably not usable unless you're able to somehow fix those damaged corroded terminals the other thing that i keep in my kit that i think is is not absolutely necessary but but helpful is i keep a little voltage meter and what this allows me to do is just check the uh voltage of the double a aaa batteries so that as we're using batteries and we're pulling some out of one device and using them another we can check to see which batteries still have a good charge and pair them up with other batteries that have a good charge and just go through the batteries and see which ones are good still this is a good item to you know let the kids do and let them divide the batteries up and something fun for them to do also so another item that you're going to want to have is a small battery-powered am fm radio and i have this small one that i got a few years ago and we used this recently and it worked good to be able to check the local am fm weather stations and just see what's going on and also just to provide some background music for when you're eating dinner and the power's out it's very quiet in the house i have this one and then i recently wanted to get a hand cranked one so i picked up this life gear one and this one is a life gear hand crank weather radio and it has a light on it it's usb rechargeable and you can hand crank it has a usb adapter at the bottom and another feature that this one happens to have is that you can use it to charge your cell phone with also so this is something else you're going to want in your kit am fm battery powered radio hand cranked um just so you can get news and information when your power is out another item i want to mention is i keep a deck of playing cards in there um you may want to do the same if the power is out uh tv's off there's not a lot to do i know when we when we lost power in it uh recently um my son was playing cards and he enjoyed you know having fun playing cards so it's it's good to have some kind of entertainment in your kit to make time go by whenever you're sitting and there's no power and no tv no device the other thing i want to mention is i also have this uh battery adapter that allows me to use my power tool batteries to power a usb device so this is just an adapter that goes on top of my power tool battery and it allows me to use my power tool batteries to recharge my cell phone or other usb devices i did a full video review on this if you haven't seen that video i'll leave a link below but that's a a very informative video showing you how this device was able to keep my cell phone and my flashlights charged during a power outage we had in texas recently so another item i like to keep in my kit are glow sticks i prefer these actually over tea lights or candles because especially if you have kids around the house you don't have to worry about it the candle being knocked over and causing a fire so i keep a few of these items in my kit i got these at walmart for a dollar they're very inexpensive you can also find them at the dollar store and um another thing i find with these is they're really good if you have kids in the house because if there's a power outage it's a little bit of a stressful situation and if you pull out glow sticks and you tell kids that hey you're going to use this on your nightstand this is going to be your night light tonight it's kind of a fun item for them and they always you know and seem to enjoy that so i like to have these on hand for the kids to use as night lights it doesn't use your batteries up and you know they they seem to last overnight and you know for the price it's it's a very good thing to have in your kit the other uh i also keep the bracelet type glow sticks and what i found is that if you put these on the doorknob of the bedroom and the restroom if someone has to get up in the middle of night and you know open the door to the bedroom or to the restroom this will light up the door handle and make it a little bit easier for them to get to that doorknob and be able to find it in the dark so very inexpensive item uh i really like keeping them in my kit the other thing i want to mention is um one more type of light that you you might want to include is a head lamp so this is good because if you're out working on a generator or out doing something else you're and you need two hands to do whatever you're doing you know adding gas to the generator or carrying something you need both hands free and if you don't have a head lamp you're going to have to have someone hold the flashlight and point it to the right direction for you but with the headlight you solve that problem so i recommend having a headlamp in your kit and one more item i want to mention is uh i'm a big fan of the olight rechargeable flashlights i also mentioned those in another video but basically these uh flashlights are very bright they're small they're rechargeable so i like to use these um with my everyday carry because they save money on batteries because you're not constantly buying batteries and you're just able to reuse these and super bright easy to carry so in my other video i also showed how these can be charged up with the usb device so if you haven't seen that there's a link in the description below thanks for watching um appreciate everyone watching if you don't mind hit the like thumbs up button that helps the algorithm and also i want to say hi to gus he's my dog right here he's being quiet being very good he actually sat through the whole video so appreciate it have a good day

Channel: Survival Vince

Views: 650

Rating: 4.8461537 out of 5

Keywords: Power Outage, Blackout Kit, Blackout Box, Grid Down, Survival, Prepper

Id: 1J0omkrPJ1c

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021