Category: Making

Projects that make or build something.

Post #1643: No-salt turkey jerky

Edited 2/22/2024

I made and ate no-salt turkey jerky, and lived to tell the tale.

I added a little salt-substitute (potassium chloride) for taste, at the rate of four teaspoons per cup of marinade.  (See recipe below).  In hindsight, a little more wouldn’t have hurt.  But the only sodium in the jerky is what was already in the turkey when I started.

The long and the short of it is that you don’t need salt to make jerky safely.  But it helps.

If you skip the salt, you’d be well-advised to do exactly as the USDA recommends for the rest of the processing steps.  Mostly, that means cooking the meat before drying it.  And then drying it quickly and thoroughly.

Below you see the results of an experiment with jerky made from ground beef heavily contaminated with e. coli.  The bars show how much live e. coli remained in the meat.  Shorter bars are better.  (Note that this is a log scale, so every tick mark on the scale is a ten-fold increase in the concentration of e. coli.)

Source:  Taken and substantially modified from:  Judy A. Harrison, Mark A. Harrison, Ruth Ann Rose, Survival of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Ground Beef Jerky Assessed on Two Plating Media,Journal of Food Protection, Volume 61, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 11-13, https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X-61.1.11. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X22014806).  Annotations in red are mine.

By eye, cooking the meat (right half versus left half, above) matters more than adding salt/nitrite curing mix to the meat (white bars versus black bars).  Though, if you want the absolute minimum risk of contamination, you should do both.

After contemplating those results for a bit, I don’t think I’d try no-salt with anything but solid meat jerky.  As shown below, using turkey.  Ground meat seems a little too bacteria-friendly to allow you to slack off on any aspect of the processing.

Depends on your tolerance for risk, I guess.  But that’s true of all home-preserved food. Continue reading Post #1643: No-salt turkey jerky

Post #1628: More on making a bug-out bag

 

Background:  Chump change.

After Post #1620, and Post #1625, I’ve followed through on stashing a few emergency-use items in my wife’s Prius Prime.  This follows the realization that if there is any sort of mass evacuation in my area, the inevitable result is that we’ll end up living in the car for a day or two, as we negotiate the resulting traffic jam.

This is, in effect, my quick-and-dirty emergency #vanlife kit.  I need to be able to drink, eat, excrete, and stay warm, in the car, for a day or two.

The trick here — as in so much of life — is not to be an idiot.  Don’t spend a ton of money.  Don’t interfere with day-to-day use of the car.  Make it easy to maintain.

But don’t skimp, either.  Keep this in perspective.   This is just another bit of of insurance, in a world where you already buy insurance.

Insurance?  For private insurance, I currently pay roughly:

  • $14,000 a year for high-deductible (“never-pay”) health insurance.
  • $1,500/year car insurance, two vehicles.
  • $1,200/year homeowner’s insurance.
  • $300/year for general liability (“umbrella”) insurance.

And I would guess that 35% of my federal taxes support Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and other government-mandated forms of social insurance. Most of which boils down to a subsidy of the less fortunate.  But some of which may benefit me.

It’s no exaggeration to say I routinely pay $20K per year for insurance.  That I hope I never get to use.  Hence the title of this.  (Which I stole, by the way, from a friend who was, at the time, the U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health, who used that line when people started talking about health insurance providing poor value.)

In that context, a one-off expense of $150 worth of stuff, for the car?  That’s not exactly rounding error, in terms of my overall insurance expenditures.  But it’s close.

Without further ado.

Water.

Below:  Vacuum-packed four-packs of half-liter bottles, hanging at the back of the cargo area.

 

Sure, water is more-or-less required for long-term survival.  But bottled water sells out rapidly in any U.S. evacuation.

You can buy bags of emergency water supplies, but they seem a) ridiculously expensive, and b) too small.

And yet, off-the-shelf bottled water comes in rather fragile packaging. Even off-the-shelf gallons will eventually leak, in my experience.  How can you take that cheap grocery-store bottled water and carry it safely in the car?

My solution is to seal four half-liter bottles inside a gallon poly bag, then hang those bags behind the back seat of my wife’s Prius Prime, hung off the rear headrests, over the all-weather floor mats.  If they leak, they’ll leak into the bag.  And if the bag leaks, it’ll leak onto the weatherproof floor mat.

This gives me 6 liters (1.5 gallons) of single-serving water bottles, with minimal risk of damaging the car interior via leaks.

Too much water?  Too little water?  Beats me.  Looks like a lot to me, but seemingly reliable sources say that you need to consume about three liters of water a day, in all forms (Reference:  Mayo clinic). More for men, less for women.  Given that everything else in the car is dry food, by that standard, this is a one-night supply of water for two adults.  I guess that’s about right.

Cost, if you have a vacuum-sealer already, is maybe $3.  If not, use zip-locks.  So, no problem if I have to toss these every couple of years.  Also uses space that doesn’t interfere with the everyday use of the car.  I might add a piece of black plastic over them to slow any UV damage to all that fragile plastic.

 

Sanitation. 

Well, there’s a reason they’re called SHTF bags.  God willing, I will never see this again in my lifetime.

Source:  Amazon.  References for other supplies are in prior post.

After looking at my off-the-shelf options, I decided that a stainless steel bedpan was my best choice for sanitation.   It’s a tried-and-true design.  And I’m fat enough that plastic likely wouldn’t do.  I bought one with a lid, and stuffed it with the items listed below.  Note that this takes up no useful space in the car.  It sits under the front passenger seat.  And, God willing, it will never come out from that hidey-hole.

  • Lidded stainless steel bedpan, containing:
    • Short bungee to anchor back of bed pan to seat belt.
    • One roll TP, compressed
    • 4 potty liners (blue, absorbent fill)
    • 3 urinals (pink, absorbent fill)
    • 8 small trash bags
    • Sanitary wipes
    • Disposable gloves
    • Water purification device
    • Water purification tablets

This is probably $85 worth of stuff, all told.  All of which should be a once-in-a-lifetime purchase.  And should never have to be touched, short of an actual emergency.

Seems like a lot, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Food 1:  Emergency rations.

Source:  Amazon and Amazon.

This is a brick of emergency food, plus some individually-wrapped emergency food bars, from Amazon.  Stuffed in a bag, to sit under the driver’s seat.  The main point is that you’d only eat these out of a total sense of desperation.  Ideally, these need to be replaced no more frequently than every five or ten years.  If then.

Cost, about $25. Should last anywhere from half-a-decade to a decade.  Call it insurance at five bucks a year.  Hope to see it again a decade from now.

First aid.

If you’re shopping for a first-aid supplies, it’s important to judge whether or not you have the moxie to deal with what I would term a trauma kit.  Something  for major injuries.  As opposed to first-aid kit, which is basically for minor injuries and common maladies.

I think the upper limit of what I can plausibly handle is a butterfly closure.  Maybe some gauze and tape.  And, e.g., aspirin, Tums, and similar off-the-shelf remedies.  So that’s what I pack.  If I manage to sever a major artery, I’m out of luck.  I think that’s the nature of insurance.

Tourniquets?  Sutures?  Splints?  Do you know you to use them?  If not, buy a first aid kid, no matter how appealing a trauma kit might be.

I have no clue what my first-aid kit cost, because I repackaged a bunch of first-aid supplies that I’ve had sitting around for years.Some elements (e.g., OTC medications) will have to be replaced every couple of years.  This sits under the driver’s seat, alongside the emergency rations.

 

Emergency tools.

The Prius Prime has one narrow, deep compartment under the floor of the trunk.  This is a place for storing (e.g.) tools for changing a tire.  I am adding, in one small bag, all the tools that might be useful in an emergency, and will never need to be refreshed or updated.  These include:

  • Multi-tool
  • Can opener
  • Space blanket x 2
  • Emergency poncho x 2
  • Compass
  • Work gloves, handful of misc car-related tools.

Note that this isn’t at all what is normally sold as a vehicle emergency kit.  Those kits focus on having a breakdown in your vehicle.  That’s not what I’m worried about.  I’m more worried about a breakdown of civil society.

In any case, despite having worked on a lot of cars over my lifetime (e.g., replaced the engine on my first car), the idea that I could diagnose and fix a serious problem on a modern fuel-injected computer-controlled engine is just laughable.  Maybe if I win the lottery, I’ll throw a high-end scan tool in that bag.  That way, if I’m stuck, at least I’ll know why.

Food 2:  Routine long-trip stuff, including snacks and the tools required to eat them.

Finally, in a small bag sitting in a little alcove in the trunk, I’m putting all the stuff that needs to be refreshed roughly annually.  That boils down to food and batteries, and a few pieces of equipment that might come in handy on any long trip. Things that you might just routinely tap into, on a long trip.  Or need to grab in a hurry.

  • Flashlights x 2
  • Spare batteries
  • Water heating device, insulated mugs
  • Tea bags x 10, other hot drinks
  • Ramen x 6
  • Plates, cups, utensils,
  • Misc dry food snacks (e.g., peanut butter crackers)
  • Cash.

The last item, because I’ve never been in a situation where having some money around made it worse.

The water heater, discussed in an earlier post, is about $30 and will take like-onto half an hour to boil a cup and a half of water.  Such is the tyranny of physics.  Otherwise, this is maybe another $10 worth of food.

Summary.

I’m not a nut.  I think. 

I’m just a fairly prudent guy.  Who, as a self-employed person, got used to paying for all of my insurance, including health insurance.  And once you’re in the habit of shipping off $1K+ per month for health insurance, while simultaneously fervently hoping that you are pissing your money away (because if not, that’s not good) …

Maybe out of all that, I ended up end up with a different attitude toward small insurance expenditures.  Which is, at root, what this is about.  This is about fitting out my wife’s car with a bit of insurance against (e.g.) what happened this past January, on I-95, in Virginia.  Let alone some greater catastrophe.

So the goal is to set up some supplies that:

  • don’t cost an arm and a leg (appropriately amortized over their expected lifetime).
  • don’t interfere with the day-to-day use of the vehicle.
  • cover the basics of existence (water, food, sanitation, light, warmth)
  • in a way that is easily maintained.

I think I’ve hit the brief on this one. 

I’ve made a one-time investment in sanitation supplies, packed so they’ll easily fit under the front passenger seat.

Thrown in some food and water, some first-aid supplies, and a few tools.

Separately, all the stuff that’s likely to need to be refreshed annually is in one bag, ready to go.

In the end, this is like having a will.  You aren’t buying happiness.  You are buying peace of mind.  If the unthinkable happens, you’ve done what you can reasonably be expected to do.  Having settled this, there’s no sense worrying about it further,  Just get on with the rest of your life.

Post #1625: Tyranny of physics, or still more on a bug-out bag

 

Background:  Emergency preparedness.

I’m in the middle of repurposing some old backpacking equipment into a set of bug-out bags (Post #1620).   To me, the big surprise is that mass evacuations in the U.S. almost always generate horrendous, days-long traffic jams. 

You can pretty much bet on it.  Which means that you ought to be prepared for it.  Which I was not.  As a result, my most pressing need wasn’t for camping gear per se.  It was for the supplies that would allow me to live in my car for a day or two.

Basically, to be prepared to bug out, in an urban area, I need a mini-#vanlife kit.  Ideally, without spending a fortune, and without having to replace critical supplies every year.  (Because I’m not that organized, and I’ll forget to do it.)

It’s not rocket science.  You need to take care of water, food, warmth (maybe), and sanitation (maybe).

In my last post, when I looked at options for the critical sanitation category, I found plenty of good choices for #1, but not such great options for handling #2.  In both cases, I’ve gone with some version of special-purpose plastic bag lined with super-absorbent gel.  I picked this and this, for starters, both of which I expect to last indefinitely and be once-in-a-lifetime purchases.

Research reveals some constraints on food choices for an emergency kit kept in the car, driven by the harsh environment of the car’s interior. Some mainstays of camping (e.g., chocolate bars) are obviously inappropriate.  Less obviously, experts frown on most canned foods and high-fat foods because the heat and freeze/thaw lead to rapid deterioration.  Even foods packaged for stability, like MREs.  In particular, the “best used by dates” of those foods cannot be trusted, if kept in a car, because those dates assume the foods were kept at normal room temperature, not at the often blistering-hot temperature of a car interior.

So I’m putting together a little kit of dried foods.  Starting with a brick of true emergency rations and some emergency food bars.  Both of those ought to last five years, even if kept in a car.  And then I’m adding things any camper would consider, and that have exceptional shelf life.  Or at least won’t kill you, even if they don’t taste so hot after a decade in the car.  These include ramen noodles, oatmeal, dried potato flakes, maybe some tea, and coffee, hot chocolate, and other dry foods.

But this brings up a new need.  My ability to eat anything tasty, out of that emergency stash, depends on my ability to boil water in the car.  I expect that the emergency ration bars taste awful, and while you can, in theory, just cold-soak ramen noodles and potato flakes, nobody claims that the results are palatable.

And that’s when I started running into the tyranny of physics.

Pick an option for boiling water in the car:  Asphyxiate, spend tons of money, electrocute, void your new car warranty, or wait a really long time.

The task is to come up with a modest amount of boiling-hot water, on demand, as the car is creeping along the freeway.

Seriously, how hard can that be?

Asphyxiate. First, I’m going to rule out any traditional flame-based camp stove.  Even clean-burning fuels like butane.  Burning anything in an enclosed space is just a bad idea.  Couple that with notion that a) you’re going to be doing this while in dense traffic, and b) whatever fuel you use, it’s going to get stored long-term in the car.  Aside from Esbit — of which I am a fan — I can’t think of a refined stove fuel that I’d even consider keeping in a hot car in the summer.

Spend tons of money.  Second, there are cooking systems that rely on exothermic chemical reactions.  You chuck a packet of chemicals into water or salt water, and the resulting chemical reaction generates the heat to cook your meal.  These include Army MRE heaters as well as commercial systems such as Barocook.  The only downside here is the expense.  Near as I can tell, it would cost me a $2 disposable every time I wanted to heat up a cup of water for tea.  And you should ideally buy the right equipment first, the sole use for which is to heat foods with these chemical heaters.

So, those would work, and those will keep indefinitely.  But there’s a lot of dedicated equipment and expense, and I would never get any utility out of them except as a component of this car emergency pack.

Third, seriously, it’s an electric car.  The motor/generators can put out tens of thousands of watts of power.  Why not just plug in an electric kettle/coffee pot and be done with it?  That’s where the choices boil down to electrocution, voiding the warranty, or waiting a long time.

Electrocution:  Although the Prius Prime can literally run on electricity, Toyota didn’t think to bring much of that inside the cabin.  The power sockets (“cigarette lighter sockets”) on the Prius interior are rated for a maximum of 120 watts.  The upshot is that if you plug in an inverter and a typical home electric kettle, you’ll instantly blow the blow the fuse on the power socket.  A typical US home electric kettle draws 1500 watts.

In fact, that’s so little power than you can’t even run this device:

Source:  Ebay.

The Kenner Easy-Bake toy oven above draws way too much wattage to be used inside a Prius Prime.  “The original Kenner Easy-Bake Oven was heated by two 100-watt incandescent light bulbs, …”  (source:  Wikipedia).

Heck, I already own one of these little immersion heaters:

 

And even the lowest-power version of that device draws far too much power for the Prius power outlets to handle.

Void your warranty.  There’s an obvious way around this, which is to wire up a socket or an inverter directly to the battery (fused, of course).  That way you could use much heavier wire, draw more current, and use an electric kettle capable of heating a pint of water in a reasonable amount of time.  Even then, as discussed in Post #1020, you probably wouldn’t want to exceed 1000 watts.  That’s the size of inverter I hook up, when I used my older Prius as an emergency generator.

That said, on an almost-new car, still under warranty, with a rather delicate 12V electrical system, I’m not sure I want to attach cables to the battery.  Let alone try to find a way to get them through the firewall.  For fear that if something goes wrong in the 12V electrical system, the deal will point to the modifications as an excuse not to fix it under warranty.

So while I have no problem hooking up a 1000-watt inverter to our long-out-of-warranty 2005 Prius, I’m not quite comfortable doing that with my wife’s 2021 Prius Prime.  Particularly not as a permanent install, to be ready in case of emergency evacuation.

Wait a really long time.  At this point, all remaining electrical solutions fall under the tyranny of physics.  If you input few watts, the water heats slowly.  And there’s no way around that.  That’s just basic physics.

If you want to heat a pint of water from room temperature to boiling, using the limit of 120 watts, assume zero losses, and assuming you don’t blow the fuse on the power socket, that will take you 22 minutes.

That said, of all the ways I could heat water in the car, a little low-powered cup-sized electrical heater seems to make the most sense.  For one thing, if I’m using it while stuck in a traffic jam, I’ll have nothing but time.  For another, I can actually use that on normal road trips to make a fresh cup of coffee or tea.  So I will get some utility out of it, beyond its value in an emergency.  For a third, they are designed to fit in a car’s cup holders, which would be handy if I’m going to use one while stuck in traffic.

When all was said and done, I ordered one of these:

Source:  Amazon.

This is an 80-watt device that should be able to bring 12 ounces of water to a boil in about 25 minutes.  That’s far enough below the power socket’s limit that I don’t risk blowing a fuse.  That’s enough boiling water to cook at least a single serving of ramen noodles.  And if I’m stuck in the car for 24 hours, the 25 minute wait will just give me something to look forward to.

Conclusion

For emergency rations to be kept in the car, experts say that a lot of your normal choices for emergency food are off-limits.  Canned foods, high-fat foods (including nuts), and MREs are all poor choices due to their rapid and unpredictable spoilage rates when subject to high temperatures and freeze-thaw cycles.

For my car kit, I am going with some ultra-stable commercial emergency foods, and a selection of dried foods and beverages.  The latter require me to boil water, in the car, possibly while moving in extended stop-and-go traffic.  After looking over my options, to boil water I’ve decided to go with the simplest plug-and-play setup I could find.  For the Prius Prime, that’s a small (12 ounce) low-wattage (80W) water heater built to sit securely in a cup holder.  The sole downside is that, assuming it works perfectly, it’s going to take roughly half-an-hour to bring 12 ounces of water to boiling.

Seems like a lousy choice.  Until you realize that all the other choices involved significant risks (flame-based cookers), expensive disposables (MRE heaters and similar), or blown fuses or possibly a blown warranty for higher-powered electrical devices.

Post #1620: Musings on putting together a bug-out bag

 

This is a lengthy set of ramblings.  There's a conclusions section at the bottom if you just want the bottom line.

I continue in my quest to Get Rid of Stuff, a.k.a., Swedish Death Cleaning.  At present I’m wondering what to do with four decades’ worth of camping gear.  Most of it is lightweight gear for backpacking.  My answer is to repurpose it into a couple of bug-out bags (or SHTF bags).

For those unfamiliar with the term, a bug-out bag is set of emergency supplies packaged so you can easily pick it up and carry it away.  Typically, it’s a backpack full of stuff.

Many responsible entities suggest that every citizen have one of these on hand.  You can get guidance on what ought to be in a typical bug-out bag from, among others, FEMA, the CDC, the Red Cross, the U.S. Army, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Fairfax County, VA.  I’m emphasizing that because having a bug-out-bag or emergency kit isn’t something you should associate with end-times preppers.  It’s a completely prudent thing to have and maintain.

Though I have to admit that all the loose talk about nuclear war and dirty bombs does not exactly reduce my anxiety level, given that we live about 15 miles from the Pentagon.  Plus, all the anti-democracy craziness at play in the coming elections suggests a non-negligible chance I might end up on the wrong side of a armed mob.  And then there’s always the odds of the next Carrington Event.  Which, while maybe not quite as destructive as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a high-altitude nuclear explosion, could wreck the power grid, with all that implies for ensuing long-term lack of water, food, fuel, and commerce in general.  But let’s keep it mainstream.  Think blizzard, hurricane, or similar natural disaster.

To be clear, for almost any conceivable emergency, I’m going to shelter in place.  We’re never going to get hurricane-force winds this far inland.  I’m never going to have to go on the lam to avoid arrest.  And in the event of nuclear war, the last place I want to be is in a multi-day traffic jam on I-66.  I’m going to stay where I have a comfortable bed and flush toilets.

At-home preparedness really isn’t the issue.  Almost everyone who lives in a big suburban house pretty much has that covered.  E.g., every person with a standard hot water heater is already storing 50 gallons of potable water.  For us, with a modern wood stove and a car that serves as an electrical generator (see Post #1020), we’ve got heat and light.  We’d suffer no hardships to speak of in (e.g.) a prolonged winter power outage.

When you step back from it, the question isn’t what to put in a bug-out bag. You can get lists of suggestions anywhere.  Heck, you can buy them ready-made on Amazon.  The basics are pretty obvious:  Water, food, shelter, light, sanitation, medicines.  And batteries.  Lots and lots of batteries.  It’s just another version of going camping.

The key question is why have a bug-out bag?  Given that I have all the basics of existence covered at home, why would I even want something I can pick up and carry off?

Let me defer an answer to that for the moment.  Because if you carry through on that thinking, you will immediately arrive at an even more basic question for which — around here at least — there is absolutely one correct answer. To get oriented, all I really need to ask myself is this:  What am I most likely to be facing, if I’m picking up those bug-out bags and heading out of town?

Around here, the answer is obvious.

Scenario 1:  Three-day traffic jam.

Northern Virginia is pretty much one big traffic jam on the best of weekdays.  If there is some general reason to evacuate this area, by far the most likely result will be a multi-day traffic jam.  Similar to — possibly worse than — the Houston evacuation prior to hurricane Rita, or the Florida state-wide traffic jam for the evacuation for hurricane Irma.

Once I started looking into that, it seems that more-or-less every modern mass evacuation in the U.S. has generated horrific traffic jams. So an epic traffic jam isn’t just likely, it’s more-or-less guaranteed in any large-scale emergency evacuation situation in the U.S.  No matter what the underlying reason, if a lot of people around here suddenly decide to go elsewhere, a massive traffic jam will be the inevitable result.

In addition, recall the earlier this year, a snowstorm broke I-95 in central Virginia, leaving people trapped in their cars, in the middle of nowhere, in the snow, in central Virginia, for more than 24 hours (reference).  My point being that you don’t necessarily even need a mass evacuation to find yourself trapped in your car for a day or more.

Accordingly, the first thing I really ought to prepare for, in a set of bug-out-bags, is spending a few days in the car.

A typical evacuation traffic jam.

Traffic jam, Florida, Hurricane Irma.  Source:  Accuweather (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert).

Let me briefly see what I can learn from recent U.S. hurricane evacuation experiences.

Here’s one first-hand account.  Some takeaways:

  • Stores were still open, so if traffic was stopped, you could hop out and use the restroom at local commercial establishments.  Plausibly, you may or may not need a porta-potty or urinal in the car, depending on whether traffic is literally stopped.
  • Once the traffic jam got started, it snowballed due to people running out of gas.
  • That then littered the road and shoulder with stopped cars, which made access for emergency equipment far more difficult.

Here’s a good scholarly article on traffic and hurricane evacuations.

  • Basically, nobody does anything to manage or stage the traffic load.  In most modern instances, while evacuation routes are identified ahead of time, once the evacuation starts, it’s just every man for himself, with the resulting chaos.
  • Roads rapidly fill past the optimum point on the K-Q curve  — the point of greatest throughput — and that throttles down the number of vehicles able to leave an area.
  • This due, in large part, because everybody waits until the last possible moment.
    • Elected officials, hoping that (e.g.) the hurricane will go elsewhere.
    • Residents, ditto
  • If I get one takeaway from that, it’s that if you are going to evacuate, do it as early as possible.

One other takeaway from that one is that people spend a lot of time farting around as they prepare to evacuate.  That adds to the chaos and further slows traffic.  They don’t have a plan, they need to hit the stores for supplies and so on.  They don’t even have a preferred route.  That strongly suggests having a preferred evacuation route in mind, and having your supplies ready to go.

Here’s a weird little tidbit, from this analysis of Florida evacuations for hurricane Irma.  So many people chose Orlando as their destination that you didn’t just have traffic jams on the gulf coast, you ended up with massive traffic jams around Orlando.  The authors described the results as “catastrophic traffic jams throughout the state”.   The clear takeaway there is to avoid what you believe will be the most common destination for people leaving your area.  In fact, the Irma evacuation caused massive traffic jams in Atlanta, Georgia.  I can only guess that was mostly people who couldn’t get a hotel room in Orlando.

This scholarly analysis adds another helpful hint.  When everybody in an area goes out to gas up the car and pick up bottled water, hey, guess what happens?  Gas and water get scarce.  The clear implication there is that you should consider keeping supplies of both water and gasoline on hand.  If nothing else, you won’t be adding to the chaos in the run-up to the evacuation.  (Although, admittedly, stockpiling a bit of gasoline involves some risks and difficulties.)

For my part, given that the Prius Prime has a 640-mile range at the stated EPA mileage, and that traffic jams actually increase your mileage, my guess is that all I would need is a full tank.  I can’t imagine the scenario where I’d have to run more than 700 miles.  I mean, I’m only 400 miles from Niagara Falls, so that range gets me well up into Canada.  So I shouldn’t need to take gas cans in the car.  Just have enough on hand to be sure to be able to fill the tank.

It almost goes without saying that you are unlikely to be able to obtain a hotel room during a mass-evacuation scenario.  Just to put some numbers on that, in all of Florida, there are under 500,000 hotel rooms (reference).  On any given day, two-thirds of them are already occupied (same reference).  On a good day, for the entire state, you might have 150,000 empty rooms.  The Irma evacuation in Florida involved an estimated 4 million vehicles (reference).  In round numbers, for the entire state of Florida, there was at best one empty hotel room for every 25 evacuating vehicles.  So I’d say, plan for some alternative accommodation is good advice.  Barring that, book well in advance.

Floridadisaster.org puts it a bit more mildly:  ” … hotels and other sheltering options in most inland metropolitan areas are likely to be filled very quickly …”   So, in addition to urging you to leave sooner rather than later, they suggest that you identify someplace safe nearby, ” … minimize the distance over which you must travel in order to reach your intended shelter location. ”  All of that seems like sound advice.

The most important takeaway from that is the idea that you will have already identified your intended shelter location.  If you do it right, you aren’t just evacuating the area, you’re evacuating to a chosen destination.

I have not seen any advice or empirical evidence on whether or not it would be better to use secondary routes rather than interstates or primary highways.  In some places — and Florida comes to mind there — the only through roads are the primary highways and interstates.  But in other areas, you might have a fairly well-developed network of secondary routes.

So what I really need is an instant #vanlife kit?

Yeah, pretty much.  That’s my conclusion, anyway.  No matter what the emergency, if there’s a mass evacuation in this area, we’re all going to be living in our cars for a day or two.

In addition to what you’d put in a normal bug-out bag (water, food, light source, and so on), I should ideally have three more things on hand, ready to go, in case of an emergency evacuation.

Source:  Clipart library.com

First, pre-select a handful of potential destinations, at various distances, and store that list in the car.  Apparently, during many of out recent hurricane-driven evacuations, a lot of people wasted a lot of time trying to figure out where they could go.  This hesitation pretty much guarantees getting stuck in the worst of traffic. Even if you’ve picked a (one) place, there’s going to be a pretty good chance that there will be (e.g.) no hotel rooms or camping spots left.  So pick several.

As I would almost certainly be driving west, and have no relatives living west of me, that would almost certainly be a list of hotels and campgrounds along the interstate and primary highways leading west of here.  Write it down and keep that list in the car.

Source:  Amazon.com

Second, keep some gasoline on hand.  A second clear lesson is that any situation that would generate a mass evacuation will also generate panic-buying of gasoline.  And if there’s anything we learned from COVID, it’s that panic buying can clear out the local inventories in a flash.  In my case, I’d want enough to ensure that I could fill the tank of my wife’s car — about ten gallons.

This is a lot tougher to do well, because gas goes “stale” in a relatively short amount of time, perhaps as little as three months.  This is due largely to the loss of the most volatile components.  As they evaporate, it raises the flash point of what’s left and makes it harder for a spark plug to ignite it.

The upshot is that you have to rotate your stock.  You can’t just put some filled gas cans on a shelf and be done with it.  You need to transfer that stored gas to your car periodically and re-fill you gas cans with fresh gas.

Maintaining adequate gasoline turnover is already a minor issue for some PHEV owners.  If you do almost all your driving on battery, you might keep the same gas in your tank for a prolonged period.  That said, car fuel systems are sealed, so there’s relatively little evaporation.  I believe Toyota recommends at least half a tank of fresh gas every year.

Just by chance, I actually have the right equipment for storing modest amounts of gasoline.  That’s a gasketed metal jerry can, as pictured above.  Those have no vent, and they seal completely when closed, slowing the rate at which the gas goes bad.  I can’t recall exactly how I came to own mine, but I’m sure they can no longer be sold in CARB-compliant areas such as the DC metro area.

I’m undecided as to whether I’m going to store a can or two of gas.  The decision to store gasoline is a commit to the effort it takes to keep it fresh.  I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

At this point, I think I have the inputs for this process down pat. 

My final concern is for outputs.

What are your alternatives if you’re stuck in the car and can’t get access to a bathroom?  I realize you can stop the car, run into the woods, and take care of business in some fashion.  The interesting question is, what can you do without getting out of the car?

And, in the modern era, well, of course there are multiple websites that will tell you just exactly how to poop and pee in the car.  Typically with some variety of D-I-Y receptacle.  And numerous vendors of commercial products for the same purpose.   And the inevitable YouTube videos.

After working through a considerable amount of that, I’ve decided to do two things.

One, I’m going to buy a pack of the “Travel Jane” brand disposable urinals above.  These contain a polymer that gels more-or-less instantly when it comes in contact with urine.  Apparently the shape is more-or-less female-friendly (but guys can use it too.)

Enough said about #1.

And then there are the various contraptions for an in-car #2.  Of which, none of them look like they’ll work for a fat guy in a Prius.  (And a standard steel bedpan won’t work, because it slopes the wrong way to be used in an already-sloping car seat.)  Instead, I’ll be cutting down a five-gallon-bucket-style emergency toilet, to match the dimensions needed to work with a car seat (3″ front, 5″ rear).

Then buying a box of disposable liners.

Then hope like hell I never have to use the thing.  And that’s that.

Some commentary on disaster kit checklists

There’s no point in my offering you a list of stuff to go into your own bug-out bag or disaster kit.  There’s no shortage of experts who will tell you what to keep on hand for disaster preparedness.  By and large, they all say the same things.  And those are pretty obvious:  Water, food, shelter, sanitation supplies, and so on.  I listed some references at the start of this post.

I will add just four refinements that you may not read elsewhere.  These are all about maintaining that emergency kit once you have put it together.

First, never leave the batteries in your devices.  Take them out, and put them in a plastic bag taped to the device.  Although battery corrosion is far less of a problem now than it was decades ago, alkaline batteries will eventually corrode.  And you’ll only find out that the device is ruined when it ceases to function.

Two, invest in a cheap battery tester.  Five dollars will get you a perfectly adequate tester on Amazon.  That will pay you back in terms of batteries that you don’t have to throw away, because they remain within spec even after sitting around for a few years.

Three, separate out all the items that need to be replaced periodically, and put them all in their own bag.  Food, medications, batteries, and so on.  Anything that has an expiration date.  If not, you’ll have to go rooting around in your kit, every year, to check for expired items.  Which means you won’t bother to do it.  Which means that when you go to use your bug-out bag, it will be full of expired items.

Four, use a sharpie to mark the purchase date of every food item.  And every other item that is in your bag of expire-ables.  This takes almost no time, and saves you having to squint at the various packages when checking the contents of your bug-out bag.

In terms of the standard lists of items, oddly, almost all of these lists not only have the same items, they have the same handful of items that I consider to be decades out-of-date.

Some common bits of bad advice

Surely the most out-of-date recommendation found on every list is to carry some travelers’ checks.  Travelers’ Checks?  Do they even make those any more?  (Answer:  Yes, American Express still offers Travelers’ Checks.)  I cannot imagine the situation in which cash would not be superior to Travelers’ Checks.

In the same vein, there’s a suggestion that you carry some change, in addition to paper money.  Maybe there are still vending machines that don’t require electricity and don’t take bills.  I can’t recall having seen one for a long time.  My guess is, that’s a recommendation that dates back to the era of pay phones.  Otherwise, if I’m in a situation, the last thing on my mind will be worrying about having to round up to the next whole dollar.

Arguably, the second most out-of-date recommendation is to carry matches in a waterproof container.  Don’t.  Carry a Bic lighter.  (What the heck, go crazy, carry two.)  Backpackers made that switch decades ago.  Bic advertises 3000 lights from its full-sized model, and most people seem to get a lot more than that.  And it’s inherently waterproof.  I can’t even imagine carrying 3000 matches.

Third worst recommendation is to include a bottle of bleach.  This was to be used to sanitize clear (non-cloudy) water for drinking.  But that’s a bad recommendation for a couple of reasons.

First, household bleach degrades rapidly.  Unless you are prepared to replace that every couple of years (or annually, per most sources), you’ll have no idea what strength the bleach is.  Standard household bleach is either 6% or 8.5% sodium hypochlorite.  Accordingly, use 8 or 6 drops of bleach per gallon of clean, pre-filtered water.  This, per the U.S. EPA.  In round numbers, to be safe, that’s a quarter-tablespoon per gallon of clear water.  Stir and let stand 30 minutes.

But that’s also a bad recommendation for drinking water purification because the technology has improved.  Back in the day, you had your pick of awkward ways to disinfect water.  Boil the water for one minute, or use water purification tablets (foul tasting and only partially effective), or use bleach (merely foul tasting).  There were also systems set up around the use of iodine rather than chlorine.

These days you have many better options.  There are microfiltration systems, such as the Lifestraw or higher-volume units that use (more-or-less) dialysis filtration material to filter pathogens out of the water.  There are systems that use salt and electricity to create chlorine for water disinfection.  There are systems that use battery-powered UV-C lights to disinfect water.  And so on.

For my part, I’m tossing one of the little Sawyer micro-filtration water filters into each bug-out bag.  Plus a handful of coffee filters for pre-treatment.  If I ever get to the point where I’ve run out of potable water, that’s going to be a lot more reliable than whatever happens to be left in an N-year-old bottle of household bleach.

Some good advice that I wouldn’t have thought of.

By contrast, here are some things I wouldn’t have thought to add:

A lot of lists recommend keeping a complete change of clothes in your emergency kit.  I guess, in the back of my mind, I figured I’d also pack a suitcase.  But if this really is for an emergency getaway, maybe a change of clothes in the bug-out bag is a good idea.  Particularly if you are making some sort of kit to reside in your car.

I would not have thought to include maps of my area.  But that makes perfect sense, as you could easily imagine a situation in which the cell towers are out.  Of course, if I’m traveling by car, I’ll have a set of maps already.

A final general item that I would not have included on my own is a selection of standard over-the-counter medications.  Things like antacids, anti-diarrhea medications, and so on.  I could see where (e.g.) a bad case of acid reflux or heartburn could be a real hindrance if you couldn’t get your hands on some antacids.

Otherwise, those lists are pretty much all the same.  And pretty much common sense if you have any camping experience.

A brief diversion on the space blanket.

Source:  Walmart

Everybody tells you to pack a space blanket.  Few people have ever tried (e.g.) camping with just a space blanket, nothing else.  (I have, and it doesn’t do much to keep you warm.)  Virtually nobody understands how space blankets actually work.  Yet that lack of understanding does not keep people from offering advice on how to use them.  As a result, much of the advice you will get about space blankets is wrong.

A space blanket is, first and foremost, a radiant barrier.  Without even attempting to get into the physics of it, I’m just going to tell you the rules.  It only stops radiant heat if there’s at least a 1″ air gap on at least one side.  It doesn’t matter which side — which kind of belies the use of the word “reflect”.  All that matters is that at least one side faces at least a 1″ air gap.

Ignore that rule, and it’s just a cheap, thin piece of plastic.

If you put one of these under your sleeping bag, it does nothing to reflect heat.  If you drape a regular blanket over it, it does next-to-nothing to reflect heat.  (It only reflects heat in the spots where there’s an air space under it.)

If you’re going to use one of these, put on whatever insulation you are going to use — warm clothes, blankets, and so on — and drape the space blanket over that.  So that that the entire top surface of the space blanket is open to the air.

Think of it as the (shiny) icing on the cake.  That’s how to use it properly.

Now you know.

Conclusions

It has been a long strange trip from “what do I do with my old backpacking gear?” to “how, exactly, does one poop in a car?”.  Let me summarize.

Every U.S. entity that is responsible for emergency management suggests that you maintain some emergency supplies, including but not limited to some form of a bug-out bag.  Something so that, no matter what the chaos is surrounding some unexpected evacuation, you’ll have some basic elements of water, food, light and shelter with you.

Practically speaking, if you are part of some mass evacuation in the U.S., you will be driving your car or other vehicle.  Along with absolutely everybody else.  In a major evacuation the odds appear overwhelming that you are going to be caught in a massive traffic jam.  You will likely end up spending 24 hours or so — maybe more — in your car.  That’s not some one-off mistake.  That’s not some rare occurrence.  That’s seems to happen, like clockwork, with each major American evacuation event.  And if history is any guide, nobody is going to be doing anything to (e.g.) make that go more smoothly, enforce traffic laws, and similar.  Chaos appears to be more the rule than the exception in U.S. evacuation traffic jams.

Plan accordingly.

First, decided on your likely destinations ahead of time.  Have a paper-copy list with (e.g.) address and phone of hotels and campgrounds along your likely evacuation route.  The less time you spend dithering, the earlier you get on the road, and the more likely you can escape the worst of the traffic.  The absolute standard advice is that if you think you may need to evacuate, leave as soon as possible.  The less time spent gathering supplies and pondering your destination, the better.

A lesson from Hurricane Irma in Florida is:  Don’t choose the same destination as everybody else.  If there’s an obvious place to get a hotel room (e.g., in Florida, Orlando), go somewhere else.  Otherwise you get caught in a second major traffic jam at your destination.

Second, don’t assume that you’ll be able to get a hotel room.  Even in tourist-rich Florida, evacuees outnumbered available hotel rooms about 25-to-1.  That surely requires having several potential destinations in mind, and booking early.

Third, keep some gasoline on hand, if you can.  Because gas and bottled water are the first two things to run out when an evacuation is declared.  Gas, in particular, is tricky, because it goes bad.  You need to store it in an unvented container and you need to replace it periodically.

Fourth, include some way to take care of all your needs in the car.  Inputs and outputs.  From shopping Amazon, it’s clear that there are many effective and moderately-priced products that will handle urine.  But poop seems to be a different story entirely.  Most of the devices sold for that would either require a lot of empty floor space in your vehicle, or would require you to stop and get out of your car. A standard bedpan is the wrong shape for use in a car seat — tall at the front, short at the back.  For my part, I’m going to cobble up something from a five-gallon-bucket-style emergency toilet, and then hope that I never have to use it.

Beyond that, you can get reasonably good lists of what to include or not in a bug-out bag from any number of sources.  Or simply buy a ready-made kit from Amazon.  I have nothing to add to those other than the handful of minor refinements listed above.

In summary, the real eye-opener to me was the auto-centric focus you need for your personal planning.  If you’re not going to shelter in place, and you live in the typical urban American setting, then evacuation means getting to your shelter by car.  For most of us, any evacuation event means that we’re going to get a brief taste of #vanlife.  And I judge that most advice for constructing your bug-out bag pays little to no attention to that basic fact.

Post #1853, autopsy of a Mint 5200 battery pack failure.

 

This is more of a note-to-self than a posting for the public.  But come along for the ride if you care to.

This is about getting fed up with short-lived rechargeable battery packs for a home device.  And deciding to Do Something About It!

I don’t actually make the repair in this post — I need to get my hands on some parts.  But I outline my proposed solution. Continue reading Post #1853, autopsy of a Mint 5200 battery pack failure.

Post G22-059, first summary of this year’s gardening season.

 

I tried a number of new plants and techniques in this year’s vegetable garden.  As we move into September, it’s time to start sorting out what worked and what didn’t.

Drip irrigation (Post G22-026, Post G22-027, Post G22-037).  A huge success.  For a bit over $100 in parts, and maybe two hours of labor, I can now water my entire garden either by hooking up to my rain barrels, or by using water from the spigot.  I can reconfigure it and add to it at will.  Key takeaway:  Use 1/2″ drip line.

Portable electric fence as a deer deterrent (Post G22-018).  A winner.  This is another project that took almost no time and a bit over $100 to set up.  Push in some cheap plastic posts, run the “wire” (more like metallized twine) through them, pound in a grounding rod, and hook up a small fence charger.  With deer deterrents, it’s hard to tell whether they worked or you just got lucky.  But I’ve had essentially zero deer damage since this went up.  I suspect the deer really don’t much like it.  (And, having tested it on myself, I concur.)  Key takeaway:  The technology has changed to make these easy, cheap, and flexible.  If you only need a small fence, you only need a small, cheap fence charger.

Sprawl technique for tomatoes (Post G22-035).  Thumbs down.  This year, I tried letting one bed of tomatoes grow un-staked and un-caged.  Just let them sprawl.  It’s by far the easiest way to grow them, but I’m not going to do that again.  They grow just fine.  I didn’t see (e.g.) any higher levels of leaf diseases and such.  This bed is now a mat of interwoven vines.  It’s hard to see the ripe tomatoes, and I’m losing more tomatoes to garden pests than I would if I had staked them.  Key takeaway:  The problem isn’t growing them, it’s getting a good harvest after allowing the vines to sprawl in the garden bed.

Cold-tolerant (early season) tomatoes (Post G22-025, Ripe Tomatoes in June).  A big winner.  This worked out quite well.  Not only did I have tomatoes by the end of June, those plants are still producing a decent yield of salad-sized tomatoes.  They slowed down in the heat of the summer, but it looks like they’re picking up steam as the cooler weather sets in.  I also learned a lot about what “days to maturity” really means.  Key takeaway:  Pick the right varieties, and you can have tomatoes in June without having a hothouse.

Growing large seedlings in paper lunch bags (Post G22-012, Post G22-017).  Works well.  This year, my butternut squash and pumpkin seedlings outgrew the paper cups I started them in before I was ready to transplant them to the garden. I moved them to doubled-up paper lunch bags filled with potting mix.  The idea was to give them room to grow and to avoid transplant shock by planting them bag and all.  Coincidence or not, I’m having my best butternut squash year ever.  Key takeway:  Double up the bags, and handle them gently when it’s time to plant.

More to come.

Post G22-018, Sprawl method for tomatoes.

 

End-of-season edit:  When all is said and done, I won’t be doing the sprawl method again with full-sized tomatoes.  Maybe I planted these too closely, but I ended up with a tangled mass of vines, weighted down by the fruit.  A lot of tomatoes ended up rotting.  Either you can’t see them, or you can’t get to them, or they end up on the ground.  It’s a lot less effort to grow them, compared to staking them up, but you don’t get much in the end. 

Everything else here:  Cold-tolerant tomatoes, and electric fence as deer deterrent, gets two thumbs up.  I now plan on growing cold-tolerant (short-season) tomatoes every year.

I’m now in Phase III of my four-part tomato strategy for 2022.  I outlined that in  my first garden post of 2022 (G22-001).  It’s time for an update.  I’m posting it because otherwise I’ll never be able to recall how things went this season. Continue reading Post G22-018, Sprawl method for tomatoes.

Post #1412: A simple heated outdoor faucet (tap, spigot, sillcock, hose bib) cover.

 

This post shows you how to take a few off-the-shelf parts from your local hardware store and make a plug-in heated cover for an outdoor faucet.   This will take you about two minutes to assemble, and, depending on how much heat you think you need, will cost you either about $6 (using a cheap night-light), up to maybe $17 (using a proper candelabra-base light fitting), including some spare light bulbs.  The only tool you need is a knife.

It’s not rocket science:  Add a candelabra-bulb socket or a cheap night-light to a standard foam faucet cover.  Screw in a night-light or similar incandescent bulb.  Attach that foam faucet cover to the faucet, and snug it up against the wall.  Plug it in.  Turn it on.  You’re done.

The only value added I’m bringing to this, other than pointing out the obvious, is that I’ve tried three wattages and recorded the results.  Having tested it, you can be assured that you’re not going to end up with a flaming piece of Styrofoam attached to your house.  In fact, the 4 watt bulb is barely warm to the touch.

Pick the wattage that meets your needs:

  • 15 watt incandescent:  60+ degrees F over ambient temperature
  • 7 watt incandescent: 40 degrees F over ambient temperature
  • 4 watt incandescent: 28 degrees F over ambient temperature.

E.g., if I’m expecting a low of 6 F in my neighborhood, a four watt bulb should keep the inside of that foam cover at a toasty (6 + 28 =) 34F.  These temperature increases were measured with the Home Depot foam cover (referenced below) snugged up against a brick wall.  You might get somewhat better or worse results depending on your siding (e.g., wood or aluminum).

The only warning is that you must use an old-fashioned incandescent bulb.  You’re using them for the waste heat, not for the light.  Do not use an LED night-light bulb.  They won’t put out enough heat.  I think that seven-watt incandescent night-light bulbs are available at every hardware store in the country.

The nicest thing about this setup is that is starts with a standard foam faucet cover.  I put these on my faucets at the start of winter, with the cord bundled up, out of the way.  Most of the winter, they just sit on the faucets like a normal foam faucet covers.  When extreme low temperatures are predicted, I unroll the cord and plug them in.  At that point, they’re heated faucet covers.

If you just want some ideas for a temporary fix, to be used for a few days in an emergency situation, read the “Cobbling something up” section below, in addition to the main post.

Parts, tools, and assembly, high-wattage model.

Parts, left to right:

Home depot reference: , $4.

 

Pick one:

\

Ace hardware typical reference., $6 for four.

 

Home depot reference, $7.  (Edit 1/12/2024:  I see HD no longer carries these in stores, but Lowes (reference Lowes.com) has the equivalent for $8. 

If you can’t find this part, and a night-light won’t do (next section), see the section “Cobbling something up” below).

Instructions:  Use the serrated knife to cut a small (1/8″ wide) notch in the bottom of the Styrofoam faucet protector.  Bend the metal fitting that comes with the candelabra socket to spread it out a bit.  Press the cord for the candelabra socket into that notch.  Snug the bottom of the socket up against the foam.  Screw in the bulb.

What you see below is the inside of the faucet protector, fully assembled and lit.  Attach this to your faucet, and draw it up firmly against the wall.

One clear drawback is the need to run an extension cord out to the faucet cover.  But, with a power draw so low, the cheapest, flimsiest outdoor extension cord will do.  Optionally, wrap any junctions (e.g., where the extension cord and lamp cord meet, or where the switch is on the lamp cord) with electrician’s tape or other waterproofing material, depending on how exposed they are.

I call this the high-wattage model because that $7 light fixture from Home Depot can easily handle a 15-watt bulb.  And the feet on the fitting keep that bulb well away from the Styrofoam.  But that’s also the most expensive part.  And you need to buy bulbs separately.

There is a cheaper way, if you don’t need 15 watts of heat.  Below.

Much cheaper, low-wattage model:  Use a night-light.

In the original version, I went with a candelabra base fitting because I thought I might need 15 watts of heating.  Turns out, 15 watts was overkill, for me.  And so, you can make this cheaper by substituting a night light for the candelabra base, as long as you keep the wattage down.

The instructions are identical to those above, you just cut a wider notch into the faucet protector.  Take the plastic shade off the night-light.  Stuff the night-light fitting into into place.  (See pictures below).  You’re done.

Originally, I cut back the foam a bit, to clear the bulb.  Not a bad idea, but not really necessary.  A four-watt night light bulb barely gets warm to the touch.

In any case, because the night-lights come with bulbs, you can make this for about $6.  I used a manual night-light, with an on-off switch.  You can use an automatic one, just tape over the sensor so the night-light thinks it’s in the dark.

I would NOT put a 15-watt bulb in one of those ultra-cheapo night light fixtures.  There ain’t a lot of metal in them.  Most of the night-lights I’ve found were rated for seven watts.  One (by GE) was only rated for four watts.  In any case, don’t exceed the rated wattage of the night-light fitting.

Note:  There are heavy-duty 15-watt night lights, sold as plug-in wax warmers or plug-in fragrance warmers.  I have no idea how hard it would be to tear one down to just the socket and switch, for use as an outdoor faucet warmer.  And they cost as much as the high-wattage fitting used in the first section above.  So may guess is, if you’re going to the night-light route, stick with a cheap night light, and low wattage.

Be sure you are getting a night-light that uses an old-fashioned incandescent bulb.  Do not try this with an LED night light.  They don’t generate enough heat.

One final caveat:  Your night light might be rated for seven watts, but that doesn’t mean it comes with a seven-watt bulb.  Here’s a $1.33 model from Menards that specifically says 7 watts for the included bulb (reference).  Here’s a Home Depot reference, 2 for $2.50, rated for 7 watts, definitely sold with 4 watt bulbs.  (reference).

So, if you go this route, pay attention to the bulb.  Otherwise, if you need 7 watts of heat, but ended up with 4 watt bulbs, you’re going to pay more for replacement bulbs than the night-light cost.

 

Cobbling something up:  A few suggestions if you are desperate and need a temporary fix.

The whole point of using these candelabra-base night-light-sized bulbs is that they’ll fit easily into a standard foam faucet cover, with room to spare.  This gives you a good chance of buying a few parts off the shelf and having it fit  your particular faucet, and gives you something you can leave up all winter.

But suppose you’re in a hurry, and just need a temporary fix, and you can’t lay your hands on the parts that I used.  What are some plausible alternatives?   It’s not like light bulb + insulation is somehow difficult to achieve.

I have to warn you that I haven’t tried all of these.  But based on making the ones above, these seem to have the highest chance of working, with minimal risk.

1:  Same idea, different socket and bulb.  Here’s the link to a guy on YouTube doing his version of this, using a 25 watt incandescent bulb (link).  He feeds the electrical cord through the end of the foam cover, rather than cutting a slot in the foam cover.  But it’s basically the same notion as what I’ve presented above.

2:  Make up a candelabra-base fitting from parts.  Let’s say you can’t lay your hands on the candelabra-base fitting that I used.  But you want to use more wattage than a night-light can handle.  Substitute a standard two-wire extension cord plus a socket-to-light adapter plus a medium-base-to-candelabra base adapter.  At my local Home Depot, those two adapters are available as this part, and this part, for a total of about $5.50 for the two of them.  That way you can still put a small night-light-sized bulb inside the foam faucet cover.   Instead of cutting a small hole, for night-light, as above, cut a hole, for the end 1″ wide end of the candelabra-base adapter.  Then proceed as with the original model above.

 

3:  Cheap trouble light, “60 watt” CFL bulb, and a cotton towel:  30 degrees F of heating.  By “trouble light”, I mean a plug-in 120-volt socket with a cage surrounding the bulb, and a hook for hanging it.   Like this, $9 (no cord, Walmart) and $16 (with cord, Lowes), respectively.

The point of the cage is to keep stuff from contacting the hot bulb.  Put in a moderate-wattage bulb, hang it on your faucet with the open side of the cage facing the wall, and then insulate it however you can, taking care that nothing touches the bulb.

Above is an example I tested using a towel, a plastic grocery bag, and a “60 watt” compact fluorescent, which actually draws 13 watts.  (And the world’s cheapest plastic-cage trouble light.)  Poke the lamp cord and the handle of the trouble light through the bottom of the bag.  Arrange some towels around the light, being careful not to touch the bulb.  Hang the light on the faucet, pull up the grocery bag, arrange the towels for best coverage, and tie the handles of the grocery bag on top of the faucet.

If you do this, be sure to come back and check it to make sure nothing is burning.  And, obviously, don’t leave this out in the rain.  (But if it’s raining, presumably you aren’t worried about your pipes freezing.)

As shown — “60 watt” (actual 13 watt)  CFL bulb, one bath towel — this produced at least 30F of heating above ambient temperature.  Obviously, YMMV.  If you have a kitchen thermometer, nothing will stop you from measuring how well yours does, before you trust it to keep your spigot from freezing.

If all you can get your hands on is an LED light bulb, bear in mind that a “60 watt” LED bulb only uses about 7 watts.  So you’re only going to get as much heat out of that as you would out of a 7-watt night-light bulb.  With this setup, I wouldn’t count on more than about 20F of heating, maybe less, with a “60 watt” LED bulb.

If all you can get is an incandescent bulb, I would not use more than a 25-watt incandescent bulb here.  Maybe not even that much.  It’s just going to get too hot.  You’ll risk (e.g.) melting something inside your cheap trouble light, or setting setting the plastic grocery bag on fire.

4:  A completely different approach:  Use a string of miniature Christmas lights, towels, grocery bag, and duct tape.  I’ve seen this one mentioned on the internet, and it seems like it should work, given the wattage involved.  You just need to have some reasonable wattage of lights, something between (say) 5 and 20 watts.  Wrap a string of miniature Christmas lights (either mini-incandescents or LEDs) around the exposed pipe of the outdoor faucet.

The rest is as shown above. Wrap some towels on top of that, for insulation.  Put a plastic trash or grocery bag on top for waterproofing.  Maybe duct-tape the entire thing.  Maybe just tie the bag on, as shown above.

As with the trouble light, check it after it’s been on for a while to make sure nothing is burning.  I would not do this with full-sized (C7 or C9) incandescent Christmas lights.  Those bulbs get hot — they run about 6 watts each — so even a short string of those can run to more than 100 watts.  That’s a LOT of heat in a very small space, and suggests a pretty significant fire risk, to me.  A string of (say) a dozen such bulbs emits vastly more heat than I would consider safe in these circumstances.

Some totally unnecessary background.

I guess the target audience for this post is people like me:  Southerners, facing a few bitterly cold nights a year, who would rather not mess with trying to winterize their outdoor faucets the proper way.  I’d rather run an extension cord to the faucet than hope that the 60-year-old sillcock shutoff — that hasn’t been used in at least 30 years — will work without leaking.

In my case, I was motivated to install one of these by a recent 11F night, after which water would only trickle out of my outdoor faucet, suggesting it was very nearly frozen solid.  This, despite using a standard foam faucet cover.  Given the damage that a burst pipe can cause, adding some heat to that seemed like a cheap bit of insurance.

I looked around for something I could buy, but came up empty.   Sure, there are heater tapes sold to keep pipes warm.  But those come in (e.g.) 30-foot lengths, and consume hundreds of watts. Overkill for a single outdoor faucet.

Near as I could tell, there doesn’t seem to be any product made to provide electric heat to a single outdoor faucet.  I assume that’s because you’re supposed to winterize these by draining them.  It’s only people who don’t want to do the right thing — shut off and drain that outdoor fitting — that would need something like this.

Which is how I ended up making these for my outdoor faucets.  For me, this is the simpler solution, for a few days of cold weather a year.

One final extras-for-experts: Post #1666.  Sure this works in practice, but does it work in theory?  The answer is yes.  In that post, I do the math.  Starting with the R-values for Styrofoam and brick, the dimensions of the faucet cover, and the heat output of a 4W light bulb, I calculate a steady-state 28F temperature difference between the inside and outside of the cover.  Which is, purely by chance, exactly what I measured.

Post #G21-052: Starting to wrap up the garden year.

 

Last year, I put in some raised beds and made a serious effort to grow some vegetables.  Mostly, it was to have something to do during the pandemic.  If nothing else, during all that isolation, it was cheering to look out my back window and see a patch of giant sunflowers.

Now it’s year two of the pandemic and of my garden.  I’m done with planting for the year, and I’m focused on winding things down, and on the likely first frost date for Vienna, VA.

It seems like a good time to summarize what did and did not go well this year.  Mostly as a reminder to myself, but also in case anyone else might benefit from reading it.

After a brief note on first frost dates, I’ll go through methods and techniques I tried this year, and maybe finish up with some notes on individual vegetables, if there is anything notable to say.  Click the links to go to the relevant sections.  Click the links below to see those sections, click the “back” link to return here.
 Continue reading Post #G21-052: Starting to wrap up the garden year.

Post #G21-051: Adding to my deer deterrent arsenal.

I have an un-fenced vegetable garden in Vienna, VA.  Which means that I have a problem with deer.

We all know that deer can read.  Otherwise, how would then know where to cross the highway?  But for some reason, they scoff at my no-deer-allowed signs.

This post is a summary of everything I think I know about deterring deer from eating my garden.  And an introduction to my latest deer-deterrent device, wireless deer fence.

Edit on 3/9/2024:  A year after I wrote this, I ended up buying an electric fence.  Those are a) surprisingly cheap, b) surprisingly easy to set up and take down, and c) effective against deer.  So far.  I use an electric fence to define the outer perimeter of my garden, and run a couple of motion-activated sprinklers (“Yard Defender” and similar) inside the perimeter.  That combination has turned out to be effective.  So far.    See (e.g.) Post G22-063, to see what one looks like.  If you don’t have little kids or pets to worry about, I’d say that a small, portable electric fence setup should be the backbone of your deer deterrence.  So much so that I planned my new garden layout with an electric fence in mind.  Take it down in the fall, put it back up when you have something worth defending, in the spring.

Why it’s so hard to separate fact from fiction regarding deer repellents

Much has been written on deer deterrents, some of which might even be true.  But it has taken some sifting and sorting to try to separate what I believe to be true, from what I believe to be false.

The first problem with evaluating deer deterrents it that deer damage is sporadic.  The deer will come by, mow down a row of (say) beans, and move on.  They might be back tomorrow, they might be back next month.  You might have one herd of deer frequenting your garden.  You might have several distinct herds.  I’ve had long stretches where I’ve seen no evidence of deer.  I have had stretches where I’ve seen them daily.

As a result, absent a serious large-scale controlled trial, all tests of deer deterrents are one-way tests.  If you see continued deer damage, you know they are not working.  But if you see no damage, well, you just don’t know whether the deer deterrent worked, or whether you just got lucky for a spell.  There is a real element of people mistaking luck for effectiveness.

The second problem with evaluating deer deterrents is that deer differ, conditions differ, and the attractiveness of your plantings (compared to other nearby forage) will differ.  People swear that deer love hostas.  We have hostas all over our yard, and the deer have never touched them.  Others will swear that deer won’t eat tomato plants.  Yet that doesn’t stop my deer from chowing down on mine from time to time, at least when the plants are young.

This generates a true “path of least resistance” effect.  Deer manage their risk/return tradeoff depending on what’s available.  Deterrents that might work on some plants, in some circumstances, will not work in others.  If you’re growing something that deer find merely edible, but there is better forage nearby, maybe a simple folklore-style deterrent (Irish Spring soap) will convince them to go elsewhere.  But if you’re growing something that deer really like (e.g., sunflowers), and there’s little for them to browse elsewhere, you’re going to have to seek a stronger solution if you’re going to keep the deer off those plants.

As a result, the available information is a mix of:

  • Proper controlled tests run by (e.g.) state extension services.  These focus almost exclusively on commercially-available products that would be of use to (say) farms, orchards, and the like, to the exclusion of things you might use in your back yard.
  • Claims/testimonials from manufacturers.  Who, of course, are not going to tout any of the negative reviews.
  • Self-reports from people who have tried some deer deterrent.  This is everything from thoughtful advice from individuals who lots of experience, to anecdotes from people who tried something and the deer went away, to classic friend-of-a-friend urban-legend style stories where the person doing the writing isn’t the person with the actual deer problem.

And in each case, the solutions that some people will swear by may or may not work in your circumstances.  Just as the plants that some will swear are “deer proof” may or may not be, depending on just how hungry the deer are.  And the same for plants that are thought to attract deer.

The facts, as I believe them to be.

I’m not giving citation as to source here.  This is just a summary of my impression of what’s true about deterring deer, based on extensive reading of internet sources.

  • Deer do prefer certain plants, and not others.  You can find lists all over the internet.  But if they are motivated enough, they’ll eat almost anything.
  • The only 100%-sure fixed deer deterrent is a physical barrier such as a tall fence, a properly configured electric fence, caging or netting.
  • A properly-trained dog, allowed to roam, is also said to be 100% effective in keeping deer out of your yard.
  • Deer get more aggressive as fall approaches.  Deterrents that worked earlier in the year may not work then, or you have to ramp them up (e.g., increase the concentrations of odor-based deterrents).
  • Deer will get used to any fixed device meant to scare them.  They actively test the limits of your deer deterrents and stay just beyond those limits, or figure ways to work around them.

If I had it to do all over again.

I use several different deer deterrents.  Mostly, I only started gardening seriously last year, and I wasn’t sure what would work or not.  So, I tried a range of them, to hedge my bets.

If I had to start from scratch, knowing what I now know, I believe I’d invest a few hundred dollars in several Yard Enforcer motion-activated sprinklers, and the associated hoses.  I’d set up double coverage of every bit of garden beds that I have.  And I’d leave them on the “night” setting, so that I’d never forget to turn them back on after I’ve been working in the garden.

This would be a somewhat expensive solution.  The hoses would eventually sun-rot from being left out continuously, and would need to be replaced.  You’d probably cut one with the mower now and then.  And I’d guess that I would not expect to get more than five years’ reliable service from the motion-activated sprinkler.

That said, absent leaks, or freezing weather, I think this would solve my problem with minimal effort on my part.  As far as I can tell, the deer have never gotten used to the Yard Enforcer that I have.  I’m not sure if that’s luck, or whether it really does annoy them enough to keep them away in the long run.  But so far, when I remember to turn it on, for the area that it covers, it seems to keep the deer at bay.  This clearly would not work if you need to protect plants when temperatures drop below freezing.

What I have actually used, so far.

Bobbex deer repellent.  This has an excellent reputation, and really does seem to work in my situation.  I couldn’t really say if it’s any better or worse than any other name-brand odor-based repellent.

It has some drawbacks.  It stinks, so it’s kind of nasty to mix up and apply (you use a spray bottle).  You have to re-apply it at two-week or one-week intervals.  You can’t spray it directly on fruits or vegetables (it taints the taste of them).  And you have to amp it up as fall approaches, according to the directions, because the deer get more aggressive.

Of all that, the biggest drawback for me is that you have to remember to mix it up and use it every week, during peak deer season.  I’m just not that regular in my gardening habits.  (And, clearly, it’s not going to work if you take an extended vacation).

Yard Enforcer motion-activated sprinkler.  The deer don’t seem to get used to this one.  As long as I remember to turn it on, it seems to provide complete protection to the area it covers.

The hose connection on mine leaked, but a ten-cent rubber hose washer fixed the problem.  You do have to change the batteries every once in a while.  And I get a lot of false triggers in bright sunlight.

I have taken to leaving it set on “night”.  On that setting, it’s only active in the dark.  That way, I don’t have to turn it on and off as I go into and out of the garden.  (Or, more likely, turn it off and forget that I’ve done that).  And that avoids the false triggers in bright sunlight.

Home-made motion-activated radio (Post #G07).  I left this one in the shed this year.  It works, but it requires having an extension cord running across the lawn.  Not only will that eventually sun-rot, but there’s no convenient way to turn it off.  As a consequence, I was always triggering this as I went out into the garden.  (Don’t know if it scares the deer, but it never failed to scare the pee out of me.)  I think this would work well in an area that you didn’t routinely walk through.  But in an area where you do some sort of activity almost daily, this was less than ideal.

Blood meal, Irish spring soap, and other similar folklore-based repellents.  These had no appreciable effect that I could see.  Doesn’t mean that they don’t work in some circumstances.  Just didn’t seem to keep the deer away in mine.

New for this fall:  Wireless Deer Fence.

As fall sets in, the deer get larger, hungrier, and more aggressive.  It gets increasingly hard to keep them out of the garden.  And, frankly, I get tired of spraying stinking solutions every week, trying to keep them out.  And I’ll forget to turn on the Yard Enforcer after I’ve been working in the garden.

I looked over what was commercially available, and settled on “wireless deer fence“, three units for $60.  That’s probably not quite enough for the size of my garden, but these will work in conjunction with everything else.

The wireless deer fence consists of roughly one-foot-tall plastic stakes that hold a deer-attracting scent-based lure.  They hold that lure in the middle of four high-voltage metal tines, running off a couple of AA batteries in the base.  If the deer touches nose or tongue to the tines, it gets a nasty shock.  And, ideally, this trains the deer to go elsewhere.  Place one wherever you note deer damage.

Of course I tried it on myself.  (If this turned out to be really horrific, I wasn’t going to use it.)  I did not have the moxie to lick it, deer-style.  Instead, I tapped it on my wet skin.  It hurts, but not too badly.  Felt about the same as brushing up against an electric fence.  Unpleasant and startling, but not hugely painful.  And no lingering pain once you lose contact with the high-voltage metal.  Once you break contact, you’re fine.

Based on the company’s write-up, one shock is enough to train any one deer to stay away.  In the grand scheme of things — no damage, no lasting pain, one shock, and trying it out on myself first — this did not seem like an excessively cruel deer deterrent to me.  Others could reasonably disagree.

And so, you place these where you see deer damage.  Maybe move them from time to time, just so the deer don’t know how to avoid them.

So far, they seem to work.  But, as noted above, there’s really no way for the backyard user to separate cause-and-effect from sheer luck, when it comes to deer deterrents.

Conclusion.

Now you know everything about this topic that I think I know.  A tall fence was not practical for my garden.  I’m fairly sure that an electric fence would be illegal in my area.  I don’t own a dog.  So I’m left with a mix of second-best solutions.

Edit, 3/9/2024:  Turns out, only barbed wire fencing is explicitly illegal in my area (Fairfax County VA).  County code does not address electric fences.  Not sure whether that’s on purpose, or because they never thought any back-yard gardener would be crazy enough to install an electric fence.  In any case, there is no legal ban on electric fences where I live.

This year, I planted my most deer-attractive plants right next to the Yard Enforcer.  I put things that deer don’t like — potatoes, for example — on the edges of the garden.  That, by itself, worked fairly well.

I’ve kept up with the Bobbex from time to time.  And I’ve now installed three wireless deer fence devices.

I still get some deer damage.  Mostly when I forget.  Forget to spray, forget to turn the Yard Enforcer back on.  But I’ve managed to keep it to a tolerable level.  As long as the deer are here and hungry, that’s about the best I can hope for.