Preparations are being made.....

6:46 am - Tuesday - November 28th - GNHS - 52° F, humidity 61%, wind 5 mph out of the north by northeast.....cloudy today with a forecast high of 69° F.  Tomorrow, 11/29/2012, I wrote the following in a Facebook post.....

.....well,  two days from now will mark 11 years, and 10 months since we began our full time travels, and 12 years, and 10 months since we began living full time in our Newell Classic 36' Class A motorhome.  However, today it feels like we have always lived and traveled in our Newell.  That life we lived before, though still seeming vaguely familiar, feels more like someone else's life than ours. 

The winds which began 3+ days prior, finally abated around 1 pm Monday, and for the first time in that period of time we went to bed Monday evening, and woke up Tuesday morning to the sounds of silence.....

....but I get ahead of myself.

As you know, we have a reverse osmosis (RO) water filtration system under the sink in our coach, which we have had for over 13 years now.  We usually have it serviced once a year when we return to SoCal by Ruben Miranda of Kook Filtration, with whom we have dealt since the late 80's.  We weren't in Fontana long enough this time to set an appointment with Ruben, so we figured we'd get it done in April when we return to Fontana on our way back to LPG&RVR, however, our primary sediment filters, of which there are two, had other plans.  About a week ago the water flow out of our RO spigot began to slow significantly to the point where a few days ago it virtually stopped.  These are the first of 4 filters within the system, with each successive filter filtering much smaller stuff, such as microbes.  I figured, or should I say HOPED, it was just the primary sediment filters, so I bought the pack of two at Home Depot when we were in La Quinta last week.  I haven't had time to install them, and knew I wouldn't when I bought them, until after the busy Thanksgiving week, so we bought two cases of bottled water from COSTCO to tide us over.  Well, Monday that day arrived.  As I removed the two filters I was really, really hoping it would be that simple, and as soon as I removed them I was positive they were the problem.....mind you now, they are pure white when brand new.......

Our 'RO' system

The quite dirty sediment filters

.....Houston I think we found the problem....lol.  Yup, those filters are way past due for replacement....WOW, am I ever glad it was that simple!  Once I had installed the new, pure white, filters, I turned the system back on, and within an hour the holding tank was full, and full water pressure had been restored to the system!  I wish everything was that simple.

Over the past few months TLE and I have been discussing the need to be more prepared for if, or when our massive infrastructure, upon which we all depend, breaks down due to civil unrest, natural disaster, etc.  We've begun to stockpile, in moderation, basic foodstuffs like rice, flour, beans, canned goods, etc., and we have acquired a month's supply of dehydrated food.  Combined with our staples, should keep us eating for up to two months. In addition to that we have acquired solar water heaters.....

....with which to heat, and purify water.  This thing, and we have tested it, gets water to over 120° F (the temp which you need to kill anything harmful in the water) in about 10-20 minutes, and to a full boil not much longer after that.  We also are keeping our 160 gallon fresh water tank full all the time now, and are looking into a water generating system, which removes water from the air around us in quantities of up to 50 gallons a day, depending on how big a system you build.  Without water  we can die in 3 days, and without clean water we can become quite ill, and die, so having a reliable, clean water supply, which does not rely upon our water and electrical grids, is imperative.  While we have a Honda 2000 watt gas generator, what happens if gasoline supplies disappear?  All we have left is the sun, which leads me to our next acquisition....a solar generator....

we bought a Bluetti 2000 watt solar generator (model AC200P) complete with solar panels to recharge it.  We already have 620 watts of solar panels on the roof of our Newell, so we can live indefinitely without being plugged into the electrical grid.  We've already plugged our Newell into the generator, and it runs all our basic systems quite easily, as well as our induction burner, and we can use it at night to augment our large 8d house batteries, if need be to keep all of our systems powered.  We do, however, keep on hand about 12 gallons of unleaded gasoline to run our Honda generator, which, if we ran it continuously (which we never do), would cover us about a week.  Currently our 60 gallon propane tank will last us about a year since we mostly only use it for our tankless water heater now.  We've just started acquiring what we need, but we are well on our way to water, and energy independence, should the worst happen.

I spent a good bit of time in the trailer moving things around to make more room, and making hard decisions about what we don't need anymore to make room for things we do need now, and into the future.  I'm not sure TLE and I would fit into the 'Prepper' category, but we are definitely trying to be modestly prepared in the event we lose access to water and electricity for a short, or much longer duration.  We think it is just prudent to be prepared, what are your thoughts on this?

Before we knew it the sun was setting once again in the west....

....and another GNHS day has come to a conclusion.

Thanks for stopping by!