Operation Preparedness

[Stosh]

"Having a gas furnace, I would figure out how to manually operate the stupid thing and then I wouldn't have to worry about the frozen pipes."

 

You'd have to have someone stand there and manually turn the blower.

 

The easiest way to prevent frozen pipes is to just let the water dribble a bit.

 

:^) GW, I don't think you are from the upper midwest. It gets really cold up here and it's usually an ice storm that takes out the electricity for any period of time.

 

Kerosene furnaces have no blower and neither do wood burning pot-bellied stoves, if one can get the elements to ignite, one really doesn't need to blow it all over the house, it'll rise on it's own up the duct work.

 

And I'm sure you've never been in a house with the temps below freezing either. Yep, the water pipes will not freeze with the water moving, but the drain will quickly fill with ice build up and plug, over flow the sink, and turn your basement into a great ice skating rink. At that point you are going to wish you had frozen pipes.

 

If one turns off the water at the point where it enters the house, there is a drain off valve right by the meter. After the water is turned off, open all the faucets in the entire house and they will release the water to flow back down and out of the drain off valve. It takes about 5-10 minutes and there's no fear of indoor ice skating rinks. Remember you have to thaw your rink after the electricity comes back on before you can drain out your basement.

 

In a real emergency, I have met people who burned furniture in the kitchen sink for survival. Blizzards in North Dakota are just plain dangerous. The natives talk of the Blizzard of 1936 where a lot of people simply suffocated in their homes because rescuers couldn't get to them and dig them out to get air to them below the snow. Real emergencies aren't for the faint of heart. After 3 years of that I moved to balmy Wisconsin where the winters are a lot better. It rarely goes below -30 degrees.

 

Stosh

[AnneinMpls]

Where's your PLC at on this?

[Trevorum]

Anne,

Excellent question! We are planning on proposing this idea to the PLC next month. If they like the idea, we'd urge some of the older scouts who have already earned the EP MB to lead some planning sessions during a couple of troop meetings, prepare some handouts for the families, and then hold a recap / reflections afterwards.