Emergency preparation Do's

[Rosco's Reefs]

Wow, this is really cool. Please keep us posted on your thoughts and progress!

[wvreef]

I have a 10000 watt diesel generator running during any outage

I have two houses hooked to it

Running 180 gallon, 45 gal, 3 fridges, 2 freezers, putdoor wood stove pumps, 3 30 gal tanks, 2 tvs, sons playstation, 2 10000 btu air units

 

Still have room for more

 

If you use ice make sure it is in leak proof bags if store bought or out of ice maker. This wayer is full of tds and traces pf chlorine.

If you use ice make it out of ro water

I use large gatorade bottles and freeze them and float in tank not the sump, have found it works better that way.

[Out Hiking]

I've been looking into building a small solar panel array that can be used to keep a car or marine battery charged during multi day outages.

Ebay has all the materials to build panels - the grade A cells can be used to make 4 panels that will produce close to 1 Kw per hour which will run the pumps and charge a battery or 2 for use at night - setup will run about $800 for materials.

Best of all its portable in emergencies like this past weekend

 

There are also videos on YouTube illustrating how to build your own solar panels for pretty cheap. There are do it yourself kits/instruction sets for purchase that people we know have implemented and saved a ton.

We ran a power strip with air and blowers from an inverter off car battery, one hour on next hour off. When it started to drain car battery, we purchased extra car battery from Sears with warranty. Battery ran out about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, so we switched back to manually aerating tank 'till Sears opened later Sunday. Took the depleted battery back asking if we could possibly get a recharge from Sears, and they just replaced battery under the warranty. We then bought a second car battery too. Hubby plans to eventually build solar panels, much like Bill, to recharge the 2 car batteries and supplement our power on an ongoing basis.... Aquarium One is selling batter powered aerators for around $30 each. Someone mentioned that you can probably also find battery operated aerators cheaper in Target or Walmart sold for aerating minnows, fyi....