The government has told us to be prepared, but not to panic.
What have you done, or bought, in preparation for possible power cuts/gas shortage/no mains water/ no drainage/ no food/ no internet?
I/we have several tins of baked beans (no cheap jokes, please), soup, loads of torches, spare phones charged up. Bottled water.
We have been told not to rush out and panic buy. How do you tell the difference between someone rushing out and someone strolling out all nonchalant like?
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We've already got plenty of tinned food - well over three days worth.
Mrs B picked up bottled water which we stowed in the garage. Just need to remember it has a finite life and stock needs to be rotated.
Might consider a cheap LPG stove to add to precautions. Pliantly of gas in the 'van and if we brought that onto the drive we could probably use it but I think 48 hours might be a trial for the leisure battery if it's powering the heater's fan.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 28 Oct 26 at 09:22
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I wouldn’t buy bottle water. Apart from avoiding plastic as much as possible as you say you will have to chuck it and replace on a regular basis. Better to buy a container and fill it yourself. If you have gas you should be OK as unlike electricity the supply company cannot just switch off the supply. Of course central heating won’t work but you would still have a hob to cook on. It would be unsafe to do so.
A couple of cases of wine is probably a good idea
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>> I wouldn’t buy bottle water. Apart from avoiding plastic as much as possible as you
>> say you will have to chuck it and replace on a regular basis. Better to
>> buy a container and fill it yourself.
Bit chary about the fill it yourself routine. Not sure about the shelf life of tap water and if the mains goes off without warning you're left, if you're lucky, with what's in the header in the loft.
Bottled water in the garage would be drunk as it nears it's BBE date. Could use it instead of tap water in the Sodastream - always have sparkling water if only to mix with whisky.
Plastic bottles go in the blue bin and are recycled by the council.
If they can't maintain supply pressure the gas goes off. A technician is then needed to check stuff when it's restored.
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www.tapwater.uk/guides/how-long-does-bottled-water-last
Water does not go off. The date printed on the bottle is a best-before, a quality marker UK law requires on packaged food and drink, not a safety deadline. What actually ages is the packaging: the plastic, the seal, and how warm you have kept them.
If you store them somewhere cool and out of sunlight you can get a couple of years out them.
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The gas supply can’t simply be safely switched off centrally like electricity It would cause massive safety issues.
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>> The gas supply can’t simply be safely switched off centrally like electricity It would cause
>> massive safety issues.
it can be easily switched off. it cant however be safely switched on again without extensive, almost street by street, supervision.
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>> A couple of cases of wine is probably a good idea
I pointed out to SWMBO that the water in the lavatory cisterns is the same as what comes out of the tap and is (maybe) perfectly safe to drink. She doesn't look convinced. We could always flush the loos with the contents of the water butt.
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I thought all houses had mains water supply for the kitchen taps?
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Let’s face it. There’s no way a few cans of beans and a litre or two of water and a packet of biscuits is going to help you survive a massive infrastructure breakdown. I guess it might help you get by a power cut lasting a few hours without needing assistance.
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>> Let’s face it. There’s no way a few cans of beans and a litre or
>> two of water and a packet of biscuits is going to help you survive a
>> massive infrastructure breakdown.
Three days is the sort of period people in rural and/or isolated places have had leccy or water off after recent storms. Three days would probably be enough time for infrastructure companies to get fall back plans up and running.
I'm fairly plugged in - if you'll excuse the analogy - to what's happening on Harris and Lewis and places like Obbe - a straggling village ribboned along roads - had no power for perhaps 48 hours.
Given the age of the cohort using this site how many of us are on the Priority Service Register with their gas/leccy and water suppliers?
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Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights.
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>> I thought all houses had mains water supply for the kitchen taps?
I think that's right.
Some have mains to fill flush tanks and to wash basins too though, at least in England, I think feeding a loo tank from the mains needs an anti siphon device.
Most feed loos and basins from a header tank in the loft. OUrs is pretty manky with sediment in the bottom.
I use the tap to clean my teeth but I'd rather draw water to drink from the kitchen.
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Like Bromps, I like to have sparkling water for my daily malt. Usually Highland Spring. I already have the caravan at home, battery always on smart charger so we get light. The two new 7kg Butanes deal with heater and cooker and the 2 X 40 litre aquarolls do for water. Ours comes straight from Thirlmere or Haweswater by gravity straight to the kerbside. It;s as pure as any as well.
We always have soups in the garage in Winter plus tuna, corned beef and tinned new potatoes.
The RAV is full of fuel and if Mr Putin is getting strumpy and starts throwing stones, we'll be off with van and all the supplies to our friends near Appleby . I'm sure we will be a prime target although he hasn't told me yet.
Ted
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Ted , you’ve missed this years Appleby Horse Fair by a few months.
I miss it by 12 months once a year.
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Leggy, Thank the lord. My pals at Maulds woke up one morning to find their fairly new Landie 4 door crew cab had lost its 4 doors, bonnet and interior ! Horse week ! I recall many years ago a group of travellers trying to get a big horse up some steps into a bar in the square in Selkirk.......it wasn't happy.
We bought our bannocks and retired to our caravan quietly !
Ted
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As far as prepping goes, I have an off grid equiped caravan on the drive, a load of bottled water, and packet/tinned food in the larder. Three days is a doddle.
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The ONLY critical item in a 3 day shutdown is water, without which one could get seriously unwell or in hot weather perish.
All else is nice to have and probably areadly exists in most households. Three days tinned food - no-one died for lack of food in 72 hours
A torch is nice to have - at worst if dark and cold go to bed until it gets light. The battery on your phone will last 3 days. Even with only 10L of fuel in the car you will have routine regular access to radio and power for a couple of weeks (start it every 6 hours, run for 15 minutes).
Any touring caravan with full gas bottles would enable off grid living for weeks. The whole "be ready" initiative is a complete waste of government time and money and adds close to zero to national security.
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Remember the three three's, 3 minutes without oxygen, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food.
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We've recently bought a bioethanol "log burner ", it's a revelation, heats our little bungalow lovely, getting 3 hours out of a .9 litre fill at full power, 6 at half throttle.
As for food apart from 2 freezers ( obviously in a crisis we would try to eat the contents first before it spoiled) we could easily eat for 3 weeks using our tins and packets stored away, the only thing that would suffer is my marine aquarium if the power failed.
Got loads of torches, candles and batteries.
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>>bioethanol "log burner
Interesting, never heard of 'em. We have an 8kw log burner + a lorry load of well-seasoned hardwood logs.
I could boil a kettle on it, heat up some tinned food, fry an egg etc. etc.
Water, well if it came to it, we live near a river :o)
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>> the only thing that would suffer is my
>> marine aquarium if the power failed.
>> Got loads of torches, candles and batteries.
You could cook the fish over a candle. ;>)
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And use the tank water to flush the toilet.
Sorted!
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>> The ONLY critical item in a 3 day shutdown is water, without which one could get seriously unwell or in hot weather perish. <<
Our problem(s) are that we are essentially leccy-dependent. Since SWMBO decided to replace the gas-hob with an induction one, the only gas we use is for central heating. In addition that is a combi boiler so we have no header tank in the (bungalow) loft and the only stored water is in the supply pipework. However under our front lawn there is a buried cistern dating from Victorian times which must hold several cubic metres of what I can only assume is accumulated rainwater. On the rare occasions that I extract some during a dry spell (last summer) it always appears remarkably clear. All we should need to do is boil (and perhaps filter) it. If only we had a gas cooker ....
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We had a gas hob that was replaced with an induction a few years ago. I'm pretty sure that the burners on that (NEF) would not stay lit unless it had power because the flame detectors were electronic.
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>> We had a gas hob that was replaced with an induction a few years ago.
>> I'm pretty sure that the burners on that (NEF) would not stay lit unless it
>> had power because the flame detectors were electronic.
>>
The same with us, neither the hob nor the boiler would ignite without electricity.
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>> We had a gas hob that was replaced with an induction a few years ago.
>> I'm pretty sure that the burners on that (NEF) would not stay lit unless it
>> had power because the flame detectors were electronic.
I think you'll find the flame detectors on boilers and gas hobs are a device that generates a small electric current to hold a solenoid open (can'r recall their name) that maintains the gas supply. When we had a power cut, the gas hob could be lit and used without mains electric. The knob had to be held down and the gas lit by a flame, but once it was on for a few seconds no further intervention was required.
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Preparations For Power Cuts - Bromptonaut
