Prepped & Ready Weekly, Issue #13

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It's Here: Pique's New Caffeine-Free Afternoon Energy

I quit my afternoon coffee. Not because I wanted to — because I found something better.

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Morning.

Most of this issue is about things you already own and have never looked at closely. There are 40 to 80 gallons of drinkable water sitting in your garage. There is a bag of flour in the pantry on a much shorter clock than you think. And somewhere in the house there is probably no cash at all, which is the one that surprises people when you point it out.

3 quick things this week

This week

September is National Preparedness Month and it is nearly over. The equinox lands this week too, which is the actual reason the hens have gone quiet and the evenings got short so fast.

Two jobs worth doing before the month runs out, both free. Walk out to the water heater and find the drain valve, so you are not hunting for it by flashlight some other day. Then check whether there is any cash in the house at all. Neither one takes 10 minutes and neither one requires buying anything, which is my favorite kind of prep.

Emergency Water in Your Home

Your water heater is a 40 to 80 gallon water tank that happens to heat things. Colorado State University Extension puts the average at 50 gallons, and at CDC's planning rate of 1 gallon per person per day, that covers a family of 4 for roughly 12 days. It is already in the house and already paid for.

Getting it out is where people go wrong. There is one step that comes before you ever touch the drain valve, and skipping it is how a free water supply turns into a repair bill, or a burn. There is also a second source in most houses that is perfectly safe under one specific condition, and a third that people swear by and should not.

The article walks the order of operations for both gas and electric, how to gravity drain the pipes, the one thing that has to be true before toilet tank water counts, and why the pool is for washing and never for drinking. Go find your drain valve this week, before it matters.

Earthquake Preparedness at Home

Same tank, different problem. Two straps and a few dollars of hardware do more for that water heater than anything you can buy in a kit.

Most of the advice we grew up with has been retired. Doorways are out. The triangle of life was never in, and ShakeOut says flatly that it recommends potentially life threatening actions and that its source has been discredited. What replaced both of them is simpler, it is free, and it starts on the floor.

We covered where those 2 straps go down to the inch, how to anchor furniture into studs instead of drywall, the single condition under which you should shut your gas off and the many under which you absolutely should not, and why USGS data makes this a lot more than a California subject.

Emergency Cash at Home

This is the prep almost nobody has done. Ask around and you will find people with 3 months of food in the basement and not 40 dollars anywhere in the house.

A card payment needs 5 separate systems working at the same moment, and a storm usually takes the power and the connectivity down together. When that happens the registers go cash only. And the mix of bills in your envelope matters more than the total in it, for a reason that only shows up an hour after the change drawer runs dry.

The article prices out a 3 day number and a 2 week number honestly instead of quoting somebody else's figure, gives the denomination split, covers where to keep it and which obvious hiding places to skip, and names the insurance limit almost nobody has read. Look up Special Limits of Liability in your own policy. It is lower than you would guess.

How to Store Flour, Sugar, Salt, and Cooking Oil

Two of these four keep more or less forever. One of them fails in weeks, and it is not the one most people would pick.

Salt does not spoil at all. It cakes, it picks up odors, and it eats unlined metal lids, but there is nothing in it to go bad. Sugar is fine indefinitely until moisture reaches it, and Utah State notes that once it hardens there is no easy way back. The oil is on the shortest clock of the four. And whole wheat flour, the one that feels like the healthier thing to store, gets about 2 weeks at 70 degrees on Utah State's table.

We pulled the real numbers from Oregon State, Penn State and Utah State Extension, covered what to do about the whole wheat problem instead of just worrying about it, and gave the nose test for oil that has turned. Worth checking the bag in your pantry before the next grocery run.

How to Stop Severe Bleeding

The American College of Surgeons puts it plainly. Uncontrolled bleeding can kill in as little as 5 minutes, and it is the number one cause of preventable death from trauma. In most places an ambulance cannot reliably beat that clock. The person already standing there can.

Which is the argument for reading this one on a quiet Monday rather than looking it up on a bad afternoon. Most of it takes no equipment at all, just your hands and a willingness to press harder and for longer than feels reasonable. The tourniquet question carries a specific fear with it, and the evidence on that fear is not what most people assume.

The article covers direct pressure, wound packing and where a tourniquet goes down to the inch, names the wounds you must never pack, and gives an honest answer on whether a belt will do. Calm, specific, and about 10 minutes.

Why Chickens Stop Laying in Fall

The feathers all over the coop floor in September look like something has gone wrong. Usually it is the opposite.

There is a rule in here that is worth the click on its own, because it is backwards from what anyone would guess. The hens that look worst during a molt, the ragged ones dropping feathers by the handful, tend to be your best layers, and they come back into production soonest. The tidy ones taking their time are often the problem.

We covered how long a molt actually runs, the 14 hour daylight threshold and whether to add a coop light at all, why that light goes on in the morning and never in the evening, the feed change that speeds feather regrowth, and how to tell a molt from mites before you start treating the wrong thing.

Gear Repair Basics

Four stitches, 3 patch rules, and a pouch that weighs about 5 ounces. That is the entire kit.

The goal is never pretty. It is holding until you get home. Most field repairs fail for one of 3 unglamorous reasons, and 2 of them happen before the patch ever touches the fabric. There is a strongest stitch, and then there is a different stitch you want on anything that would hurt you badly if one thread let go.

The article covers what belongs in the pouch, which thread survives sun and which one quietly does not, the patch geometry that stops peeling at the corners, and the fix for a zipper that keeps splitting open. Which, as it turns out, is almost never a problem with the teeth.

Worth a watch

The earthquake piece is the one in this issue where knowing the answer is not the same as having practiced it. Drop, cover, hold on sounds obvious right up until you try to work out what it means in bed, in a wheelchair, in a theater seat, or standing on a shoreline. The Great ShakeOut has a short video series that just shows each of those, one situation at a time, with no commentary and no drama.

Earthquake Safety Video Series, from the Great ShakeOut earthquake drills.

That is the issue. If one thing in here earns its keep, make it the water heater. Go find the drain valve, look at it for 30 seconds, and you never have to look for it again.

And if somebody forwarded you this, you can get it in your own inbox twice a week, free.

You never know, but you can always be ready.

Logan