Zombie Squad

Well don't keep us in suspense, what is it? BTW the "giant battery" ref actually referred to "Giant Battery Corp" they have direct sales online, but I'd probably buy locally through surplus battery company called Budget Batteries. The batts I got were second hand, and only 2 years old for just a cou...

@Maast: I took a picture of something you would like in our shop today but don't have room to post it. It's impressive. The online photos just don't do it justice... A brand new 24-85-33 forklift battery, 48 volts 1360 amp hours, weighing in at... (I wish I could do a Don King voice) Four-thousand,...

You need to post an updated picture. Your setup is much neater than mine. I like the idea of everything being in a metal cabinet for protection against EMP and fire too. It's nice to just yawn at power outages of less than 2 days, huh? :wink: I currently use a 24v forklift battery and it's definite...

IMO fuel choice boils down to the duration of the outage you want to prep for and if you're in an earthquake zone: Batteries - a day or maybe two (or if you have or are planning a solar setup) Gasoline - up to a week Propane - a week to a month (primarily due to the large tanks involved and storabil...

Heh, 85 gallons of stabilized diesel to start with (have about the same toolbox/tank combo). The truck is my tow vehicle for a 28 foot aluminum boat, however I have gone up/down the Alaska-Canada highway several times with it so I have a lot of self-rescue gear in the tool box that I've never bother...

Not trying to get personal but what are you trying to filter out of the water? If it is simply chloromine then you can do that with the GAC filter bed using a good quality activated carbon and avoid the extra cost and hassle of filtering down to the .1 micron level. That's just it, I don't know exa...

With the allergy issues I ordered a full up comprehensive lab analysis of our water, it costs $155 but it'll be worth it to know exactly what's in my water before I start throwing hardware at the problem. Luckily the house was built in 2002 and we're already pretty good with water conservation: fron...

After a bit more research I think I'm going to bump up the post filter to three parallel refillable 4.5"x20" housings and fill them with "catalytic" activated carbon, the catalytic carbon has greater action on chloramine and going to 3 parallel filters slows the water down and gives it greater conta...

I'm gearing up to install a whole house filter. I’m on a community well in WA, the water has a LOT of brown manganese sediment in it, along with some iron sediment – sometimes the water turns brown if it gets stirred up in the lines. We have good pressure and flow (easily 10GPM) In addition to the p...

I'd like to go with bigger containers, but IBC totes have the biggest gallon per buck ratio available. I found one place online for 30 bucks a tote w/ another 40 for shipping and I get a discount per unit shipping if I buy more than one, min order is 6. That's a good point about keeping access to th...

I'm putting in nine (maybe twelve) 330 gallon IBC totes for rainwater collection, I don't want to use the bottom valve ports due to the possibility of breakage and losing all that water. And I want to pour foam between each tote and make it all a monolithic block. I'm thinking if I pull from the top...

Its been stated before but I'll say it again; pay close attention to the drainage of the property - water is the #1 destroyer of homes. At the top of a long gentle slope is ideal. Solar orientation and exposure; if you ever want to put up solar panels you're going to want at least one roof segment f...

There are several problems with using your car as a generator. It's doable, but horribly inefficient compared to using a generator: - When idling a vehicle alternator makes very little power, barely above field excitation power usage. - For the limited amount of power you actually make you use a lot...

Start prepping, start right now. Something could kick off next week and you'd be screwed. If you wait for the "right time" to start prepping you'll never start; there'll always be something in the way. With $100 a month you can do a hell of a lot of prepping, think of it as "dollar cost averaging". ...

KYZHunters wrote: I'm curious, what runs on 400hz?

Aircraft avionics

Heh, thanks. After much research I ended up getting another SURTA2000XL and running them in parallel off the same battery bank: One will feed the furnace and freezer, the other will do everything else. I've already tested it to make sure it can handle the load. Having a dual stack will give me some ...

The entire group is family, I could potentially have 20 people show up but only 15 adults have said they'd fall back to my place if things fell apart. If they actually get here or not is another matter since most of them are in the Portland/Salem Oregon area and its a 3.5 hour drive on a good day. I...

I live in the pacific northwest, the lots are basically just hacked out of the forest with a road along one side, there aren't any direct sight lines from one corner to the opposite corner, As it stands right now I've got a half acre+ and the house area cleared in the middle. It slopes downward at a...

My place is the BOL for my family, for various reasons we've decided to standardize on the AKM47 rifle as our main "security" rifle. In a perfect world each shooter would have their own personal rifle. However even at $449 each its not going to happen. So, in your opinion whats the minimum number of...

Been very happy with the MURS Dakota Alerts for years, but never tried any others either. Keep them dry outdoors and they're 90+% reliable year round here in N. MI. Inside unheated buildings I've never had one fail. YMMV on the range of course, but I have one mounted inside a steel polebarn 400 yds...

The reason I added cetane booster is so I wouldn't have to when I poured it into a vehicle/genny fuel tank, diesel mainly goes bad in 3 ways: 1 - water gets into it which supports microbial growth which literally eats the volatiles that would otherwise be burnt in an engine. 2 - When exposed to ambi...

I'm one of the ones that have standardized on diesel fuel; diesel truck w/ 85 gallon fuel tank/toolbox in the bed, diesel car, diesel generator. Boat and other car are gasoline, for now. I had a long conversation with one of the local fuel/fuel oil providers he said that #2 heating oil is indeed dye...

BTW, I recently discovered while playing around with my new SURTA2000XL UPS and verified it by checking it on the other three type of smart ups that I have here that if you set your battery constant to "FF" it will set your battery to magic-super-duper-uber battery and it'll give you the maximum pos...

At work we have two: A big 60hz 60KVA attached to two very large battery cabinets, and a slightly smaller 400hz 10KVA that has a bank that's only a quarter the size. Both were extremely expensive. I'm hoping that when it comes time to swap out the batteries I can take a bunch of the 100AH batteries ...