From cayoung01@earthlink.net Fri Aug 03 05:55:04 2001 To: Subject: [misc_survivalism_moderated] Fw: Living Without From: "Chris Young" Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 07:55:04 -0400 -------- ----- Original Message ----- From: Dathos Newsgroups: misc.survivalism Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 4:03 AM Subject: Living Without Well time to get off the political crap and on to something else for a change. Have you everhad to live without electricity for an extended period of time. I have along with my wife and two sons. We were forced to live without electricity for 2 1/2 consecutive years. At the time my sons were 11 months and 7 years. I've been watching the economy slowing down and I looks like we're headed for hard times again. Having said that, I've decided to tell what happened to us in the 1980's. In '83 we were living in Longview, Tx. We were renting a small house and we both were working. Our jobs were mediocre at best but we were managing and even managed to scrap upa small down payment for 4 acres that we had found. It was owner financed, not to far out of town, and the owner offered low monthly payments. We purchased it. The summer of '84 everything went to hell. Murphy's Law kicked into overdrive and our world crashed and burned in one month. My wife and I were both laid-off within a week of each other. I only drew $85 a week unemployment and she wasn't eligible. We had just paid our bills and they were due again in 3 weeks. The money was running out fast and there wasn't a job to be found anywhere at the time. We had to do something fast. We gave up trying to figure out a way to maintain what we had. We decided to move out onto the 4 acres and get out of the rent house. We got rid of just about everything as there was no place to store it. I found a guy that had a run down cabover camper for a hundred dollars so I bought it and set it up on the property. It was a life saver. It had a working propane stove top, a sink with a holding tank for water, and wired for a 12v light. I bought a small propane tank, a roll of 6mil plastic sheeting, and four large plastic trash cans with tight fitting lids. We used the trash cans for storage and hung the plastic around the front of the camper for some extra storage. We moved. Doing without electricity is nothing compared to not having any water on the property. Water is the big problem. Everything else is secondary. Having to haul water is a huge problem. Drinking water wasn't a problem we could buy that in gallon jugs. Water for bathing, doing dishes, etc., was. Even though we conserved as much as possible we could never keep enough. After a month of hauling water I had to do something. I made up a divining rod out of a 3ft. forked willow branch and witched for water. I found a spot where the rod pulled down the hardest. I bought two 10ft. pieces of one inch metal conduit, a connector, 6" long piece of 2" muffler pipe, and one large flat washer that was the same diameter as the pipe. I had a muffler shop weld the washer over one end of the muffler pipe and the conduit onto the center of the washer. I sharpened the inside edge of the muffler pipe with a rat-tail file. I used this to punch a hole in the ground. It took a full day to get down 10ft. I enlarged the hole as I went. I took another five days to get down another 7ft. I was very fortunate, I hit water sand at 16 1/2ft. I Lined the hole with 4" PVC pipe. I used a cheap hand operated well pump (hand pump) to get the water sand and water out and was able to get down to 19ft. It produced enough water to where I did have to haul water anymore. If I hadn't hit water at such a shallow depth I would have had to dig a large well. Which I did a year later. We had to learn new ways (actually old ways) to do just about everything. I bought a bag of lime and set up an outdoor toilet. I also made up a gravity fed shower and let the sun heat the water in an overhead container. I cut small trees to build both units. I notched and lashed the logs together. I used plastic sheeting to line the insides of both units to help keep insects out. Another thing I made up out of necessity was what I call yard candles for working at night. I made them out of 15oz tin cans that had the tops cut out. I use 1/2"dia. sticks for the wicks. Not any stick will do. It has to be half rotten, light weight, porous and completely dry. Place the stick in the can and leave it sticking out of the top about two inches. Fill the can, to the top, with 1/2" to 1" stones then fill with gasoline to just below the top of the stones. These yard candles will last up to 4hrs., if the wick is right. You can also use tightly rolled newspaper but it will only last 1 1/2 to 2hrs. max. I tried kerosene but they didn't work very well. I used these for over two years without any problems. The only danger would be if you were to knock it over and you can prevent that by piling dirt around them. One provides enough light to keep you from stumbling around in the dark. Several fairly close together puts out a pretty good light. Washing clothes was a chore but the cold water detergents are a big help. I got a hold of a fairly good 55gal. drum and cut it down to 18" high with a hammer and a hatchet. I rolled the sharp edge over to the outside to keep from snagging the clothes. We did however go to the laundry mat whenever we were able. Later on I made an open front shed out of logs and plastic sheeting so I would have a place to work out of the rain when needed. We were really fortunate that this happened in the summer which gave us some time before winter. -- David in Alabama Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! 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Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From cayoung01@earthlink.net Fri Aug 03 05:59:46 2001 To: Subject: Fw: [misc_survivalism_moderated] (fwd) Living Without {continued} From: "Chris Young" Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 07:59:46 -0400 -------- ----- Original Message ----- From: Dreamer To: misc_survivalism_moderated@egroups.com Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 9:09 AM Subject: [misc_survivalism_moderated] (fwd) Living Without {continued} On Tue, 05 Dec 2000 12:05:36 GMT, in misc.survivalism Dathos wrote: >Some very kind people here asked me to post more of my experience, so >here it is. > >What is posted below is a continuation of an earlier post. My family >and I had to survive for two and a half years without steady employment >and without electricity. This was from the summer of 1984 to Jan. 1987. > >Long before my unemployment benefits ran out I started doing odd jobs, >taking whatever I could find. The jobs would last from a few hours to a >full week on the better ones. Some weeks I did pretty good considering >but a lot of the times there was nothing. I tried not to turn down >anything. If I did take a job and I wasn't quite sure how to do it. I >would delayed it for a day and go to the library and read up on it and >take notes. The odd jobs were sporadic at best and nothing ever lasted >over a week. > >Here is a list of things I did to keep money coming in. Mowing grass, >trimming shrubs, hauling off trash, hauling scrap metal, hauling off >junk tires, picking up aluminum cans on the side of the road, minor >carpentry work, warehouse repair, machinery installation for a lumber >company, lumber yard clean up, occasional auto repair, occasional truck >repair, plumbing on a lake house, did some electrical wiring on the >same house, painted two cars, painted one 2 1/2 ton truck, rebuilt 2 >automatic transmissions. If I was asked to repair or paint cars or >trucks, they had to provide the place to do it. I did some house >painting, also. > >Some places wanted me to keep checking back with them. Most was just a >one time deal. A lot of the jobs were though referrals. Someone would >know somebody that needed something done and I would meet with them and >discuss it. > >Here is a little bonus that I got out of hauling off junk tires. >Occasionally I was able to find a tire that was still good. Good enough >that I could use it on one of my two vehicles. I was able to keep tires >on my vehicles because of this. I also saved money by changing my own >tires. I was able to break down the tires with a bumper jack. I would >place the edge of the tire under the front bumper on my truck and use >the weight of the vehicle to break the bead loose from the rim. Then I >took two straight lug wrenches and pried the tire off the rim. Putting >a tire back on the rim is fairly easy. One problem I ran into was >airing up the tire. All I had was one of those cheap 12v air >compressors. It was capable of putting out 200psi but it wouldn't put >out enough volume to seal the tire against the rim. I found a remedy >for that problem. > >I went down to the local scrap metal yard looking for some kind of tank >I could put air in. What I found was a thirty gallon hot water heater >tank in fairly good condition, that someone had discarded. I bought it >at scrap metal prices for two dollars. I went to the hardware store and >bought a pipe plug to block off one of the openings where the water >pipes had screwed into the tank. I took a short pipe nipple, a pipe >tee, and reducer bushings for an air hose and screw in type valve >stem. I used the 12v air pump to fill it. It took quite a while to fill >but it gave me the volume of air I needed to seal the tire bead against >the rim. I had found an old discarded air hose at a service station >that I was able to repair and used it on the tank. > >Dealing with trash was also a problem and it was a little to far to >haul the trash to the county land fill so we burned our trash. I used a >55 gallon drum with holes punched around the bottom at first. If you >don't punch air holes around the bottom, the trash won't completely >burn and it is a real mess to deal with. The problem with using a drum >is that after its burnt it rots away pretty quick and that makes >another problem to deal with. So after several months I decided to >build an incinerator. > >I started buying a few 8"x 16" concrete blocks at a time, whenever I >could. It took over six months to get up enough materials to build it. >I made it 64"x 64" square and 84" tall. I sat a 3ft. tall square cone >on top of that. I left an 8 " square opening in the top of the cone. I >gathered up some 1/4" plate steel at the scrap yard for the cone and >made a deal with the scrap yard to cut the plates to size. I knew an >individual that had a home welder that was kind enough to let me weld >the pieces together for a small fee. I used scrap 1/2" rebar for the >inside grate. I didn't place the ends of the rebar between the blocks >because I knew that they would eventually rot and I wouldn't be able to >replace them. Instead I cut the rebar into 8ft. pieces with a hack saw >and bent them at a 90% angle 24" from each end. > >Rebar is very difficult to bend at sharp angles. I ended up having to >heat them before bending. I heated them in a camp fire at the points >where I wanted them bent. I didn't have a vice to bend them so I took a >24" long piece of 1" pipe, slipped it over the heated rebar, placed it >on the ground and bent it. It took 27 pieces in all, 25 from front to >back with 2" spacing. I used the other 2 pieces for bracing underneath >to help to keep the center from sagging. I drove the ends of the rebar >into the ground about 6 inches. That left an 18" air space underneath >the grate. > >The grate was time consuming to build but getting the cone on top of >the incinerator was a real challenge. I ended up having to build an A- >frame out of logs and use a come-a-long to lift it into place. > >The incinerator worked really well. The only thing that I had to deal >with was a few ashes, tin cans, and glass bottles. I buried the burnt >cans and dug a separate hole and broke up the bottles in that hole. > >Winter time was really miserable. The cabover camper barely had any >insulation in it and we like to have froze at first.. All we had for >heat was the stove top and without a way to circulate the air all the >heat went to the ceiling. The bottom half of the camper always stayed >freezing cold. We placed the kids in the upper bed and they stayed >fairly warm but the lower beds was another matter. We all slept in our >clothes for a while and piled on the blankets but it really wasn't >enough. We finally got some insulated underwear and it helped but still >wasn't enough. We found some sleeping bags at a yard sale and that made >all the difference. With the sleeping bags and some blankets over the >top of them we were at least able to sleep without half freezing. > >I hate to admit it but during the winter we didn't stay very clean. >With the shower being outside we had to pick the days we could get out >there to take one. Heating enough water, in cold weather, for the 18 >gallon holding tank above the shower was a time consuming chore. >Heating water over a camp fire and on the stove took a while to get it >prepared. All of us cleaned up on those days. > >The shower was rather crude but worked out fairly well. It was made out >of small logs that were notched and lashed together. It was lined with >plastic sheeting. I sacrificed a new plastic auxiliary gas tank that >was suppose to be for my truck and used it for the water holding tank. >I siphoned the water out of the tank with a piece of garden hose. The >shower head was made out of an old hub cap with several holes punched >in the center and suspended from the ceiling with four pieces of wire. >Once I had the water siphoning out of the tank I used a pair of vice >grips (locking pliers) as a shutoff valve. > >At first I just used plastic sheeting to cover the door. Later on I >built a door for it using the same construction methods as the rest of >it. I used an old leather belt for hinges at first then replaced them >with rubber pieces that I cut out of the sidewall of an old tire. The >rubber worked out a lot better. It was stiffer and held the door >better. I used a piece of the leather belt for a door latch. I nailed >it to the door and hung it over another nail on the inside of the >shower. I also did the same thing for the outdoor toilet. > >My buying power was almost zero so I relied heavily on the scrap metal >salvage yard that was in the area and yard sales if we were needing >something. I was always searching for ideas and anything that I thought >I might be able to use. > >I ran across some information on forges at the library. So I built a >very crude version and a bellows. It allowed me to make brackets and >even a couple of hinges so I could put a door on my incinerator. I may >post how I built it later on if anyone is interested in this sort of >thing. > > >-- >David in Alabama > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Small business owners... 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