Preparedness for when

GreyQueen

pineapple wrote: »

A word of caution. I bought some army surplus leggings and a vest and washed them most carefully. The leggings were fine - but dear me - the top now stretches to my knees!
I suppose it will 'come in'. Meanwhile I do have quite a pretty v necked long sleeved vest that I got from George.

Congratulations on making a thermal nightie.

pineapple wrote: »

A neighbour bought a burnt out shell of a house and lived in the shed for two years while he rebuilt it - I kid you not! This included that cold winter a couple of years back. He lined the walls - not sure what with - it might have been polystyrene and foil :huh:

Mum has an 10 x 12 ft wookshop shed and she put sheet polystrene between the uprights and covered over with hardboard and plywood sheeting. Very snug.

The new age traveller types I once mixed with used to do the same but behind tongue-and-groove boarding inside their converted trucks. BT trucks were a very popular choice as they were nice and square. Condensation is a big problem in very small vans/ dwellings as are plagues of woodlice for some reason.

My entire flat is a whisker over 240 sq feet which means that the largest room is 9 x 12 feet and the bedroom is just about big enough to accomodate a standard double bed and one piece of furniture in the alcove. The upshot of such small spaces is that it is very warm and cosy even with no heat on.

Having lived in very draughty Victorian houses inc one where the underfloor draught caused the unfitted carpet to billow like ocean waves (yes, this looks very spooky) I've had ample time to think about how lightly-clad we moderns are compared to our Victorian ancestors.

Women in those days would have been layered sideways to Sunday with lots of petticoats and heavy skirts. Wool would have featured strongly in all wardrobes. I have a wintertime fashion for dresses-over-trousers and the extra layer to the knee really helps. I've also lived indoors in hats and fingerless mittens and blankets on laps whenever sitting down.

When I was living in the woods for a week with the Mad Bushcrafters it was raining day and night for 6 days and we were in ankle-deep mud at all times. We were taught about handling the cold (this group takes parties into Northern Maine in the winter, so they know cold).

It's very important to warm your core (torso, inner thighs and inner arms) as the major blood vessels flow there. For example, if you huddle around the campfire with your coat done up tightly, you don't allow the fire's heat to warm your body. You want to get that coat open and toast yourself before going to your tent.

We also ritually toasted our bare feet and I can assure you that very warm and dry feet will see you sleeping like a baby. And food, esp high-calorie food at bedtime, and even something to take away as a snack to eat during the night to keep your metabolism revved up is a good idea.

I was astonished that we were eating like absolute pigs and still all visibly losing weight in such a short time; the difference in calorie consumption wasn't activity, it was caused by living out of doors and having to expend more energy as heat. Those in our group who had done the Maine trip said it was even more acute in the snowy wastes.

We're a very adaptable species and manage to live all over the planet and can adjust ourselves but the anomaly of heating a whole dwelling and then dressing ourselves as if it is 30 celcius may well be something we'll have to forgo in the future.

ginnyknit

Butterflybrain, I am loving the plant pot heaters! heating will be a serious issue for us as we are all electric and a smokeless area, so even if I could afford a real fire it would probably be expensive to run. As I already mentioned am making the sawdust/candle burners and have all I need for them. Mr M has very cheap sawdust for pets so will be buying more of even tho the one remaining rescue rabbit uses very little.

Its a very worrying world at the moment but cannot let myself get down about it when there are practical things to do. I have to replace Oh's duvets, I just buy the cheap ones as I have to change them so often so am going to make them in to window quilts which can be stored easily ready to pop on the heavy wooden curtain rails.

A friend of Dd's has just gifted her 3 sets of bedding and curtains from her caravan for DGs and Dd sent me the curtains to line before she uses them. Honestly they are like new so I found some stashed curtain fabric and will make them as cosy as I can. Boy am I going to be busy for a while :rotfl: Off to Dunelm Mill tomorrow to see what I can get in the sale.

Uniscots97

Westlothianlass, I share your problem as well. Try the Marie Curie CS in Bathgate they get a lot of new stuff from shops that might be too high or low in the neck for others. I get a lot of stuff from there.

[Deleted User]

my old aunt had (in 1964) her bed in a wall alcove in a very old cottage, they just drew a curtain across the front. Mind you they were smaller people in those days. They had goosedown quilts well before duvets and rough wool knitted garments, I am talking peasant by the way and not uk. The rooms were very small with low ceilings so not much air to heat. I think I will be dredging right back in my brains here, as that was how it was in the era before me

Tbh, I just wish they would get on and build those nuclear power stations that we need. I cannot think of anything else that will work for energy in a little ice age. There will be no oil or gas and coal will be inaccessible as we will have no oil to power the equipment to get it dug out and transported

maryb

Kittie, don't you think we'd go back to steam powered pumps for the mines and steam trains to transport it? After all, it was a sort of symbiotic relationship that got the Industrial Revolution going - steam pumps meant they could mine deeper without mines flooding and cheap coal meant steam power was cost effective.

And if there is a little ice age we'd not be worrying about the warming effect of the extra carbon emissions from burning coal

[Deleted User]

I grew up in a tiny terraced house with an open fire in one room. In winter we always had ice fans on the inside of the windows. We had an outside toilet and no heated water. The bath was a tin one hung in the yard outside and the water had to be heated in buckets on the stove. We survived, and until I grew up and visited other folks homes I had no idea life could be any different. I think we sometimes loose sight of the fact that many generations had so much less than we do and still the human race went on. It certainly would be much harder work to go back technologically and have to make the best of what was available, but certainly do-able. What is missing is the experienced elders who after watching you make a hash of things would explain and show how it should be done. We have many skills and an appetite for learning new ones, whatever does happen there will always be ideas if not real experience and the sharing that goes on here fills me personally with hope for the future whatever it brings to us. What we have is community and sharing of knowledge and both those things are beyond price. We'll make out, wait and see, Cheers Lyn xxx.

Butterfly_Brain

There were five children in my family and we were brought up in a house that was converted into four flats, the bathroom was down one flight of stairs with a huge copper boiler and washboard then we had a separate toilet that the whole house used then we had the kitchen and living room. Dad put a partition wall in the living room so that was where the four eldest slept in bunk beds, with one chest of drawers and one wardrobe between us, then you had another flight of stairs to the bedroom which Mum and Dad slept in with baby sis.
The only heating was an open fire in the living room and a gas fire in the kitchen the rest of the rooms had a paraffin heater and I remember going to get a gallon of paraffin and the wicks from the corner shop.
I too remember ice on the insides of the windows, we just had hot water bottles, warm pjs, bedsocks, extra blankets, flannelette sheets and eiderdowns to keep us warm.
We got washed and dressed in the kitchen in front of the gas fire.
It was luxury moving to a brand new house with parkray central heating and only two to a room, that is when Mum got her first twin tub washing machine and she was in heaven.

Butterfly_Brain

I have just put the plant pot heater into the downstairs loo and it has really made a difference it is usually Baltic in there but it is quite cosy now, So I think you would need a couple for a large room.

bluebag

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

I grew up in a tiny terraced house with an open fire in one room. In winter we always had ice fans on the inside of the windows. We had an outside toilet and no heated water. The bath was a tin one hung in the yard outside and the water had to be heated in buckets on the stove. We survived, and until I grew up and visited other folks homes I had no idea life could be any different. I think we sometimes loose sight of the fact that many generations had so much less than we do and still the human race went on. It certainly would be much harder work to go back technologically and have to make the best of what was available, but certainly do-able. What is missing is the experienced elders who after watching you make a hash of things would explain and show how it should be done. We have many skills and an appetite for learning new ones, whatever does happen there will always be ideas if not real experience and the sharing that goes on here fills me personally with hope for the future whatever it brings to us. What we have is community and sharing of knowledge and both those things are beyond price. We'll make out, wait and see, Cheers Lyn xxx.

Aye, I grew up just the same, I can't get my head round how we have fridges, freezers, washing machines, on-line shopping, dryers and all the labour saving stuff we have now, and we seem somehow to have less time? Truly baffles me.

bluebag

kittie wrote: »

have a look at both posts by Mark on 28th (below 6)

http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=510&c=5

besides food and `playing` at methods for cooking and keeping warm, any fuel we have stored will last no time in the scheme of things. We need to think much deeper than that ie how to use our body heat to keep warm, assuming that any available wood will be taken by the young and fit and that includes people, understandably, flooding into the uk from much harsher climes. Those of us over 60 now with encroaching feebleness have no physical chance of repelling the young and fit so we must find alternative means of keeping safe and warm but then again if the little ice age lasts for 20 years ????

http://iceagenow.info/2012/11/russian-scientist-%E2%80%94-ice-age/

A good sleeping bag is one way of keeping warm, well built and designed they keep body heat in a small space. Putting a tent up inside the house can give a sleeping enviroment above 16 degrees, a house rarely goes much below 10c in sub zero temperatures with good insulation.

Anyway with the amount of rain we are getting just lately, I really think all the wood will be needed for an Ark!