They say that (all global warming arguments aside) we are in a cycle of more unstable weather patterns. They also say that the weather we have been having for the last hundred years or so was actually an unusually calm period in long term weather history.
That and the fact that our power grid is waaay under capacity and badly deteriorated has me re-thinking a lot of things. Most of my life we had very few power outages and most were quite local and quickly repaired. That is no longer the case. Power outages are more and more frequent and are involving huge numbers of people and sometimes taking days to restore power. We used to have a lot of local power company (Duke) workers and response time was often minutes. Now we call a center maybe 50 miles away and they dispatch someone or a crew from who knows where. They are all nice guys and work quickly and effectively but the time to get them here or where ever the problem is located is the big problem. That and at times there just is not enough of them available.
More power generation capacity is now fairly high on my priority list. I can run my furnace off of my power inverter or a few fans etc. but it won't run the AC or refrigerator or pump water.
I can hand pump water from an extra unused well in the strong room in the basement but I don't want to have to carry water to a big bunch of horses like that. Especially so if something happens during an ice storm or in triple digit temps like now. I can still handle all of that manual stuff but common sense says that I cannot count on always being able to.
My son has a good sized portable generator but he is always busy helping other people when something happens. The last big power outage he spent a lot of time carting it around (including here) running peoples refrigerators and freezers several times a day to save their food from spoiling. If I set up my own systems it will be one less place to worry about.
I have about a 12' x 16' strong room in the southwest corner of the basement that is pretty strong but I may beef it up a little more. I might even split the room part way with a wall made of 12" concrete block and maybe beef the ceiling up a bit more too. The floor above was built with double joist laminated together with the subfloor put down with construction adhesive and screw shank nails. Then the 3/4" floor above that was installed troweling white wood glue (this was about 1972) bought in gallons down then nailing the beejeebers out of it with ring shank nails while still wet. In addition to those items I am considering adding a number of extra anchors from the joist to well down the walls to help prevent floor lifting. It is already anchored better than most and the outside wall above the basement wall is stone. Still, we have had more local tornadoes in the last few years than I remember all of the rest of my life. Might as well get a little more ready for them.
That is all fine if we are at the house and I do have a well pit at the barns down the road where 2 people or 3 very good friends could ride out a storm a little better off than standing out on a hill holding up a metal golf club.
We have a place almost a half mile from the house where we are building a small camping / picnic area in a Scotch pine plantation about 25 years old and I am giving thought to building a small storm shelter there even if it is nothing more than an earth bermed "U" shaped wall about 3' high to lay down behind. Hardly ideal but still better than the above mentioned hill and golf club. This location is up on a hill and has nothing to break the wind before it. I am the only thing that breaks wind there.
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