The problem with having had a relatively mild winter is that when we actually get seasonably correct temperatures it feels so much worse. Case in point – this winter had been quite mild..I don’t recall it getting below 20 degreese at all. And yesterday..*bam!*…it was -1 degrees. And it felt like it.
Everyone want to live in a place like Wyoming or Montana or Idaho when they think about being a survivalist, but it seems not everyone thinks through the fact that it’s going to be bloody hard to stay warm during an apocalypse. Sure, you can have a couple 500-gallon propane tanks or 500-gallon oil tanks hidden away on your property, but at some point you’re going to have to think about staying warm using other resources hat aren’t dependent on a functioning system of infrastructure.
When I eventually get Commander Zero’s Bunker O’ Love And Lingerie Proving Ground built at the Beta Site it’s going to have to take this sort of thing into account. The obvious answer is a woodstove of some kind but, geez, thats gonna be a lot of wood to chop for a bad winter. Of course, the smart thing to do would be to optimize things so that while you may be burning wood you are at least doing it efficiently….good insulation in the building, an efficient stove, a system to move hot air around, a way to isolate unheated rooms, etc, etc.
I suppose if it truly is Ragnarok and all youre concerned with is just staying alive with no regard to style and normalcy you could just shut down al your household systems, pile into one small room of the house, and dedicate whatever resources you have to just heating that one room. I like to think that with a bit of planning, engineering, and thinking, I could come up with some sort of redundant systems to heat a ‘getaway’ cabin. But, I suspect the real efficiency and utility comes long before you start installing heat sources…it comes when you start building the structure and get in your insulation, ductwork, weather-resistant entry/egress points (doors,windows), etc. If I really think about it, I suppose the smart thing to do in any future construction is to design one of the rooms of the building to be the ‘lifeboat’ room…in a crisis it would be the one room to have power, heat, and water when the rest of the building has to be shut down.
Anyway, nothing like 0-degree weather to put on e in the frame of mind of “Hmm…how would I heat this place if the utilities went off today?” The answer, by the way, for me in the short term is kerosene. Long terms is a completely different story, but for the short term of a few days to a few weeks, I likes me the kerosene. Highest BTU’s of any fuel, stores forever with no treatment, can be used in stoves, heaters, and lamps, is portable, and won’t explode. Good stuff.
Wood cook stove. Heats the space, cooks your food and if you’re clever enough, it can heat your water.
Maybe 20 years ago now, PBS had a reality series that I believe was called “America House.” In any event, it involved perhaps five families/couples from different backgrounds around the country. All were taken to Wyoming or Montana (I forget which), and they were provided with period tools and supplies. They then set out to a place where they would build their homesteads from scratch a la the 1880s.
As you might expect, some did better, and some failed miserably. The viewers were told that every one of them failed to cut enough firewood to make it through the harsh winter, something that would have threatened their very survival if they had actually been required to remain onsite for the winter.
Of course, they had to obtain firewood with axes and saws, not with chainsaws. For a lengthy SHTF situation, however, given that gasoline and oil are finite commodities, sooner or later, most survivalists will have face a crisis when their supplies are exhausted. The harsher the climate, the greater the burden to obtain a heat source that will get them through the winter. It will likely be a matter of life and death.
You need a Monolithic Dome. https://www.monolithic.org
Commander Zero please check out Rocket Mass Heaters. Aka Finnish Stove, Russian Stove and so on. I’ve personal experience how I went from 16 cords of firewood in a good airtight stove to 3 cords and some left over with the rocket stove. One really hot long burn and it radiates heat for many hours.
I’ve used storm branches I picked up around my yard to heat my home for most of that day.
They are DESIGNED to burn crappy Pine even Green Pine HOT and Efficiently. Not a lot of Oak and other hardwoods in Finland and the Targa. Very Little smoke once at operating temperature.
A LOT of concrete or cob so not for retrofitting in the second story living room, but Hey Heat Rises and old fashioned through floor heat vents can be retrofitted.
Lot’s of insulation helps, insulated window treatments also help a LOT. Just remember to make them fit tightly or cold just seeps around AND easy to clean as Mold WILL be an issue. R factor of a “Triple Pane Argon Filled, yadda, yadda” is nothing compared to an inch of Blue foam.
Kerosene is great but at least around here it’s ruinously expensive – like there’s no source of supply at less than a dollar a gallon.
Or, start 3′ underground, where the temp stays 55° year-around with zero input, and then you only have to increase it by 15° or less to live at 70° singing “Polly wolly doodle” all day.
Note: You don’t actually have to sing that.
The fact that it can’t burn down, blends with the landscape, and is proof against just about everything concerning that’s within your means to prevent is icing on the cake. Anything that would take it out is catastrophic to everything else anyways.
A solar and farm roof is another bonus, and with proper construction thoughtfulness regarding snow load management, a year-around earth-sheltered greenhouse is also doable.
Just saying.
Mike Oehler 50.00 and up underground house and his greenhouse plans are excellent. I’ve helped build and lived in one of his houses.
The only thing I changed when I built his PSP system was adding blue foam board to protect the black plastic from backfill and a little insulation. Very little firewood needed to keep it toasty in northern ID winters.
Most libraries have them in the system so check them out.
I dunno about “three feet under” being a constant 55… maybe in your neck of California it does. I live about 1200 miles north of there and 1200 miles east– yup, Great Lakes region– and we get frozen water lines as far as nine feet down.
At 0200 this morning, the outside temp was 32 below zero, F, and the same when I awoke at 0630. Now, near noon, it’s still 16 below– and wind chills are in the minus 50 range.
Burning wood is great, and the best method IMO– house is constantly warm and smells great. But it’s also the most labor intensive. In a normal winter, I’m going through seven-to-eight cords a season. When I was a kid, we used to cut and split that by hand. Took four boys all summer and we sweat off a lot of weight. Even now, with chaiinsaw and gas splitter, it takes a good week to cut and split ten cords– if it’s worked at steadily.
Point being, if you’re going to heat, use wood as a back-up at least.
Solar roof… average snowfall here is six-to-eight feet. That’s a huge pile of snow to be pulling off solar panels. Cloudy days? About 60% of days are overcast. Turbines? Seriously, how high is the maintenance and skill/knowledge level?
Again, stick with wood. Kids always need something to do.
If your ceiling is 3′ down, your floor is 11′ down.
That’s besides the fact that you’re still insulating it and heat the interior space.
And dollars to donuts your water lines aren’t frozen at -9′; they’re frozen where the line comes up to ground level.
You got any pics of ruptured water lines found that deep after trenching down under 9′ of earth, post ’em. Or maybe just pics of ponds frozen with ice 9′ thick.
That would sort of preclude anything like ice fishing, at a guess. I had thought that was a thing thereabouts, but I don’t recall pictures of drilling rigs to punch through that 9′ crust. Just saying.
Water freezes from the top down, man, think about it. It’s physics. If what you describe was a thing, they’d have to bury municipal lines 10′ plus, everywhere around, or the whole city water system would explode every winter, and the whole territory would look like Anchorage AK after the ’64 Easter quake, from the constant freezing and shifting.
That’s Shenanigans.
The Edina MN UBC calls for only 7′ deep min. burial:
https://library.municode.com/mn/edina/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=SPACOOR_CH10BUBURE_ARTIXREPLINWACOEQ#:~:text=%2D%20Additional%20regulations%20for%20plumbing%20installation.&text=Minimum%20depth.,lines%20shall%20be%20seven%20feet.&text=Grades%20of%20sewer%20shall%20be,inch%20per%20two%20feet%20maximum.
and when those lines freeze, they freeze at the tap, not in the depth of the trench.
If you lived north of the Arctic Circle, we could talk permafrost tundra that only thaws down to 3′ in summer, or Arctic ice floe thickness at the North Pole, but the Great Lakes ain’t that, not even in Frostbite Falls, MN.
And where snowfall is 6-8′, solar panels don’t get put on the ground. Nor inside the basement.
And do the math for me: if 10 cords of wood took 4 boys all summer, how long will it take the bloghost with no boys, no chainsaw, and no gas splitter? All year, if he stays healthy, and his axe is sharp? And has nothing else to do? And has how many trees available, on how many acres, just for his woodlot?
This is akin to suggesting everyone start a family baseball team, but leaving out that you’ll need nine kids first. And a baseball field.
Wood has a place, but there’s a reason 330M of us don’t use it as a primary source of energy.
If the continent’s population gets back down to 30M after the Zombpocalypse, that’s another story.
Water freezing on pond and freezing are two different things
Water freezing on a pond and the soil freezing to a depth of 7ft are to different things. Soil will freeze deeper than the thickness of ice on a body of water. In North Central SD our water line was 8 ft deep line came into the house in the crawl space or basement
Break it down for me then.
Last I looked, the only thing that freezes and thaws at atmospheric temperatures (say anywhere between -40°F. – 140°F.) is water. None of the other elements or compounds that I am aware of does that.
So when soil “freezes”, it’s not the minerals that do that, that’s actually the water content in it freezing, because it’s the only thing that can. Dry sand is dry sand at -40°. Wet sand is concrete at 32°. It’s the wet that makes the difference.
Soil will certainly freeze deeper than pure water bodies, but that’s because the water is moving, and because it freezes from the top down. Just like pipes do. They don’t freeze at the bottom, they freeze at the top.
And FTR, the frost line in Western MT is 50″ or less, the deepest anywhere in the state is 6′, and it’s not 9 feet anywhere.
https://www.hammerpedia.com/montana-frost-line/
So let’s stop pretending CZ lives north of the Brooks Range in Barrow AK, and come back to Reality.
3′ of earth sheltering on top of a roof built for the load would put the ceiling on any such dwelling above freezing year around, without any heat whatsoever (completely overlooking solar gain from even one south-facing window) unless he moved east, to the border of N. Dakota.
Pretty much as noted by every earth-sheltered designer and architect going back to the dawn of the idea, living and working in such tropical climates as Boston, NYFC, Detroit, Chicongo, and Idaho. Which last, IIRC from the 3rd grade, is mostly at the same latitude as MT, top to bottom.
Hmmm.
Almost like the guy mentioned in comments above, living in exactly such earth-sheltered digs, at the extreme northern tip of the Idaho panhandle, by frickin’ Canuckistan, knew WTF he was talking about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Oehler
Let it go, kids.
some in the Nordic countries used earth sheltered homes and heat sink fireplaces. Stores the heat in a masonry/stone mass to gain efficiency. Those Ruskies knew a thing or two about heating. Of course those that didn’t probably froze to death.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/12/tile-stoves.html
I like storing propane. I can cook with it, heat the living room/bedroom, and light the same room. Bottles get heavy, but storage is easy.
I like propane but someone pointed out that when it comes to buy/sell fuel with a neighbor, you can transact business with a five-gallon bucket when it comes to liquid fuels like kero or oil. Propane its a different story.
Coal in a coal stove. Coal is literally dirt cheap now, and stores easily in a pile. Get 10 tons, or 50 tons. During an apocalypse nobody is going to complain about the CO2.
they are actually giving it away her in Arizona. Need to be able to transport though.
Me. I’m thinking about moving operations to Costa Rica. Warm. Nice. Friendly people. Not much crime. They don’t even have an army.
I’ve come to the conclusion that my Arthur Itsis would be better suited to someplace warmer. Still investigating but after living my 66 years in Michigan. It just might be time to move some place warmer.
You might like nomad capatilist on youtube. He has lots of info on living abroad.
Unless you speak fluent Spanish with the local accent and idioms AND look like a native, you’ll be targeted with the assistance of corrupt officials and judiciary. You will be considered a wealthy gringo and WILL be ripped off. They appear friendly if you’re a tourist spending money there. Move there and you will find that you will always be an outsider. Do a serious search for expats in Costa Rica (or any of the other Central or South American countries). The one exception is to marry a native.
∆
All good ideas. Consider also a rocket mass heater:
https://www.instructables.com/How-to-build-a-Rocket-Mass-Heater/
Developed originally (i think) by a group of permaculturists from Missoula area.
I don’t know if I’m naturally brilliant or I did a lot of research (probably the latter), but in the ramp-up to Y2K it was obvious to me that kerosene was the way to go. You get heat, light, and cooking in one fuel, assuming you buy the proper appliances.
When divorce struck in 2003, I left my two 50-gallon drums of kero behind. Since then, I’ve rebuilt, including Aladdin lamps, Dietz-style lanterns, and 2-3 different styles of kero cook stoves/burners. Aladdins can be finicky, but when properly tuned, nothing is more efficient for converting kero to heat and light. Yes, the mantle and the tall chimney are a little fragile, but they can last a long time if you’re careful. And the Dietz “railroad-style” lanterns are simple and tough as nails.
There’s no question that for the long haul the answer has to be wood, but for the short- and even medium-term, kero is the right answer for me. It’s gratifying to run into someone else who has come to the same conclusion.
PS. Are you old enough to have had older relatives who called kero coal oil?
ICF. Insulated concrete foundation. From the basement to the roof line. Can’t beat it up here in the north.
After living in a mild climate all my life, we moved here & experienced real winter. That’s when I realized why Earth Abides (one of my favorite books) takes place in California; Ish would likely have died very quickly.
If the disaster/plague that occurred in ‘Earth Abides’ happened, I would move south in a heartbeat. Californians wouldn’t be much of a problem in a 99.999% die-off. The weather would still be nice.
Don’t worry about air tightness in a house, or how much of what type of insulation is in the walls, ceiling and floors, or how much thermal mass is inside the insulation envelope. Those marble countertops and Italian tile bathrooms with a jacuzzi are more important.
I have a Jotul woodstove in a 2000 sq ft. 1 story home. The perimeters do not get sufficient heat, even with fans running. If I was building a bunker in the woods maybe a split level, or walk-out basement? Heat rises and all that. Loft bedrooms? Dunno what solutions best for you.
I’ve been heating almost exclusively with wood for 8 years now. I figure using oil to run the chainsaw, splitter, and truck is a much better use of it than for heating. I am fortunate to have enough hardwood on my property that I only burn what falls on it’s own and is already seasoned. I figure I use about 4 gallons of gasoline each year to get 4 cords of wood (plus about 3 days of labor).
In the coldest weather, my house gets cool in the extremities, but not enough to worry about. But when I build a house, I’d like to find a method of cutting down both heat and AC. I like the idea of a buried or half buried house, but need to look more into how it is done.