The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

Toonie

@MrsCD I work in early years, mostly with nannying of late but more people seem to be heading down the route of nurseries as they are cheaper. Mostly better from Covid, though still find myself getting out of breath occasionally.

@LadOnTheHill I'm not sure what I will qualify for, but hopefully something. I'm going to investigate whether my local council offer any career advice or retraining.

When we have some spare money I want to get a couple of USB powered airstones for our aquarium as we don't have an alternative aeration system for power cuts. We do have power banks and we have a solar power bank as well so will just need the airstone which will keep the fish going a while.

MrsCD

Pleased you're on the mend, @Toonie. My dd had bad headaches and severe exhaustion which kept her off work for a month but is back to work now.
Our electricity went off at 9.30 this morning. Not surprised as the strong wind is blowing so many things around, including the compost bin! Lovely sunny day otherwise. 😎 

DigForVictory

@SiClist, just wondering  & you're the known expert. I exhumed a tin of Nido from a stash to find it dated 2012 - still sealed & lidded - still OK to use? 

Living_proof

DigForVictory said:

@SiClist, just wondering  & you're the known expert. I exhumed a tin of Nido from a stash to find it dated 2012 - still sealed & lidded - still OK to use? 

Let us know - or not!

LadOnTheHill

@Toonie the nicrew aquarium air pump (on the big river site) will run for over a day on its own internal battery, on the lowest setting. DH got one of each model recently, the 1.7w version ran for 26 hours on low. They're charged via USB, so you could run one down and then recharge it from a power pack to extend the amount of time you have.

daz378

Thinking of buying a portable power station  around 200 pound  is that overkill. For an apartment.....definitely buying a solar powercharger....just the potential  unreliable supply we may experience....you all take care

Si_Clist

DigForVictory said:

@SiClist, just wondering  & you're the known expert. I exhumed a tin of Nido from a stash to find it dated 2012 - still sealed & lidded - still OK to use? 

TBH I have no idea as the most OOD I've ever used is two years past BBE.  (Gosh, 3 TLAs in one sentence )

I guess you could always fall back on the old in-the-jungle-will-it-kill-me routine of try a tablespoon of it (liquid), give it 24 hours to see if you die, try an eggcupfull, give it 24 hours and so on ... ?

Toonie

LadOnTheHill said:

@Toonie the nicrew aquarium air pump (on the big river site) will run for over a day on its own internal battery, on the lowest setting. DH got one of each model recently, the 1.7w version ran for 26 hours on low. They're charged via USB, so you could run one down and then recharge it from a power pack to extend the amount of time you have.

That sounds fab, thanks will look into it. Need to make sure my fishy friends are taken care of too.

jk0

Deleted_User said:

We were without power for nine days back in November / December thanks to

Arwen. This also affected our water supply as we are pumped from the spring. 

Thankfully we have woodburners, so we kept warm and cooked on those. We still cook on them now; why use a gas hob when we have a fire roaring? 

My lessons learnt were, quite simply, you can never have enough candles or wood. 

It also taught me that when funds allow, I would like to invest in a small generator. Just enough to power a lamp and charge a phone / tablet. With two young children, doing everything by head torch and candlelight after 3.30pm when it went dark wasn’t fun. Also we have no landline so I felt quite stuck without my mobile phone, from a safety perspective. 

Have you considered a car battery?

I've had one in my garage for about 5 years now. It's trickle charged on a timeswitch for 4 hours every Sunday morning. I bought one the same as the one in my car, so I can substitute it any time the one in the car packs up.

I have a couple of thick cables through the wall to a 2000W inverter. This should run lights for many days. Worse comes to worse, I also have some long jump leads, so could recharge it by running my car engine outside.

euronorris

Hello all. Still lurking. Just been busy entering competitions (to bump up the income a bit),new job, Christmas etc.

Hope you're all keeping well. Sorry to hear about the redundancy Toonie and I really hope you find something else super fast. Sorry if I've missed any other pertinent updates also, but there over 350 posts! 😳

Ticking along here and worried about ever increasing food and energy bills. DD had a sick bug on Sunday evening. Fortunate that she's never had one before, and we'll, let's just say I was glad we plenty of spare towels, and a couple spare mattress protectors for her! She's fine now. Like nothing happened lol.