What Preps are you doing this week? Part 13

[Yorkshire Andy]

Just ordered a Delta 3 max power bank and will buy the expandable battery in the future. Ecoflow offer 5% off for over 60s in return for your email address and phone number, so input husbands. Not a fan of giving information out but for £55 he can deal with the spam. We already have a Jackery which we use for camping but wanted something different this time. Need to get the shed kitted out with guttering and down spouts, we only have one slimline water butt connected to the garage and need to expand on that and considering whether to get a pre-used food grade IBC rather than several water butts and place it on concrete blocks rather than 2 or 3 water butts. It will happily fit where the old coal bunker lives now, which we no longer use for storing wood. Any thoughts on the IBC please? We can collect one locally for a reasonable cost.

Might take some hunting but black plastic ibcs can be found. No issues with sun light then... Try and get one with a plastic pallet base or pressed metal base rather than a wooden pallet

[Medusa]

Thanks Andy, I did not realise that they came with different kinds of bases. I will certainly look into the black ones, although I am fairly certain that our local supplier did not stock those. Might be worth paying a bit more to get one.

[GillyBee]

Thanks Andy, I did not realise that they came with different kinds of bases. I will certainly look into the black ones, although I am fairly certain that our local supplier did not stock those. Might be worth paying a bit more to get one.

Failing that a simple cover or even a coat of acrylic paint might solve the problem. And would allow you to add some thermal barrier. A black IBC would have made a good water heater this summer. (As did my black compost bin which cooked the contents.)

[Frnc]

Doing water container rotation. I might have only used 1 milton and 1 puri tab on the last one, so I might do that again when I've done all the others. I did remember 2 Milton in the one I'm doing now.

Ordered some more 33mg Oasis. Need 2 of these for each container as well. You can buy 67s actually. But I have 10 and 5 litre containers.

Bike is fixed now. New rear axle. Parts and labour £50, including tyre change (but not including cost of tyre and tube).

More or less finished all my winter preps.

[Medusa]

Failing that a simple cover or even a coat of acrylic paint might solve the problem. And would allow you to add some thermal barrier. A black IBC would have made a good water heater this summer. (As did my black compost bin which cooked the contents.)

I have just found IBC covers are a thing. Added to my wishlist for now.

[pseudonym]

Following on from Gerald's thread:

https://www.uk-preppers.co.uk/forum/vie ... 07#p248407

Bit the bullet and ordered a Bluetti Fridge Power

[itsybitsy]

Following on from Gerald's thread:

https://www.uk-preppers.co.uk/forum/vie ... 07#p248407

Bit the bullet and ordered a Bluetti Fridge Power

That looks beaut!

[pseudonym]

Following on from Gerald's thread:

https://www.uk-preppers.co.uk/forum/vie ... 07#p248407

Bit the bullet and ordered a Bluetti Fridge Power

That looks beaut!

Although great for powercuts and powering the fridgefreezer automatically, I bought it for it's slimline profile for car camping and taking up less room than my other powerbanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XOL_wI6A5I&t=36s

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JeDVNAYbI5w

[jameswhitfield]

Spent part of this week on the fuel side of things, which I keep putting off.

Two jerry cans emptied into the van and refilled fresh. I had lost track of when the petrol one was last turned over, and with E10 that matters more than it used to. The ethanol pulls in moisture, so six months in a sealed can is about as far as I would push it. Diesel is more forgiving, a year or so, though a can sat in a warm shed is where diesel bug starts, in the water that settles at the bottom. The date goes on masking tape on the handle now, because I clearly cannot rely on my memory.

Worth knowing where the lines are if anyone is thinking of holding more than a couple of cans. At home you can keep up to 30 litres of petrol without telling anyone. Between 30 and 275 litres you have to notify your local Petroleum Enforcement Authority in writing, which is usually the county council or the fire authority depending on where you are. The containers themselves are capped too: 10 litres if they are plastic, 20 litres if they are metal, which is why the big metal jerry cans you see are 20s and the green plastic ones are 5 and 10 litres. Diesel sits outside all of that, so a barrel of red or white diesel is a different conversation entirely.

The other job was route planning for work, and the gap between filling on the motorway and filling off it is still daft. The services are averaging about 190p a litre this week against roughly 173p at ordinary forecourts, so a 50 litre fill costs the better part of nine pounds more if you do not come off. There are only 168 service areas on the whole network, so there is almost always something within a couple of miles of a junction. Even allowing for the detour it pays for itself.

[pseudonym]

James please post an introductory thread as requested in the Forum rules. Many thanks.