Filtering

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So one of the the issues at the Beta Site is that to pull water from the creek you have to, obviously, drop one end of a suction hose into the creek to allow the pump to pull water in. Creeks are, by their very nature, rather open to the environment and get all sorts crap in them…dust, dirt, small bugs, pine needles, etc, etc. And thats in addition the stuff thats on the bottom of the creek…dirt, silt, degraded organic matter of all sorts, etc. Sucking anything up into your pump that is not water is usually a bad idea. Some stuff you can get away with if its small enough, but you really want to keep the pine needles and dead bugs outta the impellors. Pretty much any plumbing supply store will sell you one of these to help keep crap out of your intake:

But thats still a bit coarse. And I need to keep as much crap out of that water as possible so I don’t gum up the internals on the water heater. So, whats an effective solution I can DIY while standing in the plumbing section of the store? The answer, as it turned out, was this:

Its an inline filter used for irrigation systems. Unscrew the bulbuous part and theres a 75 micron screen in there. As it turns out, Rain Bird also sells screens of other size. Obviously this is not something that makes water potable…its for filtering solids, not Giardia and other biologics. So I hooked this up to one end of my intake hose and tried it out. Worked awesome. When I checked the filter there was plenty of small tiny bits of sediment and gunk that the filter had kept out of my pump and, by extension, out of my water tank. For fun, I also put one on the output hose from my storage tank so that if there is anythign that works its way into the tank, it doesnt get transferred into anything I don’t want it in.

Cost? Shoot, man…the filter and a couple 3/4 adaptors was less than twenty bucks. I decided to buy the next larger size, meant for 1″ pipe, and use a couple 1″-to-3/4″ adaptors to give myself a larger setup so flow wouldnt be restricted if things got muddy.

TPIWWP, so:

Its important to note that the 3/4″ thread on the filter is not the same as the 3/4 thread on your garden hose. You’ll need a 3/4fpt to 3/4fht adaptor (the brass thing in the picture) to get them to work together and you can find that easily in the plumbing section.

Its worked out quite well for me and I keep a couple spares in the box with the transfer pump. The more crap I can keep out of the water storage tank, the less frequently I need to powerwash it’s interior with bleach.

Again, this is not something that turns untreated water into drinkable water. That should be pretty obvious. But it definitely helps when its time to purify and treat water.

Workplace LMI

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Finally got a good amount of rain here today. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is, after weeks of heat and smoke, to finally get some relief. The Pacific Northwest is an awesome place to be but sometimes theres a price and that price is paid by your lungs.

I seem to have stumbled across another LMI at work this week. Theres a fella working in our delivery/shipping/warehouse section who came up to me and said “I hear youre a real gun guy”. We chatted about guns and, of course, out came the cell phones to show favorite guns. His collection of guns, plate carriers, and strong opinions about gear readily paints him as, if not on the same team, certainly in our division.

Today he came by my desk to show off some Ferro Concepts stuff and some other things. One of which impressed me enough that I jumped onto my work computer and ordered some stuff up from these guys. (As an aside, this is often how I discover awesome gear. I see or encounter someone with it and I think “Holy crap, thats awesome. I need that!”)

He was wearing some Kifaru gear today, and we chatted about Kifaru and some other gear makers. He knows his stuff. I haven’t trickled into end-of-the-world stuff, but we did exchange some morale patches that leaned in that direction. I think he was excited to meet someone who he could geek out with over all this stuff.

This is, by the way, the organic way that you wind up meeting like-minded individuals. In my experience, in Montana anyway, you get yourself and five other guys in a room it’s pretty good odds that one of them is a ‘gun guy’ and theres a pretty good chance there’s a ‘prepper’ type in there as well. If you work in an environment of about twenty people or so, I’d be surprised if  there wasn’t at least one guy like that.

While I can certainly chat over the water cooler at work with this guy and compare notes, I don’t think I’ll be bringing him ‘into my world’. I’ve a tiny handful of people I freely share information and access with, but I’m really not keen to bring anyone else into the fold right now. Thats probably a little short-sighted since there are, no doubt, people out there who would be great to have in my tight little circle, but its always a risk. And, its not only a risk to me, its a risk to the others in that circle. But…I’ve done it in the past so I guess we can’t say ‘never’.

 

 

The Box

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Got a bill from the conex people today. Soup-to-nuts, $5295. That includes delivery along the goat trail that passes for a road. I went up there last weekend and marked off where I’d like them to drop it. Next Wednesday is the scheduled delivery day.

This will be one of the more expensive additions to the place this year. But, I am hoping it affords me the convenience of leaving some stuff up there in a reasonably secure environment.*

The geegaw to let me use a bottle jack to lift the corners will be arriving today. So next weekends plan is to pick up some concrete block and some flat scrap steel and jack the bloody thing up off the ground a foot or so. And, of course, fix it so nothing tries to make a home underneath.

Ideally, this will let me avoid renewing my lease on a storage unit where I keep the side-by-side and some other small odds and ends.

However, this is all contingent on these guys getting it up there, in the right place, pointed in the right direction, and on time. We’ll see.

* = Yes, I know nothing is ‘secure’ when someone has all the time in the world to break into something. But, you know what? It’s more secure than it not being there.  And, for now, theres not going to be anything more valuable than a few power tools in there and some assorted odds and ends.

Milwaukee Transfer Pump

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I’ve mentioned it a time or two but never really expounded on my opinion on the Milwaukee Transfer Pump that I’ve been using lately to move water around the Beta Site. The TL;DR version: buy it.

My primary uses of it to date  have been to a) move water from the creek, uphill, to a larger water tank and b) transferring water from a smaller tank to a larger one. In both cases, this thing did an outstanding job. It’s pretty quick at 8 gpm, and creates enough pressure that when I feed the output to a garden hose with a spray nozzle on the end I get a good 20-30′ of range.

The pump runs off the Milwaukee batteries and accepts all of the M18 series of batteries. I usually use the 6.0 battery although if you remove the spacer in the battery compartment it will accommodate the larger 12.0 batt. I ran the 6.0 battery today and moved 200 gallons of water before the battery called it quits..that was a 50-gallon fillup, transfer to the main tank, another 50-gallon fillup, transfer that to the main tank. Thats a total of 200 gallons of throughput.

The pump is fairly quiet…from about 30′ away all  you hear is a quiet whine. I has two hose faucet male threaded ports..one for input and one for output. I just cut some how, got an assortment of connectors, and make my own specific connections as needed. Sometimes I need female threaded end of the hose, sometimes I need male threaded end…having an assortment of fittings and hose clamps really opens up a bunch of possibilities.

There are, of course, larger pumps out there that will pump higher and further, but for my needs thus far this thing has performed quite well. It ran water uphill to the tank in the back of my truck with no problems, and it’s light weight makes it easy to haul around the fairly primitive (for now) environs of the Beta Site. You dont have to be a genius to see how something like this can have quite a few applications for we of the survival mindset. Pumping water from your bathtub to your toilet tank, filling jerry cans from a creek or other water source, impromptu showering, keeping handy for firefighting when doing a slash or barrel burn, watering a garden from a water storage tank, etc, etc. It has been the key to having high water pressure for my portable tankless water heater…it makes a strong hot stream of shower water possible. Don’t undersell that.

When I originally bought this I only had a vague idea of how useful it would be. Now that I’ve had it for a while and used if for several different tasks ‘out in the field’ I cannot say enough good things about  it.

 

Built to last II

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Well, you guys seemed to like the 2-ton Beebe winch I posted about, so you’re gonna love this: It’s the 5-ton big brother to the 2-ton. I was cruising eBay looking for a beater one to use for parts and maybe get the correct handle. Naturally, I got sidetracked and started looking at all the winches that were up for sale. I came across this monster which was, at $550, the cheapest one in good condition that was for sale. I had discovered that while you may find these things online at reasonable prices (although often they are wildly unreasonable) the shipping absolutely queers the deal. Shipping? $372. I mentally shrugged and was about to move on when I noticed that the listing said this thing was sitting in Corvallis….well, thats about 40 miles down the road. I’ll drive 40 miles to save $372…especially if I can get a better deal. So I contacted the buyer and asked if they’d take $300 and could I come pick it up. Yes to both, it turned out. And, in fact, they were passing through Missoula on their way somewhere for the weekend, so they actually dropped it off here in town for me. Sweet!

How does it compare to the 2-ton? Well, for one thing, its more than twice as heavy. As for size, here you go:

I’m thinking of how best to use this thing. It weighs about 150# so portability is a bit of a challenge. What Im thinking of doing is mounting it on a flatbed cart and using that to haul it around. Chain the winch to a tree as an anchor and all the stresses and weight goes into the chains around the anchor and the platform takes no strain at all. Need to give it some more thought. 

But, its a really neat piece of machinery from ‘back in the day’. I’m looking forward to spooling some cable on it and seeing what kind of mayhem I can create with it.

 

Built to last

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One of the interesting things I’ve noticed since I acquired the Beta Site is that many people, people I know in real life and internet strangers, suddenly become invested in the adventure. I get a goodly amount of messages of people saying they are living vicariously through my experiences and that I’m doing something they’ve always wanted and haven’t gotten to do yet.

People who know me in ‘real life’, as it were, are also very happy for me. I get quite a few offers of people wanting to come up there and help, or to loan me equipment, etc, etc. One thing that a friend dropped off on ‘indefinite loan’ is this cast metal monster:

Its a Beebe Bros. 2-ton hand winch. You anchor this monster to a solid object (hence, the chains), play out the line to the object you want pulled, and start cranking. These things turn up sometimes at ranch and farm auctions. I like the idea of a hand-powered winch that I can use up at the Beta Site for moving heavy objects. Here’s some more detail on it.

This thing has some weight to it but there isn’t a part on it that isnt made of metal. This is one of those utilitarian objects built back when you built something like a tank and expected it last for generations.

My use for it is in moving a rock sled and some fallen timber around. Given my druthers, a lightweight portable ATV-style electric winch would be my first choice. But we don’t always get what we want and the apocalypse is certain to have a distinct lack of electricity. So…why not have something like this in the toolchest?

I’d like to thank the local person who dropped this thing in the back of my truck and said “theres no hurry in getting it back”. Much thanks.

Epic loot drop

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A few posts back I mentioned that I was going to be looking at picking up an estate from a deceased survivalist. How’d that go, you ask? Well, you tell me……..the haul includes, but is not limited to, things like gas masks, filters, water purification, water filters, water barrels, water tanks, propane tanks, kerosene, propane heater, kerosene heater, knives, holsters, bear spray, speedloaders, gun rugs, tools, and a bunch of other stuff. Lets go to the pics…

Also picked up a Makita power drill as well…

There were several Buck and KaBar knives. The SOG Seal knife is a bit of a collectible.

Mostly Glock and K-frame holsters. The brand new DeSantis gun belts are only an inch lager than my normal belt size, so those should work nicely. The brown holster is for an L-frame Smith which is the same size as my GP-100 pistols. Same for the speedloaders.

Several of these with filters. All appear new and unopened.

These are one-gallon containers but there were some 5-gallon drums of kero as well.

A little bit of everything. The two tanks are 100-gallon.

I really only took pictures of the interesting stuff. There were also a dozen full barbecue bombs, which, of course, I snapped up.

A  bunch of this stuff will wind up going to the Beta Site at some point soon. A lot of this stuff is actually redundant to things I have here in town…as it should be. Never know if youre gonna be stuck at home for the apocalypse or if youre gonna have time to beat feet to your alternate location.

Its always interesting to go through someone elses preps and see how they decided they wanted to prepare for the uncertain future. Im sure that a lot of cool stuff was picked over by relatives and friends before I got to it, but I am nonetheless pleased with what I got. There were a few good values in there and I have nothing to complain about.

90% of this stuff will wind up going into containers and set aside for when I get the conex up and secured. But, it crosses a lot of things off of my list of Things To Get For The Beta Site.

Container

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Well….that happened.

Twenty foot container. It’ll be delivered in about two weeks. Now Im researching all the accessories, improvements, and modifications that can be done with something like this. As soon as this thing is situated I’ll start moving some of the larger, bulkier things up there which will, ideally, give me some more room around the house.

Hardigg/Pelican sarcophagus

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The Missoula gun show was this weekend. Its always a fun time, and I often get to see people whom I almost never see the rest of the year.

Johnny Trochmann wasn’t there this year. Not sure why. Nonetheless, there was someone there selling the parachute flares I normally get from John. Picked up two dozen as well as some sealed up lifeboat first aid kits.

I also scored what I believe is the largest Hardigg/Pelican case you can fit in t pickup truck. I was walking through the parking lot and there was a pickup truck with three Hardigg/Pelican cases on it and an ote with a price and phone number. I texted the number, met with the guy, did the dance, and wound up with this monster to take to the Beta Site:

Easily holds two, maybe three call girls hookers.

Its four feet by five feet and about 32 inches tall. I could pull the foam and use it as a hot tub. It is, I think, the last word for storing a secreted stash of gear to be hidden in the woods somewhere, You could easily fit clothes, food, water, sleeping bag, tent, pack, radio, batteries, utensils, and everything else you’d need to hide out for a week or so.

Anything else acquired at the show? Guns? Well….one, yeah. Found a 5″ 1946 vintage Smith & Wesson M&P (pre Model 10) revolver in very good condition. I have a weakness for 5″ barrel pistols and the old timey Smiths are always well made guns.

A buddy of mine will be heading up to the Beta Site this week to level the area where I’ve decided to drop the 20′ conex. Tomorrow I need to go see the conex people, show them the maps and Google Earth views of the area and access, and then ask them if they think they can deliver that 20′ conex to where I want it. If so, we have a deal. Fingers crossed.