Thread: Preparing for critical weather events

Originally Posted by p38arover

Is that all? On Norfolk, it was rats on our roof.

yes.

i could filter the water but apart from boiling, im unsure how.

Once our house at Maleny is finished next year I plan for it to have:
30,000 litres of water plus a bore
Solar power with battery bank
Septic waste disposal
Hen house full of laying hens
Store room with many tins and packets of supplies
Wine collection
Would be nice to add an EV if funds permit

We have a 5KVA generator, water tank, portable toilet, and a cyclone kit replenished every year. And a comprehensive first aid kit. And sat phone. Apart from that two car fridges, one set as freezer one as fridge, and battery and solar panel setups. just the average stand alone camping stuff in the main. And 100 litre water tank in the camper.

Forget doomsday, we can't have rain and electricity at the same time here. We're on tank water (I have about 120,000L in tanks, plus a bore) and I bought a generator for the sole purpose of enabling us to have water to the house when the power goes out.

Originally Posted by POD

Forget doomsday, we can't have rain and electricity at the same time here. We're on tank water (I have about 120,000L in tanks, plus a bore) and I bought a generator for the sole purpose of enabling us to have water to the house when the power goes out.

In the old days country houses had 500 gallon tanks on tall pipe stands so they were higher than the roof. I bought one at a garage sale 25 years ago but ended up moving to another place with a decent slope, so the tank became a firewood shelter instead.

In Qld, ours was on a high timber structure. Water was pumped up from a bore down at the bottom of the property to an underground tank behind the house. From there it was pumped up to the tank on the timber structure. One of my jobs when I was 12 or so was to go down to the dam where the bore was located and start the kero pump engine. Start on petrol, then change over to kero.

(For Brisbanites, this was out in the bush on Beaudesert Rd, Calamvale.)

Originally Posted by POD

Forget doomsday, we can't have rain and electricity at the same time here. We're on tank water (I have about 120,000L in tanks, plus a bore) and I bought a generator for the sole purpose of enabling us to have water to the house when the power goes out.

Same here, everything runs on power. Had no power for 2 weeks, having to manually bucket water around to the toilet and the sinks is the worst. We have a combustion stove/oven so cooking wasn't a problem, but moving water around and bucket filling the dunny gets old fast.
Cheers Jim

We don't prepare for critical weather or any other doomsday type scenario But we do live out of town and the only service we get is electricity.
We supply all our own water needs, sewage and rubbish removals so the only thing we would be dependant on is electricity.
As we do a lot of camping and remote trips we have an array of solar and genset power available to us if we loose mains power.
We also always shop in bulk simply because it is far easier to shop once a month than duck into town every couple of days for stores so we always have at least a months supply of provisions on hand.
As for communications we don't have a landline so we both use mobiles and if the network goes down we also have UHF and VHF radios we can use in case of an emergency.
This is Not "Prepping" this is just the way many of us that don't live in town or in the city live our daily lives.
I would hate to have to endure a week of No services in the city because I think it would be absolute mayhem But out here it would simply be a PITA But Not a disaster.