Cold Times — How to Prepare for the Mini Ice Age

by Dr. Anita Bailey

  Starting fires in stoves or fireplaces for the first time is a similar experience, especially if you have to really work at it. Here’s how I do it:

  Make sure chimney is clear (no bird’s nest in it, for example), and that there isn’t excessive ash in the stove already. Open the chimney damper all the way (vertical).

  Take a couple sheets of newspaper or anything similarly flammable, give it a few twists, and lay it in the bottom of your stove on top of the grate. Put the same under the grate.

  On top of the paper on the grate, place light, dry kindling about 2 or 3 inches deep, crisscrossing all the little sticks and chips so that there’s pretty good airflow around them.

  On top of the kindling, lay 5 or 6 small pieces of split wood, crisscrossing all.

  Now, take a piece of newspaper, feed bag, or similar, crumple and twist it, and light one end. Hold that inside the stove near where the stovepipe exits, so that it draws smoke up the chimney. This is basically priming the chimney to draw smoke upward by heating it a little.

  Once you can see the stove is “drawing” good, light the paper under the grate. The draw will pull the heat and flames up through the kindling and set the whole thing ablaze.

  Leave the stove front open until the fire is “merry”.

  Put in larger pieces of wood, crossing them several ways to allow continued airflow.

  Close stove front, and adjust air intake(s) and the damper so that the fire is burning, but burning slowly – you’ll be able to hear the sound change as you adjust everything. It burns more slowly with the vents turned down but not closed completely, and the damper closed about halfway. Never close the chimney damper down completely if the vents are open. That will fill your house with smoke. If you get a roaring chimney fire, close all vents first, then close the damper.

  Check the fire in an hour or so, or if you start to feel a chill. Add wood as needed to keep it going continuously. At night, “bank” the fire by turning vents down low and damper about ¼ open. It will burn down to coals by morning.

  The next morning, open the damper, open the vents. Open the stove front. If you still have coals, just reload small wood over that as you did initially. If the coals are cool, start over. You may have to scoop out some ash to get it going.

  CAVEAT: Everyone starts fires differently, so experiment. Find an approach that works for you. Don’t even bother trying to light it with damp leaves or tinder, because all you’ll get is smoke. If you’re keeping your fire going, you may be able to use but a single match for the entire season. That’s the high challenge for good fire maintenance. Store lots of matches! As a backup, keep a large magnifying glass and some very dry tinder. Light the tinder by using the magnifying glass to focus sunlight onto it, then bring the burning tinder to the stove.

  Firestarters

  As tempting as it may be to start a reluctant fire with a wee bit of diesel fuel or gasoline or barbeque lighter, DON’T. That’s one of the best ways to burn down your house and turn yourself into a living torch.

  There are materials that burn well and allow enough time for your tinder to catch, which you can make readily today. For example, you can make an excellent Firestarter with Vaseline and genuine cotton balls, smearing the Vaseline over the balls – when you want a fire, place the Firestarter on your tinder, and light the ball.

  You can do the same with some dryer lint in melted wax – place a cotton-ball size hunk of dryer lint in a dry ice cube tray section, and cover it with melted wax, either fresh wax or saved old candle wax. When hardened, store it in a baggie and use one or two on your kindling.

  If you make up lots of these now, you won’t have to make them later when wax, Vaseline, genuine cotton balls, or dryer lint are hard to find.

  Awakening Stage Temporary Heat

  It is wise to keep several forms of backup heat, for any just-in-case situation that may arise. I’m calling these “Awakening Stage” heat, because once the Zen-slap sets in, it may be difficult or impossible to get these supplies.

  One of these is a kerosene heater, effectively, a portable stand-alone smaller stove that runs off of kerosene. These cost around $200 or less, are lightweight when empty, and can run all night on a single kerosene fill of a few gallons. The heat generated is warming and moderately clean. You’ll need to leave a window at each end of the house partially open a crack so that you get air movement through the house. The challenge with these is that you then have to store lots and lots of kerosene, another cost.

  If you have a barbeque grill propane tank, you can use that to feed into a propane heater but DO NOT use your BBQ grill as a heat source or for cooking when it is not HIGHLY ventilated. You will die from carbon monoxide poisoning, without even knowing it’s happening. Instead, the “Big Buddy” type is a ventless heater that is usually used for camping. For the same cost, you can buy a small wall-mountable ventless standard heater that will run for several days to a week on a portable jug of propane. These are probably safer than the camping heaters, because they are designed for use in a home.

  If you have a non-electric propane cookstove, your oven makes a fine heater as well. Although manufacturers say not to use these for heating, it’s unlikely to kill you. Proof is that there aren’t a spate of “Thanksgiving deaths” related to cooking the turkey all night or running the cookstove all day.

  These are all temporary heat sources, because eventually the manufactured fuel runs out. Once again, that wood stove and heater will last as long as there are trees, so it’s a better resource for the long run.

  Keeping Heat Where You Want It

  Modern houses are made to be well insulated and air tight – hopefully not so tight that you’d run out of breathable air if doors and windows are all closed! Closing off portions of your home, such as bedrooms, is a good way to localize heat.

  During cold winters in the old, leaky farmhouse, we would crank up the woodstove and close off doors to the rest of the house – that kept heat in the room we were in. We’d sleep in sleeping bags next to the stove, plenty warm. The rest of the house could get below freezing, and we’d still be toasty. At the time, we didn’t have water pipes to worry about. Don’t close off rooms where water pipes are located, such as bathrooms and kitchens. We’ve also set up heavy curtains in doorways to control heat flow. Curtained rooms can be opened just before use, letting warm air back in.

  The novel, Stacey’s Quest by AK Steele available on Amazon Kindle, is set during a social collapse in a snowy winter. In one scene, Stacey goes to a neighbor’s home. Inside the house, she finds a camping tent with the neighbor family dead inside. They had set up a propane camp heater, and were all asphyxiated. Pretty graphic, but a strong reminder of what not to do in a cold situation.

  Keep heat around you, but remember that all flame utilizes the same oxygen you breathe. Give it its own air, by cracking open a couple windows on opposite ends of the house. It will be chilly, but you’ll survive. That’s what counts.

  9 POWER AND LIGHT

  One of the important features of the modern age is so commonplace and so foundational to everything we do, that it is virtually invisible. Because grid power is so ubiquitous, most of us can scarcely imagine a world without it. That is, until the power goes down, and we stumble in the dark turning on switches that don’t work, and continuing to be surprised when we open the refrigerator and the light doesn’t come on. All of our entire lifetime of experience tells us that the power outage is temporary, and we merely need to wait it out until ‘they’ get it fixed.

  A lifetime of experience is profoundly hard behavior to change, much harder than choosing to break a habit like smoking or eating too many carbs. Two years after we went off grid and largely non-electric, I was still absent-mindedly flipping dead light switches. Forty years of training doesn’t just go away. When power is interrupted, a normal part of our lives is lost, our control is lost, our ability to perform competently in the world we have built is shattered. Some people will literally not know how to functi
on.

  As we move deeper into the Grand Solar Minimum, the risk of long-term grid-down incidents increases. Storms, snow, and floods become more severe; electronics-destroying power surges and brownouts increase; and the risk for a systemic failure grows. As national economies contract, the funds for repairing failing facilities dry up, so repairs aren’t made. Electrical power is a fragile foundation on which to plan a future.

  Unfortunately, because universal power is so involved with our lives, planning a non-electric future becomes extremely hard to envision. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t plan for it. The only way to imagine it is to experience it, so you have a non-electric challenge ahead of you. You must practice with these supplies before you need them. This is particularly true if you have children; they can adapt, too, but need to feel like the non-electric life is just one more version of “normal”.

  Solar, The Pros and Cons

  One of the first options many people consider is to go “off grid” with solar applications. Solar has some real benefits. It can be portable or stationary; it can provide consistent power that is “free” after the initial expense; it will continue to function when the main grid has gone down; and it returns control over your energy needs to you.

  However, the downsides of solar are very real, too. The first is that it is very costly to try to duplicate grid power with solar, if you keep using electricity as most people do right now. Retrofitting an ordinary house can easily run into $30,000-$70,000, if you don’t change out appliances for propane-powered or low electric-draw stoves, refrigerators, driers, and water heaters. Buying those is an additional thousands of dollars of initial expense.

  Another downside is that solar is 100% dependent on the sun….and we already know that the Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) output is dropping and will get lower during the Cold Times ahead. That WILL affect the efficiency of your solar panels and power collection – which means that you will need about double the collection panels that you would have needed a decade ago, in order to get the same power output. That also ups the initial expense. EMPs and CMEs have the potential to impair panel circuitry, as well.

  Solar panels have a life-span, a decade more or less. They can be damaged by hail, can get cloudy and suffer decreased efficiency, and need to be cleaned once or twice a year. Unless your panels are very securely attached, they can be lifted by high winds and lost during storms, too. So you’ll need to buy more panels than you think you need to replace ones that are damaged, worn out, or lost.

  Yet another issue is that you need to store your solar collected power in batteries. Even if you buy the top of the line, batteries have a life-span of about a decade. That means, even with the top level equipment, you’re going to be unable to store power efficiently for longer than a decade, unless you store “sleeping” batteries (uncharged) as replacements, another expense.

  A critical piece of your system is the charge controller, an electronic device that manages the input from your panels into the batteries. Because your systems cannot work without a functional charge controller, you’ll need at least two. One of them is for backup. More expense.

  Another downside is that you have to learn how solar works, and how to maintain your equipment. This is about as challenging as learning how to rewire your house, or replace hardware components in your computer, so it’s not impossible to learn. However, if you don’t have an inclination to do that type of electrical work, you won’t develop the interest just because you bought a solar panel. Don’t make your future dependent on a technology that you have little interest in maintaining.

  That said, there’s no reason why a home or community couldn’t install smaller solar applications – say, a single battery with a small solar panel to charge it – and run a few lower power items off it. A few LED lights, a laptop or two, a small DVD player, an ebook reader, a backup battery charger, a cell phone or even a field phone could be charged off this kind of system. With two batteries and two panels, you could run a still-air (Styrofoam) incubator and hatch chicks, too, or expand your other charging operations.

  Right now, there are many solar operations offering a wide assortment of solar panels, set ups (arrays), batteries, and charge controllers. Each operation has its own view of the best way to do things and the best equipment for the job. Watch some YouTubes and get familiar with the basics before you leap.

  For now, if you have a limited amount of funds, aim toward a small solar system. Check and compare online prices and systems. Don’t go for the cheapest or the most expensive; go mid-price. On the low end, Northern and Harbor Freight both have carried complete “portable” systems, with four 15-watt panels (a total of 60 watts), charge controller and wiring – you supply the marine deep-cycle battery or car battery. A marine deep cycle battery or golf cart battery is generally more expensive than a car battery, but can tolerate being discharged more “deeply” before it needs to be recharged than can car batteries.

  Variations on Solar: Generator Plan

  The concept of solar power has been so glamorized in the past couple decades that it’s easy to lose sight of what solar is all about: acquiring and storing useable electrical power. Solar panels are merely the way we “grab” potential electricity and transform it into a form that can be readily “stored” in batteries. Basically, solar panels are just one way to acquire and store electricity in batteries. Any system that can “save” electricity for use later is points ahead during trying times – so, consider this:

  1000 watt gasoline generator  battery charger  battery

  Grid  battery charger  battery

  Driving your car to work  battery charger  battery

  Tractor  PTO generator battery charger  battery

  Solar accomplishes the exact same end point – charging batteries.

  So, one plan might be to store treated1 non-ethanol2 gasoline. Use that to power a $400 generator, which is hooked to a battery charger, which charges deep cycle batteries, one at a time if you have to. While the generator is running3, depending on your available power4, you could also do a load of laundry, pump enough water to fill a holding tank, charge cellphones and tablets and laptops5. The energy you store in batteries can then be used for lights and small appliances (blenders, for example) and laptop DVDs6.

  Treat gasoline with Stabil or Pri-G, which keeps it in good condition for long periods of time. Also, store gasoline where it is away from flammables and your residence and relatively cool, such as in a tank that is heavily shaded by trees.

  Use ONLY non-ethanol gasoline in small engines, such as generators, mowers, and trimmers. Ethanol gasoline (“corn gas”) is widely recognized as damaging to small engine carburetors and gaskets. Corn gas doesn’t keep in storage, either, no matter how you treat it.

  Generators must never be run in a confined space, such as a garage or closed shed or near a sleeping area. There’s the risk of killing yourself with a carbon monoxide overdose. Keep in mind that the sound of a generator when the grid is down is like a lighthouse beacon on a dark night. It will draw in lots of people you might not want around. Muffle and suppress the sound as much as possible. If you run an exhaust hose outside a shed and another air intake vent, you can operate the generator inside a closed and sound-insulated shed. Don’t leave the generator where it can be stolen; lock it down tight.

  Depending on your finances, get a generator that will give you at least 3000 watts of power, if you want to pump water or carry on several operations at one time. A 5000 watt one is even better. But you can certainly charge batteries with a small 1000 watt generator – just not run a microwave or washing machine or freezer off it. Make sure it’s got an automatic low-oil shutoff – and check the oil level every time you fire it up.

  All electronics such as laptops, tablets, and cell phones should be separated from energy sources by at least one surge protector. This is especially the case when you are charging off of a generator – power is just not consistent, and the little surges that ar
e typical of generator power can damage your electronics otherwise.

  Batteries are “direct current” (DC) whereas most household appliances and electronics are “alternating current” (AC). That means that you’ll need a device called an “inverter” between your DC batteries and your AC appliances. The inverter changes (inverts) DC to AC.

  Less expensive, still, to start storing power, is to use grid power while it is still up. Buy an automotive battery charger ($100 or so), hook to your deep cycle batteries, plug it in, and start charging. You can charge them one at a time, or charge in series if you have several hooked together. In order to use the power, you’ll have to have an outlet connected to the battery – a car-style DC “cigarette lighter” type is inexpensive and relatively simple to clip to the battery (with a fuse between them, of course). Then, if you wish to power AC equipment, you’ll also need a small car-style “inverter” that will plug into the DC outlet and make regular AC power accessible.

  Probably the cheapest start-up method is to use your existing car or truck as the charger and battery. Just acquire an inverter that will plug into your car’s “cigarette lighter” outlet, and use the AC outlets on that to charge several small items and rechargeable AA, AAA, C and D batteries, while you are doing your daily driving. You can also charge with your vehicle sitting in the driveway idling, but that’s not an efficient use of gasoline.