Thought I was a prepper but I'm not

[Indoctro]

I have a full stock of food in garage and medicine etc

I thought I was prepared

We lost power on Friday at 2pm and it might be another couple days before it's back due to the storm

We are all freezing

My husband wanted to instal a log burner but I said no due to environmental reason but now I'm thinking of changing my mind and I also want a small generator as it's been a nightmare having no phone to check what's happening with electricity etc on line

We ended abandoning the house due to the cold and going to stay else where.

Turns out im not that prepared after all

But you are now better prepared for next time

Preparing for an emergency always leave out one thing and that's the emergency

You can never be solely and sufficiently planned for it until it happens

I agree with the others - learn from it. Have you no gas? Phone can be charged in the car too remember

You are right I have learned
I'm buying a small portable generator and letting my husband install a log burner , I won't leave myself in this position again.

Yeah I was doing that with the phone but it was taking 40 minutes to get 10% and then dying again within no time at all - really frustrating

A log burner would probably only have kept part of the house warm…. Re phone, you can get a wind up charger/radio which I have for emergencies

You are a prepper

Something like this is why I won't have the house fully reliant on electricity.
Cooker is gas. Even if all the electricity is down at least the cooker will work

so you need a camping cooker (only use it outside!)

and hot water bottles, flasks, blankets/duvets.

solar chargers for powerbanks/camping lights.

Daughters collection of portable chargers saved me this weekend. Have head torch and kindle luckily has hob so I’ve been ok.

Good luck x

Gas hob for cuppas, hot water bottles, soup etc

Nothing wrong with log burners, most natural way to heat.

Ours has got us out of many a sticky situation when our old boiler failed and we couldn't afford to replace it!

I thought that’s exactly what a prepper does. Plans ahead, then makes notes during and after an event to see what can be improved upon.
Try not to make the same mistake or have the same problem twice.

We have a kerosene heater in case of losing power. We only need to keep the living room warm and would all sleep in sleeping bags there. I have a camping stove and LED lanterns from camping. I also have a battery charger for my phone. I agree though, we learn from experience. At least you had plenty of food and stuff, so that was good!

Unless you live at extreme latitudes install a couple of Powerwalls and solar panels, chances are you will rarely need grid electricity and even in the depths of winter you could probably survive without the grid with careful management.

Nothing wrong with log burners, most natural way to heat.

I respectfully disagree. unless you grow your own wood and season it well their co2 balance is awful.
plus the emissions of even well seasoned/kiln dried wood are astonishingly bad.

I keep an old style phone to plug into the phone socket for power cuts.
Absolutely you need an alternative way of keeping warm and heating food.
I focus on the more mundane, likely scenarios and have lived through several 20 hour plus power cuts so I have the 'power' of hindsight.

A couple of decent battery packs (which get charged regularly) will charge a phone several times. A small camping gas cooker is also good if you have the space to store it.
Wood burners are brilliant, (we use our own wood), 'green' wood doesn't burn properly anyway and soots up the chimney so it should always be well seasoned, but it's not difficult to get well seasoned. Go for a wood burner which has a heating plate. Our kettle permanently lives on the wood burner so we always have near to boiling water on the go! Also you can get fans which sit on top of the burner which help disperse the heat. Our wood burner heats most of the house (house is tiny so it's not that difficult!)

We put a wood burning stove into the open fire place in the sitting room, it's lovely and cosy generally, but heated the entire house reasonably well in the snow in 2010/11 - compared to open fire barely keeping just the sitting room warm the previous year and getting through loads more wood.

I got a solar panel for camping in the summer, and have been using that to charge my powerbanks ever since when I see the sun shining, it does a surprisingly good job. There are some good powerbanks available now that will charge a phone a few times before being drained. I got the so,ar panel from decathlon, and the big power bank I have is Anker (I have a few smaller ones for charging my phone on my commute but they are only good to keep you going til you get home and to a plug).

At least, while probably highly annoying, this sounds like you had somewhere else to bail out to and it wasn't an absolute failure. So you have a chance to see what did and what didn't work, and think it through again to add a few more bits to improve things the next time.

One thing we learned from power cuts when we were young and the couple of years of bad snow 10 years ago is to try and keep to only a few rooms when necessary - close rooms not in use (spare bedroom etc), heat the room you do your living in, try to keep to downstairs mostly during the day, keep doors closed to keep the heat in, and use blankets/ hot water bottles both in that/those rooms when less active and when going to bed of upstairs rooms are cold.

@Indoctro

You are right I have learned I'm buying a small portable generator and letting my husband install a log burner , I won't leave myself in this position again.

Yeah I was doing that with the phone but it was taking 40 minutes to get 10% and then dying again within no time at all - really frustrating

Ive just had a log burner installed with a large flat top to cook on. We moved house a few years ago and I've only just sorted this out.

I learnt a bit like you have this time, we lived remotely and electric was off for three days about ten years go.

It does make you think of ways to combat difficulties you'd normally overlook in a cosy supplied life.

So your experience has sharpened you this time, next time you'll have it covered!

We also have a few solar panels set up For charging things and these work well even in lower winter light.

I have hurricane lamps and candles for light if needed.

Once bitten.....

I meant to say, our stove is great mostly, but set into the fire place. DMIL has one in her kitchen which is in the open so has a flat top, she also keeps a large kettle on top for hot water, but also occasionally does stews or casseroles which she leaves to cook slowly for hours on the top for evening dinner (she's home all day so it's lit all day), and they are so tender from the long slow cook. I would have an open one with flat top if that was possible.

We have a gas cooker ran off large gas bottles in the garden - so that was ok

I'm installing a log burner which won't be used as a regular heat source but as a back up in case of emergencies as I'm aware of health and environmental impact

We are buying a portable generator, I've seen some for around £500 that look like they will be fine for a freezer and power a tv and charge phones etc

These are the changes I'm making and lessons I've learnt from this experience

I will have heat, cooking and a small amount of power which hopefully would keep us covered in future

@purplesequins

Nothing wrong with log burners, most natural way to heat.

I respectfully disagree. unless you grow your own wood and season it well their co2 balance is awful.
plus the emissions of even well seasoned/kiln dried wood are astonishingly bad.

I agree it will be purely used for a back up , we have gas heating and and underfloor electric which is fine

It's only for if we lose power not for regular heating

If you have the space to store a generator and fuel safely then go for it. I would advise buying a generator to match your car though. Fuel 'go's off' after a few months, if it matches your car's fuel you can at least top up your tank with the fuel that needs to be cycled. Also check the efficiency of you generator, I have no idea what they are like but if one can does say 6h then you may need to have several cans of fuel around. I would then advise stock rotating the fuel so each was bought in a different month.

I do recommend getting power banks for phones though. They are not expensive and very portable. I have 4 that I rotate their use of. 1 in my work bag, 1 in each adult grab bag and one 'on charge' which get used around the house when it's easier to have a portable charger or if we going away.

Yes, I am well stocked to the point that we could last a long time without a shop, but if the general infrastructure fails we've had it.

@Porfre

You are a prepper

Something like this is why I won't have the house fully reliant on electricity.
Cooker is gas. Even if all the electricity is down at least the cooker will work

Same here.

I've got inverters that run off a car battery to run the fridge/freezer if the power goes out. They're handy to have around.

Sometimes we need to be put in the situation to see any holes. You've seen and are sorting out.