Life goes on - Winter 2016

The scrap metal gasifier fits the truck,and i can see too hook up a trailer or out back of truck i have too get some air cans hooked up and canect the heat exchanger too rack. My carb air gas devider is built,just needs lever and hook ups.CHEERS.

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Ha! Had a good-and-wet turkey and ham Thanksgiving day here. 4 inches rain on just that day alone.
Still a bit too warm, in the high 40’sF to low 50’sF for full use of the warm-when-wet full wools.
Finally some snow packing up in the hydro-storing mountains above 3500 feet.
Snow skiers/boarders are smiling now. Tire stores happy doing winter tires change-overs.
Regards,JIC
Steve Unruh

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O.K. Two power outages now storm and wind caused in the last week.
And my cut open topped 50 gallon plastic barrel “rain gauges” are now up to 30 inches (762 mm) filled up since set up at the first of October.
Yep. And average of 1/2" (12.7 mm) a day.
This amount, and duration of air humidity’s WHY all of our woods even covered from rain, stored out side will stabilized back up to 20-22% true moisture by weight.
Hey! We did have four no-rain, partial sunny days in the last 60. Enough I was able to squeeze in one last yards mowing before the snow expected next week.
North-south mountain ranges leads to unequal rains and sunshine distributions on the westside of the America’s.

J-I-C Steve Unruh

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OPEC just agreed to turn down the taps. Expect a rise in gas prices…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/opec-said-to-agree-oil-production-cuts-as-saudis-soften-on-iran

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Getting my gasifier back together just in time.

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I agree. A little inspiration to get out in the shop. TomC

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With the recent tornado and wild fire activity going on I thought I’d add lessons learned from my last grid-power outage.
Was Wednesday night, the day before Thanksgiving Day with two adjacent houses with food stuffed refrigerators and two woman expecting power to cook up a joint turkey and ham dinner with all of the trimmings.
Ours was a Pacific wind and rain storm event, occurring at 2:30 AM.
Wife woke me wanting power solutions for the upcoming expected 4" raining day.
We woodstove, so heating was not a problem. Space heating stoves are ok for water heating but too all surfaces hot to extensive cook on. Cooks, the cook. 40F outside so no problem for days with the two big chest freezers out in their own shed.

Generator power, dear? No problems.
I have currently four on-hand portable generators: 1600+1600+2200+700=6100 watts available. With cords enough to do four distances separate feeds: refrigerator1, refrigerator2, cooking area1, cooking area2.
We also have the been-used-much, two burner Coleman propane camping stove.
Enabled to use her plug-in roaster pan, a couple of microwaves and such she was able to settle and we could go back to sleep.
Ha! Daylight came. I was setting up generators and power cords, then the grid power came back up. She just went ahead an did the turkey in her roaster pan.
And I told them to hustle up and do their pies in the electric range ovens first, while the grid power lasted.
That’d been the only hole in the holiday dinner making capabilities. Oven pies cooking.
I would have had to fire up the diesel tractor to move the welder-genrator up next to the house for range-oven power. And then cut up, and make up a workable cord/plug set.
Been 1/1/2 gallons of gasoline an hour for power at only one location that way.
Using the four portables I would have used only 1.25 gallons total an hour for the four separate power sources.

Yeah.Yeah. Whats this got to do with woodgasing SteveU???
IF you are woodgas electrical generating/using every day you will not notice grid power outages. Already made the lifestyle changes to cook/live that way.
As a matter of real practicality when on-grid you need some situational adaptation time. Gasoline, propane, or even diesel generating for a few days buys you this adaptation time.
Amazing how with no power - that “noisy” engine generated power seems so acceptably to them then.

Two of these five units were got to be woodgasfueled come the longer term need. Only had two other not-woodgasable’s on hand as the next gift-outs.

And I have now later gone out and thrift store bought two plug-in toster ovens. As a 20 year adult batcholer I used a toaster-oven for all of my baking/roasting, and such. Why heat up a whole family oven for just one?
And I do like my pies! Homemade from sctrach, with love true minced-meat and rhubarb pies this Thanksgiving.
(Apricot and sweetpotoato requested for Christmas)

J-I-C Steve Unruh

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These are the pies I grew up on at every Thanksgiving Steve. My Grandma used to cook for the hay and thrashing crews, breakfast lunch and dinner for twenty men. She always said Thanksgiving dinner was no problem to cook for compared to that. At her house, up until she was in her 80’s it all came staight out of the garden, home grown meats from the smoke house and she raised and killed her own chickens and turkeys…

She grew up with work horses for transportation and farming. The milk cows were the dairy isle. The chickens another source of meat and eggs. Later, they farmed with tractors, combines, trucks and grain bins, my Grandfather always had a Chrysler 440 under his foot and later the first Hemi’s.

She saw a man walk on the moon and showed off her new “Amana Radar Range” to us one Christmas in the 70’s. I asked her one time, with all the technology she saw change in her lifetime, what did she consider to be the biggest improvement? Hands down she said it was electricity, that changed everything …

Looking back, my family was much happier and healthier then too…including me. She had at least two years of vegetables, meats and fruits all canned and in the basement for daily use and plenty for any emergency.

Living off the grid was a common thing in her time, you are now in a very elite minority. Being able to create your own electicity off the grid is one of the most important things, and Gram would agree with you on your successful electrical generation efforts and capabilities.

Thanks ahain for showing and sharing your wisdom with all of us…

Bryan S

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Just for Bill, the drain King.

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Hahaha Andy. I like the one that says, “Back off, we ain’t haulin’ milk”.

I’ve been making homemade pumpkin pies since I was 16. I don’t know why I started but the reason why I continued was that everyone liked them better than store bought. Pie crusts tastes better when made with rendered lard.
This year our pumpkins were so small, a neighbor gave us a big one. I ended up with 20 cups of pumpkin which is good for 10 pies. I made 2 pies and the rest of the pumpkin will be used to make dog treats. Our dog loves them.

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Bill, how do you make this biscuits? Are they grain based or is anything more “meaty” in them too?

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Pumpkin, peanut butter, oatmeal, baking powder, eggs and cinnamon. There are tons of recipes online. This one gives a 2 week shelf life. Or they can be frozen. These are quick and easy. The wife is going to try and sell some at a craft sale this weekend to see how they do.

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OH Scooby snacks!! they sound like something a guy should keep in his pocket to snack on himself . Funny I found this now as I was just going through my pumpkins and squashes and cooking up what will be spoiling soon. Chickens just got there pumpkins that had started to go bad and I’ baking pumpkin pies. Going to try to make some from Hubbard squash that are getting some bad spots on them.To windy and cold outside and much to do inside that has been neglected in the nice weather we have been having.

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Just for fun, a look at my YouTube videos by popularity. Matt R, you are popular!

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I found the actual website that shows global temperature deviations.

http://cci-reanalyzer.org/dailysummary/#T2_anom

In fact they have a wealth of weather information, a real one stop shop. The arctic ocean anomaly continues, it’s not looking very good.

We have just got through a nasty storm here, blizzard conditions, highways were closed for 2 days, now the wind is blowing out of the north, temperature dropping, just reaching the seasonal norm, minus 18, mind you. The last geese left Tuesday, 2 weeks ago we were looking at green grass. We get soft fast. :fearful: The forecast is threatening minus 30 Saturday and Monday morning, winter is here.

Regards,

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Hello Garry .

I can understand temps down to the 30s and maybe even the 20s but when you put that minus sign before them there is no way us folks down here can comprehend :cry:

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We had 1’ of snow and below 32 f for 3 days, actually saw a 19 degree this morning
The firewood consumption has jumped from 1 wheelbarrow a week to 1 per day
The coldest i have seen here 25 miles South of Seattle was a -15 about 10 years ago

I cannot believe it is much fun anytime below about 10 degrees

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That was 1" of snow not 1’

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Minus 30 C is the same as minus 22 F. I could do without knowing what that means too. :confused: A comparison: remember when ice cube trays used to be made of aluminum, you would get that uncomfortable feeling when damp fingers would stick to the tray? That’s the kinds of outdoor conditions you have at minus 30. Damp fingers will stick momentarily to door handles on houses and vehicles, rubber and plastics begin to behave quite differently, the sheathing on cheap electrical cords may break, motor oil gets very thick. Sound begins to carry better the colder it gets. A pail of water will begin to ice over in not much more than 10 minutes, water on the ground almost immediately.

Builds character? :relaxed:

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Here’s another good example, I just received this text from the gf minutes ago. (It’s minus 21 or a bit cooler right now, heading for minus 28 by morning)…

…Then your daughter stuck her tongue and lip on the metal railing by the front door when we were unlocking it. I had to pour water on it to unstick her. Argh. It bled but wasn’t really bad. I don’t think she’ll do that again…

My daughter is 3 1/2, apparently she just had to try. Just like that classic scene from “A Christmas Story”. Oh my… :slight_smile:

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