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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Personal Contingency Planning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jbe who wrote (550)	12/8/1998 12:42:00 PM
From: Sawtooth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 888

Thanks, jbe; I'll check out your link. The Sterno I'm familiar with is a gel, so I'll have to see what's different. Maybe Sterno makes both. Regarding woodstoves, I think you can find a fireplace/woodstove dealer who will come to your home for free, take a look, and tell you what they think you need to do to safely use your fireplace. Since they obviously have an interest in doing the work, you should get a second opinion, IMO. Moving on, fireplaces are very inefficient (conversion of fuel to heat, other than what goes up the chimney); almost to the point of net heat loss. If I were you, I would look into having a soapstone (or other material) firebox set right in front of your fireplace opening. See: hearth.com for just one example. This would have the chimney routed up your fireplace chimney. They can look very classy, too. One thing about a fireplace INSERT is that it probably has to have an electric blower to circulate the heat out into the room. With the freestanding woodstove, this is not the case. Same with pellet stoves and "outside the house" wood furnaces; most require electric power (which could be from a generator). We are talking about preparing for Y2K but I have started to see that it's probably pretty good planning to have an auxilliary heat source during any winter, where I live. You can cook on top of the woodstove, too. Downside is you need to have a good wood supply and the woodstove will cost you $1500 - $2500 unless you can find a good used one. My experience with people who have woodstove businesses is that they are friendly and helpful, for the most part. they'll give you lots of good information, discuss options with you, look at a used stove you might be interested in, maybe even have a good used woodstove to sell you. Most obvious danger of woodstove/fireplace is a chimney fire from not having the chimney cleaned on a regular basis (annually for me; depends on how much and what type of wood you burn). Re: freeze-dried food, my experience is there are two kinds; pretty bad tasting and real bad tasting <ggg>. I'm laying in the types of foods I usually eat; lots of canned goods. Regards. ...Tim

To: jbe who wrote (550)	12/8/1998 2:19:00 PM
From: ScatterShot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 888

Re: propane heaters-- I've used one for several years in my garage for winter projects and would not hesitate to bring it inside if I had to. But of course with CO2 detector and some adequate ventilation. The kind I have is a 15000-30000 BTU made by Coleman and attaches directly to the top of your conventional BBQ grill bottle so it is extremely portable. Has a spark igniter and cost about 50-60 bucks I think. It gets plenty hot so don't get your night gown next to it.

To: jbe who wrote (550)	12/8/1998 9:36:00 PM
From: ScatterShot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 888

jbe, sorry about the typo on the earlier post; I should have said CO detector, not CO2. I'll have to go look up what "superannuated" means, but I can relate to your being a single female in the DC area and not wanting to buy something you can't use later. I live on the Gulf Coast and intend to buy a reasonably small generator in the event we have a hurricane outage of power. But I'll have it before y2k. It seems to me that providing electricity would be your biggest obstacle to being self sufficient thru y2k or a hurricane which is not out of the question for you. In my house I think I can cut the main circuit breakers which would prevent a lineman from being electrocuted off my genset and at the same time it would provide power to the house circuits. I guess if you don't have any frozen stuff and have all candles for light, wood for heat, and don't watch tv, you might not need electricity. But it seems to me that a lot of city apartment dwellers would need these things and might have a problem with a genset running on their patio. Where do you store all that gasoline in an apartment? These are problems I have to contend with but are much simpler to solve in a home/garage/yard scenario than what I remember about apartment living. BTW, been lurking y2k threads 6-8 months & definitely notice the posting activity picking up. Also I'm with you, let's leave god out of this.

To: jbe who wrote (550)	12/10/1998 7:47:00 PM
From: RagTimeBand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 888

Hi jbe FWIW My wife and I both have a computer science backgrounds and we don't know what's going to happen, with respect to Y2K. However, we're concerned enough that we're starting to accumulate canned food, paper products, etc. We're also trying to find a house that has a well and a wood burning stove. >>I do have a fireplace in my downstairs living-dining room-kitchen area. Problem: too many windows, front and back doors open right into the area, fireplace does not seem to heat very much (I only use it at Christmas time). The downstairs is generally much colder than the upstairs bedrooms. Does it make sense to have the fireplace cleaned, repaired (if necessary), "retrofitted" so it will produce more heat? Would buying a fireplace insert be simpler/better? Or should I forget about heating the relatively huge downstairs area altogether? Any major safety problems with wood (outside of the immediately obvious)?<< In a house we used to own we had a fireplace insert. Our experience was it produced a reasonable amount of heat when we used the built in electric fans to push the heat out into the room. Without the fans there was some heat but you had to be close to the fireplace. >>The downstairs is generally much colder than the upstairs bedrooms.<< You've probably already thought of this but just in case -- have you thought about ways of closing off (using plastic, blankets, etc.) the upstairs? >>Does it make sense to have the fireplace cleaned...<< Having the chimney cleaned is a good idea as you could have a flu fire if there's a lot of build up in the chimney. >>Any major safety problems with wood (outside of the immediately obvious)?<< I know this isn't what you had in mind but if you have one or more cords of wood and your neighbors are without heat..... Emory

To: jbe who wrote (550)	12/23/1998 12:40:00 PM
From: RagTimeBand	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 888

jbe Revisiting your post of some time ago: >>Does it make sense to have the fireplace cleaned, repaired (if necessary), "retrofitted" so it will produce more heat? Would buying a fireplace insert be simpler/better?<< I've thought of something else that you might find useful. One of the worst things about heating with a fireplace, and most fireplace inserts, is you lose a lot of heat when the fire is in the dying process. You can't close the vent to stop the heat loss because of the smoke the fire is still producing. The way around this is to have a fireplace insert that gets the air that is needed for combustion from the outside instead of from inside the house. I don't know if your fireplace can be retrofitted for "outside air combustion" but if it can and the retrofit doesn't cost too much (how much is too much is an interesting question) that might be the way to go. Emory