I know your probably busy getting ready for the winter where you are, but I thought I would take a moment to share what we are getting done with a little piece of video to boot.

It looks like our first snow of the season will hit Monday night through Wednesday, so I have running my butt off to be ready. Some of issues we had have finally been corrected so that the backup power prep is ready to go. Tomorrow I will fuel up and check out the generator to make sure it’s ready.

One of the big issues for us in that our drive to the house is uphill and during the wet season, it gets pretty slick. So the previous owner had some nice Decomposed Granite for the driveway up the hill and the driveway and parking areas around the house. During the addition of water to 3 locations on the property, we had trenching done so that we could lay the new water lines. At the same time I ran power wiring from the new sub-panel I installed on the house, to the garage. The reason for the new feed is that when this was built, they did not install a neutral wire to the garage as required by the electrical code. Since this is my point of connection for the genset, this had to be corrected as well as not having a frigging fire. So the trenching pretty much destroyed some of the DG. So about 60 tons of DG were brought in.

I had the trucking company spread the DG as best he could, but my tractor had the finishing job to final spread and pack in down. This video shows me taking DG from the stockpile I have to the uphill driveway. It took several trips and some handwork with a rake. Rakes and  shovels are very exacting tools, they only take or move as much material as you desire. A tractor is good for some work but sometimes the simple solutions work the best.

Another thing we do is to move some select food stores to the pantry in the house. Cutting down on movements when it’s best to stay indoors. We have food in 2-3 locations so that if one is damaged or compromised, another is intact. This is a good thing to do at your residence. Use the garage, part of a closet and the kitchen pantry together to increase safety.

So with this done, we should be ready to weather the storms coming and the winter in general. Hope your preps are coming along!