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Hey everybody, Scott Terry here, and you are listening to
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Our Life Up Here, the Scott Terry Show. And this
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is a podcast about homesteading, horticulture, agrarianism, entrepreneurship, and stuff
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like that. So in this episode, I want to talk
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about developing backup plans that actually work. So... I'm talking
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about backup plans for emergency situations. And I've found over
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the years that a lot of people, when it comes
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to actually implementing these plans in an emergency situation, they
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seldom work out the way that they had planned. Might
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have great intentions. On paper, it might be a really
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cool backup plan. But... When the rubber meets the road,
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it doesn't work out that way. So, there's some things
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that you have to consider when coming up with an
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emergency backup plan of any kind. So, this can, these
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general principles and rules can be applied to a lot
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of different stuff. But, you know, let's take, for example,
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you have a major power outage. and you need to
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be able to run the refrigerators, run your chest freezers,
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run your well pump, so you can water the livestock,
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all the things that you need electricity for. The general
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idea that most people will say, okay, I'll go out
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and get a generator, and that'll fix my problem. And
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the number of people that say, I'm going to buy
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a generator and then don't even take it out of
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the box. Stick it in the corner of the barn
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or the garage or a shed. And, well, there. If
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we ever have a power outage, I've got a generator.
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So when you finally do have the power outage and
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it's in the dark and fumble around trying to find
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a flashlight so that you can get out there and
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try to remember where you left the stupid thing, take
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it out of the box for the first time Read
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the owner's manual of the flashlight for the first time.
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Get it started. Figure out how you hook it. You
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can't do that. You have to actually, when you get
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the thing home, you have to sit down and see
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how it works. Get yourself so that you're comfortable running
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the machine. Learn how to check the oil. Do you
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have fuel on hand? Do you have enough fuel on
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hand for a long-term power outage? Have you tested it
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out to see how many things you can run at
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one time? Those are all things you don't want to
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learn the first time you're using it. So what I
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always tell people is, you know, because you've got to
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have a way to hook this thing up. So that
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you're not going to blow that up when the power
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comes on. Or electrocute pole workers while they're working on things.
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You've got to get that figured out first. Get your
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lockout system and switchover system set up. You've got to
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run it. And then see how many things you can
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run at once before you... before you max out the
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generator and trip it. You might find that you can
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run the well pump and a couple other things. You
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might find out that when you're running the well pump,
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you've got to shut other things off. But that's good
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to know ahead of time so that you're not learning
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all this stuff during the emergency. Then it makes the
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emergency go a lot smoother. Fuel. What are you going
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to do for fuel? So there's different methods of having
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fresh fuel. You've got to rotate gasoline if you have
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a gasoline power generator. You've got to have a plan
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for that. You need to have fuel on hand. You
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should have fuel in the machine. As far as fuel goes,
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for me, I've kind of got it easy because we've
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got so many gas engines around here that have to
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run off of ethanol free gasoline that I just have
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bulk deliveries and I have a 300 gallon tank full
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of 91 octane ethanol free gas for small engines and
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that has a hand crank pump on it because just
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in case the last nincompoop that ran the Generator ran
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Load full transcript
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it out of fuel and then didn't fill it back
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up and then Then if you had an electric pump
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on your gas tank, how would you get the gas out?
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so another hand pump a Hand crank pump on that
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tank for that particular reason I can always get generator
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gas whether I've got power or not as long as
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my arm can Go round and round I can get
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gasoline Now the other thing was with the generator example,
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is you've got to get those things out and run
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them and do practice runs. This works for any emergency
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backup plan. You have to actually practice it. If you
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don't practice it, then just trust me. It's not going
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to go very smoothly the first time you do it.
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You're going to find all sorts of things that you
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need to You need to change up. As far as
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the generator situation, the best idea that I can give
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you is pick an afternoon when you're not terribly busy.
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You've got some time to test it out. Shut the
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grid power off. Get your generator out. Fire it up.
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And run your homestead off the generator for an afternoon.
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Generators like to be used every once in a while. Um,
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so don't just let it sit there. Maybe once every
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couple of months, fire it up and run the farm
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off of the generator. And, you know, again, and you're
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going to find out what you can run and what
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you can't run. And depending on how much, you know,
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if it's stuff that you can get away with, it's
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just going to be an inconvenience, not the end of
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the world. maybe having one generator is enough. Um, we
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have two generators because the general rule when you're developing
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a backup plan is two is one, one is none,
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because if one of them dies, then you just, you can't,
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you can't operate. So we have two gas generators so
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that in the worst case scenario, I should be able
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to have one of them running. Um, The other reason
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why I have two is we have our generator switched
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so that it's actually divided. The house and then all
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the greenhouses and outbuildings and stuff are on two separate circuits.
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Now I can run them completely off of one generator
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just by plugging in two cords. But if it happened
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to be the heat of the summer and I had
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all of the greenhouses and I was running exhaust fans
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on every house, then it wouldn't run the house as well.
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So we ran it this summer with one generator just
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to kind of test it out and see because I
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got a well pump for the house and then we
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have two wells, so I'm running two well pumps and
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then all the other stuff, plus whatever. And I have
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to be able to power the house because the Wi-Fi
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from the house is what runs my temperature alarms and
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my point-of-sale system runs off of that and other things,
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so I have to have power in both places. But
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the idea of practicing, just taking a day and... Okay,
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we're going to go ahead and pretend like we don't
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have power today, see how it works. And these are
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just the general rules that can apply to any backup
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system that you're trying to develop. I give an example
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of where, okay, so I teach this stuff, right? You
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would think that I would follow all of my own rules. Well,
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guess what? I didn't. And it was a good reminder,
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a good reminder. So I won't forget for a while,
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but eventually I'll become complacent and won't practice, won't test
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things out ahead of time. Our main greenhouse that we
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start first in the cold, cold part of February, early March,
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if the furnaces go down in there, it's a pretty serious,
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pretty serious problem. And this particular time, we had a
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backup plan, but we've never actually had to use it.
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And so we started getting lax on making sure everything
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was where it was supposed to be. The backup plan
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is I've got tools, I've got spare parts for the furnace,
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I
understand how to fix furnaces, so I just need
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to be able to keep it warm in there until
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I get the furnace fixed and Not a big deal.
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The few times that we had problems were in the
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warmer part of the year, and it wasn't like you
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had three to four minutes or you were going to
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lose everything. So we got kind of lackadaisical about it.
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We had needed the backup salamander, which is our fuel
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oil salamander. that if the furnace goes down, you fire
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that thing up, and it makes just enough heat to
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keep everything from freezing while you're working on the furnace.
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So one day, and it was cold, it was pretty
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sure it was below zero, and early March, and the
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alarm for house 10 went off. And none of us
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were here, So Isaiah and I dropped what we were
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doing and drove as fast as we could to get
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over here. Go in. It's almost down to freezing, almost
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about to lose. What we had in there was probably
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the retail value on what we had going so far
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in there was probably $ 15, 000, $ 20, 000 worth of geranium baskets
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that were in there. And If they die, the timing
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for that particular window when we sell those baskets is
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such that you can't just start over. It ain't going
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to work. So you're just not going to have a
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crop for that. So we run in there and go
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to grab the salamander. Where is it? Oh, we took
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it over to the barn when we were working on
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bearings or something on a piece of machinery and needed
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some heat. to keep us from freezing while we were
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working on it and never brought it back. They'll run
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over there, get it, get back. That makes you open
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the door one more time, which isn't great. You only
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got two pieces of poly are all that's separating the
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plants and that temperature from below zero weather outside. The
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sun hasn't come up yet. It's early in the morning.
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It's just about daybreak. Then somebody
took the extension cord
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that was supposed to be hanging there for the thing.
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So I had to run and get an extension cord. Well, thankfully,
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we had just enough time. Got that thing fired up.
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It started making some heat, and I could watch the
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thermometer in there start inching up a little bit. And
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then the sun peeked up over the horizon and sent
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its rays through the plastic, and that was a big help.
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And we were like, okay, let's... Let's get into fixing
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the furnace. So now we've already learned several things. Before
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anybody goes home at the end of the day, you
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better make sure that that salamander is back in house
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10 full of fuel and underneath the bench where we
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can grab it easy. And two, if anybody touches the
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extension cord that's coiled up hanging on that nail, that's
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the only way to turn that thing on. They should
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have their fingers cut off because that was not good.
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That stuff has to be there. This is something we
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learned real quick. This is like religious dogma now. It
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has to be there. So, like I said, I got
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plenty of spare parts and everything. Shouldn't be a problem.
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Tear into it immediately. Start checking... the things that you
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know to check. There's the little cad eye that sees
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whether or not there's a flame. And if that goes bad,
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it won't run because it's a safety switch inside your
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fuel oil furnace that if it's not seeing a flame,
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it doesn't want you pumping a whole tank of fuel
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in there. Sometimes those go bad. But I change those
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cad eyes every season, whether they need it or not.
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I have thrown away a ridiculous amount of $ 15 Cad-Eyes
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every year because I want a brand new one on
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there every year. It's worth $ 15 worth of insurance for me.
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I didn't think that was the problem, and it wasn't
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the problem. Switch out the nozzle. Check your points. Got
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power to the transformer. What's going on? I'm not getting fuel. Well,
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I just put a brand new filter in it, but
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maybe the filter's plugged. I don't know how, but maybe
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the filter's plugged. The filter off. Filter's not plugged, but
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there's no fuel coming. So we got to go out there.
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So I'm trying to figure out why I'm not getting
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fuel to the filter. Isaiah goes out with a flashlight.
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We've got 1,200 gallons worth of fuel oil out there
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for that house. He hollers back and says, this is
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not good. It is not good. I said, well, what
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could be the problem? Get out there. 1,200 gallons of
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fuel oil solidified. It gelled. So what happened was, instead
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of delivering the cut winterized fuel, they had delivered the
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summer blend. Now, if I had known that, I would
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have treated it with some power service anti-gel stuff, and
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it would have been fine, but I didn't know it,
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and now it was solid. Well, what in the world
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are we going to do now? 1,200 gallons of solidified fuel.
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The only thing you can do is put diesel 911
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in it, and it will liquefy it. Now, I do
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not have enough diesel 911 to treat 1,200 gallons of fuel.
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And in the meantime, I like to run that house
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at 70 degrees, and we're We're keeping it at right
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about 34, 35 degrees. It's starting to inch up a
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little bit after the sun come up. It got up
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to 40. But stuff in the back and stuff on
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the edges had some frost damage already. And so jump
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in the truck, drive all the way to town, go
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to Napa. Isaiah walked in, says, I need enough 911
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for 1,200 gallons of fuel. And they all just stared
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at him. Said he explained what happened, and they came
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back with a great big cardboard case of 911 and said,
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that'll be $ 230. So we got that home. Had to
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00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:03.000
put two jugs in each tank. Put two jugs in
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each tank, and we're watching it with the flashlight, and
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just like magic, it started wiggling and jiggling around in
there,
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00:19:11.339 --> 00:19:15.740
and then whoo! It turned into liquid. I'm like, all right, good.
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Now let's fire it up. So I put everything back together,
248
00:19:22.559 --> 00:19:26.829
turn it on, hit the bleed screw, still no fuel. Well,
249
00:19:27.849 --> 00:19:33.029
it liquefied stuff in the tanks, but there's copper tubing
250
00:19:33.049 --> 00:19:36.319
that runs from all four or five, however many tanks
251
00:19:36.380 --> 00:19:39.220
are in there, I can't remember now, runs out of there,
252
00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:43.559
along the ground, into the side of the furnace room,
253
00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:50.660
that was all solidified, the whole tube. so grab the
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00:19:50.740 --> 00:19:55.059
air compressor hook the air compressor up blow it backwards
255
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until you get bubbles but now I'm on the other
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00:19:58.460 --> 00:20:02.240
side of the turn off switch so I had to
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00:20:02.279 --> 00:20:05.349
have Isaiah out there so that once he heard the
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00:20:05.410 --> 00:20:07.549
bubbles coming up in the tank he could turn all
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00:20:07.569 --> 00:20:10.509
the valves off so that when I took the air
260
00:20:10.549 --> 00:20:12.970
compressor hose off of it, I didn't get all that
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00:20:13.049 --> 00:20:16.630
fuel come flying back out at me. So we got
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that blowed out. In the meantime, a buddy from farm,
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00:20:21.950 --> 00:20:24.450
the road came over, and he set up a couple
264
00:20:24.490 --> 00:20:28.400
of salamanders and a tarp in there to help heat
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00:20:28.420 --> 00:20:30.940
it up while we were waiting for the 911 to
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00:20:31.259 --> 00:20:38.079
do its trick. So then I finally hit it. Fuel
267
00:20:38.119 --> 00:20:40.259
came out of the bleed screw, closed the bleed screw,
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00:20:40.420 --> 00:20:44.640
fired right up, heated the house up. But found a
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00:20:44.779 --> 00:20:48.980
lot of holes in our supposed perfect backup plan for
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when the furnace goes down. Come to find out, none
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00:20:52.160 --> 00:20:54.750
of the parts I had did me any good because
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00:20:54.789 --> 00:21:00.150
they weren't the problem. I didn't have enough anti-gel, or
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00:21:00.589 --> 00:21:03.430
I didn't treat the fuel with anti-gel because I assumed
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00:21:03.829 --> 00:21:07.470
that I was delivered the proper product. I didn't have
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00:21:07.529 --> 00:21:10.650
enough 911 for an emergency like that because I never
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00:21:10.710 --> 00:21:12.890
in my wildest dreams ever thought that I would have
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00:21:12.950 --> 00:21:17.980
to have an entire case of 911 for one emergency. So,
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00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:23.660
what do we do different now? I wished I'd, I
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00:21:23.700 --> 00:21:25.200
don't know, some of this stuff, the only way to
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00:21:25.259 --> 00:21:27.140
learn it was to have it happen to you. But
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00:21:27.980 --> 00:21:30.440
there's an extension cord coiled up, hangs on a nail.
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00:21:30.569 --> 00:21:32.500
No one's allowed to touch it. If you touch it,
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00:21:32.569 --> 00:21:37.750
you are dead to me. The salamander. remains under the
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00:21:37.789 --> 00:21:40.740
little workbench in the furnace room. If you take it,
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00:21:41.710 --> 00:21:44.210
that's fine. Make sure it's full of fuel and it
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00:21:44.319 --> 00:21:49.700
is returned back there before you do anything else. Do
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00:21:49.740 --> 00:21:52.960
we treat all fuel that comes onto the property? Yes,
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00:21:53.259 --> 00:21:55.700
it's now pre-treated so that it's not going to gel
289
00:21:55.759 --> 00:22:02.000
no matter what. Do we have 911 on hand enough
290
00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:06.410
to do a mass catastrophe like 1,200 gallons of gelled fuel? Yes,
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00:22:07.240 --> 00:22:09.660
we have a case of that. It is sitting there
292
00:22:10.160 --> 00:22:16.380
ready to go. What are some other things we learned?
293
00:22:16.559 --> 00:22:21.789
Every second counts. The amount of time that it took
294
00:22:21.890 --> 00:22:27.269
for that building to go from 70 degrees to... When
295
00:22:27.309 --> 00:22:31.849
we went in there, the thermometer said 32, but thank
296
00:22:31.869 --> 00:22:38.900
God it hadn't actually frozen anything yet. Um, so yeah, we,
297
00:22:39.069 --> 00:22:43.769
we got tested by tested by fire and learned, we
298
00:22:43.809 --> 00:22:46.210
had a whole list that we sat down afterwards, like
299
00:22:46.569 --> 00:22:49.269
we're going to sit down and find every hole in
300
00:22:49.349 --> 00:22:53.109
our plan and everything that we did wrong and make
301
00:22:53.170 --> 00:22:58.109
sure that it never happens again. So that's the other thing. When,
302
00:22:58.210 --> 00:23:02.819
when you, when you find these things during an emergency,
303
00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:05.150
Take the time to write them down so that when
304
00:23:05.170 --> 00:23:10.509
the emergency is all over and you have a meeting
305
00:23:10.569 --> 00:23:13.269
and be like, okay, well, how did this go? What
306
00:23:13.329 --> 00:23:14.930
do we want to change? How are we going to
307
00:23:14.970 --> 00:23:18.109
change our plan and make it better? And then make
308
00:23:18.170 --> 00:23:25.029
that your new rule, your new rules that cannot be broken.
309
00:23:27.450 --> 00:23:30.059
And another thing is, you know, no matter what kind
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00:23:30.119 --> 00:23:34.829
of emergency that you're coming up with a a real
311
00:23:35.750 --> 00:23:39.710
down-to-earth backup plan that you're going to test and you're
312
00:23:39.730 --> 00:23:42.049
going to work all this stuff out. You're going to
313
00:23:42.650 --> 00:23:45.069
play with it and actually do it. You've got to
314
00:23:45.109 --> 00:23:48.349
think of all the things that have to be done
315
00:23:48.410 --> 00:23:52.069
and have plans for that. You've got livestock. How are
316
00:23:52.109 --> 00:23:54.450
you going to water them? How are you going to
317
00:23:54.490 --> 00:23:57.819
feed them? How are you going to, you know, and
318
00:23:57.839 --> 00:24:00.420
that could come down to, all right, well, you're dependent
319
00:24:00.500 --> 00:24:04.250
on a loader tractor to move around bales. If your
320
00:24:04.289 --> 00:24:08.150
only loader tractor dies, have you got a plan on
321
00:24:08.190 --> 00:24:11.670
how you're going to move round bales? There's a bunch
322
00:24:11.710 --> 00:24:13.920
of different things that you could do. But think about
323
00:24:13.960 --> 00:24:16.180
it before it actually happens so you already got some
324
00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:25.490
ideas planned out. Water. Always think about water. Water is life.
325
00:24:25.789 --> 00:24:28.750
You've got to have water. You need to have backup
326
00:24:28.789 --> 00:24:32.430
plans on how you're going to take care of stuff,
327
00:24:32.470 --> 00:24:36.970
whether it's a well pump failure, whether it's the electricity
328
00:24:36.990 --> 00:24:40.619
and you can't pump the wells, um, have backup plans,
329
00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:49.440
backup plans for water. Um, very important, but whatever, whatever
330
00:24:49.500 --> 00:24:54.160
plans you come up with, again, test out the plan
331
00:24:54.569 --> 00:24:58.799
in a non-emergency situation and then come up with a,
332
00:24:59.819 --> 00:25:05.299
come up with a good game plan. Two, every so often,
333
00:25:05.779 --> 00:25:11.359
the whole family practices these things. Practice for a power outage,
334
00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:14.859
shut the power off. Run the whole homestead off of
335
00:25:15.500 --> 00:25:19.500
your generators. Make sure everything still works. That's another thing,
336
00:25:19.559 --> 00:25:25.390
you know, things break in the meantime, and, uh, It'd
337
00:25:25.410 --> 00:25:28.349
be good to just test it and be, well, everything
338
00:25:28.390 --> 00:25:35.519
still works. Or, oh, no, this throwout switch doesn't even
339
00:25:35.559 --> 00:25:43.220
work anymore. Well, you better figure that out. But the practice,
340
00:25:43.380 --> 00:25:48.319
and then at the end of every emergency, just have
341
00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:51.759
a meeting with everybody that was involved in it and
342
00:25:51.839 --> 00:25:56.210
ask yourself the questions, okay, what worked really well and
343
00:25:56.309 --> 00:25:58.910
what could we have done better? What do we want
344
00:25:58.930 --> 00:26:08.099
to change about our emergency backup plan in this area? So, yeah,
345
00:26:08.299 --> 00:26:14.160
that was just, uh, don't know. I was thinking about,
346
00:26:14.799 --> 00:26:18.779
thinking about that this morning as we're starting to, starting
347
00:26:18.819 --> 00:26:24.289
to get ready for winter and, uh, I walked past
348
00:26:24.390 --> 00:26:30.250
the case of anti-gel sitting here and I thought, you know,
349
00:26:31.809 --> 00:26:33.990
it would probably be a good time to do a
350
00:26:33.990 --> 00:26:39.980
refresher course for folks on setting up backup plans that
351
00:26:40.119 --> 00:26:47.680
will actually work and I could use my example of
352
00:26:47.720 --> 00:26:50.839
me breaking my own rules and not really having as
353
00:26:50.880 --> 00:26:53.680
good a plan as I should have and why it
354
00:26:53.720 --> 00:26:56.980
was a big wake-up call to me and a reminder
355
00:26:57.059 --> 00:27:03.920
that this is important. It's an important thing for people
356
00:27:03.980 --> 00:27:09.519
to have their head wrapped around way, way before any
357
00:27:09.559 --> 00:27:14.420
type of emergency occurs. Alright, well I gotta get back
358
00:27:14.519 --> 00:27:18.619
to getting some stuff accomplished around here. I've been canning
359
00:27:18.640 --> 00:27:23.359
beets and carrots the last couple of days and I
360
00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:27.900
probably should get back at it because winter's coming quick.
361
00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:33.079
And got some firewood. We got just about wrapped up
362
00:27:33.180 --> 00:27:35.759
on firewood for the house. Still got to get some
363
00:27:35.779 --> 00:27:37.880
done for house 13. But I guess the boys are
364
00:27:37.900 --> 00:27:41.539
going to start digging trees today. We got our fall
365
00:27:41.599 --> 00:27:48.170
orders for field-grown trees. And that's going to take a
366
00:27:48.210 --> 00:27:50.690
little bit of time. They got quite a list of
367
00:27:50.710 --> 00:27:56.339
trees they got to dig. So anyway, if you want
368
00:27:56.359 --> 00:27:58.440
to keep up with the show and what's going on,
369
00:27:59.079 --> 00:28:05.180
our website is ourlifeuphere.com. There's a place on there where
370
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:08.970
you can sign up for our email list. If you
371
00:28:08.990 --> 00:28:13.710
want to hear more stuff from me, that would be
372
00:28:14.230 --> 00:28:16.630
the way to make that happen. Just sign up for
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the email list. And yeah. There's also the Supporting Listeners Club.
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If you enjoy the show and want to help support it,
375
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you can join there and you get exclusive content that
376
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is only for the supporting listeners. And, yeah, until next time.