<31:19>
Jack Spirko: Yeah. I would. <laughs> Of course if you have even more meat, if you got some salt, pepper, and vinegar you can start making biltong. Even if you have more than you can cook all at one. There is always something you can do to prolong its shelf life. A lot of people would jerk it, but biltong is easier and takes less energy and it takes less materials and it is faster.
<31:42>
Steven Harris: If you have a small chest freezer or even your freezer above or below, and there is not much in it. Fill up a 2 liter soda bottle or any size pop bottle or milk carton with 80% of tap water and let it freeze. That way when the power fails you got a lot more thermal mass in there because the ice is melting. It is going to go through what is called a phase change. That is why Ice cools so good because it take 1 BTU to move 1 pound of water 1 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes 140 BTUs 1 pound of water, from 32 (degrees Fahrenheit) solid to 32 (degrees Fahrenheit) liquid. Ice stores a lot of energy. When the water does melt, they you got cool water to drink.
<32:25>
Jack Spirko: I got a good one even for you, Steve. When you used to come up on and off. We would be gone for four months at a time. It is possible that the power went out, for a week or more, and the food in the freezer might have gone bad. It would be really hard to know that if your neighbors didn't tell you. The little system I came up with, is I took a soda bottle and filled it up halfway with water and froze it. Then set it upside down. If all the water had melted and refrozen at the bottom. Then I knew it had completely defrosted. That doesn't mean it was necessarily bad, but discretion the better part of valor. At least I knew to go up and ask the neighbors, "When did the power go out and for how long?" If the water was still frozen in place or it had fallen down but not completely melted and refrozen I knew the food was going to be good.
<33:17>
Steven Harris: Yeah, that is fabulous.
<33:18>
Jack Spirko: That is redneck engineering, baby.
<33:21>
Steven Harris: Here is another little secret for you, regarding ice from my thermal dynamics background when I worked at Chrysler. If you have frozen bottles of ice in the freezer or even a bucket of ice or Ziploc bags filled with little ice cubes or anything with ice in it. As long as there is ice.. As long as there is one cube or one piece of ice still in that bottle or bucket, in the freezer. Then that freezer has not yet gone above 32 degrees Fahrenheit, because the ice will sit there and always from 32 degrees (Fahrenheit) solid to 32 degrees (Fahrenheit) liquid. There is no way that ice can exist if it warmed up hotter than that. If you the freezer and you see ice cubes, it is at 32 degrees Fahrenheit and it is fine. If you don't see any ice, you need to put your hand on the meat because you know it is warming up. Will all the water in the world... Your freeze will stay 32 degrees (Fahrenheit) as long as there is ice melting in it. That is the temperature that ice melts. When the ice has fully 100% melted in the freezer, then you know it is going to start warming up. You might have to have a cookout in the next 24 to 48 hours. Feed your neighbors steak. Let me back up a minute. If you have space in your freezer, put soda bottles 80% fill with water in it or well washed out milk jugs 80% full. You could even put a bucket of water, just a plastic bucket of water in the freezer and let it freeze. Or a five gallon pail about 80% full because ice is going to expand 10%. You can even take a trash bag and fill full, about five gallons of water, tie it off and drop it bottom of the freezer. That will work for thermal mass. You can put multiple of these in, you can fill the freezer up. If you see a hurricane coming and you live in Louisiana, hurricane magnet of the world, start filling the freezer with water so you can freeze the water in a day or two before it hits. That way you got a lot of thermal mass, you got a lot of cooling, you got a lot of extra water which you are going to need anyways, and you got a lot of cold water. I promised you I was going to talk about powering your refrigerator and freezer from your car in a disaster. If you really have to this is what you can do. First of all, you need an inverter. If you don't know what an inverter is, it converts DC voltage of your car into a AC voltage. It clamp onto your car battery or it plugs into cigarette lighter. It make a AC voltage almost like what comes out of your outlets right now. Here are some rules of thumb. If you get an inverter and you plug it into your cigarette lighter or your power outlet inside the car, you can only draw or output 150 watts. That doesn't matter if its a 400 watt or a 800 watt or a 1 gigawatts inverter. You can only suck about a 150 watts out of the cigarette lighter. That is because the size of cable and the fuse that is in it. Stop by AutoZone and get some extra 15 or 20 amp fuses in your car, just in case you do blow a fuse. You need to find out if you take mini fuses or maxi fuses. The newer cars take mini fuses. The older ones take maxi fuses that you and I are both thinking of more of the car fuses. Get a fuse puller as well, to save your fingers. If you can't buy fuses I put a whole bunch of them on Solar1234.com. They are on Amazon, you can get 140 fuses for $10. It is cheaper than buying 3 fuses at AutoZone.
<36:57>
Jack Spirko: It is also some of the cheapest insurance you will ever buy. I just sold my RV. I had a huge box fuses in the RV. The guy said, "Will I get these with it?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "How often does this thing blow a fuse, that you have this many fuses?" I said, "It blew a fuse once." He said, "Then why do you have so many fuses?" I said, "Because it blew a fuse once." <both Steven and Jack laugh> There you go.
<37:20>
Steven Harris: You have now had a sermon from the church of Jack. I love that. If you want to power something that powers more than 150 watts, this would be your refrigerator or your freezer, you are going to need an inverter of the right size. Lets say you need a 750 or 800 inverter. It will have to clamp onto the battery or your car to get its full power. You can't do it through a cigarette lighter because it is more than 150 (watts). You got to get the clamps out that came with the inverter and clamp the red on the positive and the black on the negative. Don't cross the streams. The inverter will come with the thick cables for this. I have one of my favorite brand name Duracell 800 watt inverter. It is only $80 from Amazon. I use it. I have used it for year. I use it when I travel. I use it for backup. I use it for testing. I use it for charging. I use it in the videos and demonstration and classes. It is on Amazon. I got a link to it at Solar1234.com with a description. If you don't want to buy it from Amazon online, you can go to Walmart and you can get about a 750 watt inverter for about $45. I guess you had a whole show on Walmart the other day, Jack. I like Walmart. They sell cheap stuff. Buy your cheap things and do your politics elsewhere. What you are going to do to power your fridge or TV OR AA battery charger or cell phone or iPad and everything else that is going to run. You are going to run an extension cord from the inverter in your car, whether it is plugged into the cigarette lighter or clamped on the battery. You are going to run a power cord, a big thick one like an orange one, into your house and you are going to plug into that. You are going to make your own little mini power grid from your car. Don't try to plug it into your house. That is a whole other Survival Podcast show that I could do on generators and back feeding your house and everything else.
<39:22>
Jack Spirko: I know for 99% people I do not have to say this. For the 1% of you I am going to say this. If you run your car with an inverter and an extensions cord into your house to do what Steve is saying to you. If you have a garage and your car is in your garage, then open the freakin' door. I know I shouldn't have to say that but if it saves one numskull it is worth saying.
<39:44>
Steven Harris: Please. In fact back the car out of the garage. Don't even leave it idling in the garage. Just back the car idling in the garage. I will give you one tip that I learned at Chrysler Corporation because I used to do stuff with the legal department. I did all of there instrumentation for their tests because people sued the company. If you take a modern car, back then is was a 2002 car, if you put a hose in your tailpipe and you run it into the interior of the car and roll the window up.
<40:14>
Jack Spirko: Yeah...
<40:15>
Steven Harris: The emission are so good on the car, you probably won't kill yourself. You might get a headache from the carbon monoxide.
<40:21>
Jack Spirko: You know what you are making me think of. Have you even seen the show South Park?
<40:25>
Steven Harris: Yeah.
<40:26>
Jack Spirko: One kid, I don't remember which one it was, says "I am going home to kill myself." I think it was Cartman...
<40:30>
Steven Harris: Kenny!
<40:31>
Jack Spirko: He goes and comes back the next day. They say, "I thought you were going to go kill yourself." He goes, "I left my mom's running in the garage with the windows open. Freakin' hybrids just won't do it anymore."
<40:43>
Steven Harris: <laughs> That's so funny.
<40:51>
Jack Spirko: Or it was "Freakin' hybrids just don't get the job done anymore." Or something like that. It was pretty funny. Lets get back to what we were talking about.
<40:59>
Steven Harris: Ok. The thing that will surprise most people today is your good modern refrigerator... Jack you remember our old refrigerators? they had power cords as thick as your thumb or wrists on them? You had to have 20 amp sockets and everything to plug them into?
<41:10>
Jack Spirko: Yeah. We still have one in the shanty up in Pennsylvania, at my dads place. It is probably 80 years old and still working.
<41:16>
Steven Harris: You are not going to power that off your inverter. New refrigerators, I am talking like the last 10 years. Especially the ones that say ENERGY STAR compliant on it. They got really smart. They increased the insulation. Instead of saying we are going to have a compressor that runs and draws 1500 Watts and it is going to run once every five minutes. They said we are going to have a smaller compressor, it is going to run more of the time and it is more efficient. I have a kilowatt meter. Whenever I get a chance I measure my refrigerators and freezers, my friends refrigerators and freezers when they are running. It is a weird things. They all draw about 120 to 200 watts when they are running. That is not a lot of power. Your 150 watt inverter could power your refrigerator, except there is this thing called an inductive kick. When you try to start the motor it wants to draw about 750 watts for about three seconds when the motor is starting. That is why you have to have the 800 watt inverter to run these refrigerators. Like I said, the older refrigerators that have 20 amp plugs, forget it. You are not going to run them. That is over 2000 watts. The new refrigerators you can power. The reason you need 800 watts because when the thing kicks on, the little 150 water inverter will go <awww>. A 800 watt inverter it can even take a surge to 1200 watts for about 12 seconds. They have a rating on it. That is why you need a 800 watt inverter, even though it is only going to draw less than 200 watts from your car. Again it has to be clamped on the battery. Jack, something good. It will run off the battery of your car. Idling the car, here is the thing. If you are drawing that much power, you are clamped on the battery, and you are powering refrigerator then you are going to have to idle the car. The battery in your car or pickup truck is generally pretty small in comparison to the amount of energy. If you took the amount of energy that was in a good deep cycle lead acid battery and you compared it it the amount of energy you get grom a generator and gasoline, it would be about 2 ounces of gasoline. It is big and heavy, but there is not a lot of energy in it
<43:27>
Jack Spirko: Sure.
<43:29>
Steven Harris: The rule of thumb is, if you are drawing this much power you are going to have to have your car at idle. The question is how long will your car idle on gasoline. When I was Chrysler I let a minivan idle 18 hours overnight for a test. It took about 12 gallons worth of gasoline. The rule of thumb is when you are car is idling it will take between 0.5 to 1 gallon of gasoline an hour. That is why you are not running your car to run your freezer and your refrigerator all the time. You are only running it for an hour to cool it down a little bit, put your blankets back over it, and then go turn off your car.
<44:04>
Jack Spirko: You know Steve, this is the same thing I am trying to teach people about food storage. I say 90 days and people go, "Well isn't it better to be a year?" Well sure, if you have the space the time and the money. Even in a long term breakdown there will still be the ability to get some food from the economy, to do some barters, and some exchanges. If you have to deal with 25% less of something than 90 days becomes a year of suitability as long as you are dealing with a 25% deficit. We have to look at refrigerators and freezers the same way. Yes it would be great if there was a magical unicorn that farts angeles that would make your house run on free energy and you could run things the same way without power all the time. We are using far more energy daily than we really need to get the job done. In these situations we have to scale back to compensate. Like you said we can run an hour here and an hour there, and extend the life expectancy of something that already has a much better life expectancy than people think it does.
<45:07>
Steven Harris: Your car is a great generator. It is a $30,000 machine, with a 200 horsepower engine. It make a great low power generator. It is spars, you might as well use it. Note: when you are powering your refrigerator or freezer, please remove the blankets that is insulating them! Refrigerator and freezers are heat pumps. They move heat from inside of the box to one side of the box to let it out.
<45:34>
Jack Spirko: I remember I saw a propane refrigerator. I was 18 or 19 years old in Honduras in the army. It blew my mind. I thought how the hell is that thing cold? The lady pulled the thing off the bottom and there was fire at the bottom of it.
<45:46>
Steven Harris: Yep, it is called an ammonia absorption process. There are a lot of refrigerator and freezers out there that you can buy right now what run on propane, natural gas, and kerosene. We can do a whole another show on that, if you want. Remember you used to see the network of tubes on the outside of your refrigerator in the old days? That is called the condenser.
<46:11>
Jack Spirko: That is the part you never wanted to push it too far back and smash it up against the wall when you are sliding it into it's slot.
<46:16>
Steven Harris: What they did now is they have built that into one wall of the refrigerator, so it looks a lot better. That is the hot side. If you actually knew what side was hot, you could keep blankets over everything else except leave the hot side exposed when you are running it. If you don't know, pull all your blankets off. Then cool it down and put all your blankets on. Jack, people ask me about small refrigerators all the time.
<46:43>
Jack Spirko: I get the same thing. Won't it take less energy to keep the small refrigerator cold? My response is generally no. You want to tell people why?
<46:51>
Steven Harris: Yeah. This will surprise you. A small refrigerator often has the same size compressor as the big one. It takes the same amount of energy to cool the small one as it does to cool the full size one. The difference is that the full size one is going to run longer and it has a lot more insulation around it, even though you don't see it. The small one has very little insulation. What it does to compensate it is it runs the compressor more. I am talking about these little under the counter refrigerators that you buy for $100 at Walmart, Home Depot, or you local hardware store that is owned by locals.
<47:28>
Jack Spirko: Or the little ones that truck drivers use. I have had someone ask me, "Why do they use those?" I said "Because you can't fit your giant two door Frigidaire in your freakin back of your sleeper cab of your truck, that is why."
<47:40>
Steven Harris: Yeah. These things draw about the same amount of power as the big ones.
<47:45>
Jack Spirko: Like you said they have less insulation. They have to do more work to do the same results.
<47:51>
Steven Harris: If you look at a refrigerator, this is a little technical stuff but that is what you got me here for, the refrigeration cycle is kind of inefficient. You are using electricity to run a compressor that moves refrigeration to the cold wall of the refrigerator, this is called the evaporator. That cold wall makes cold air. That cold air then makes your food cold. What is air. It is an insulator. It doesn't really want to cool things very well or heat things very well. Here is one of my favorite Harris tricks. We talked about making ice, now I am going to tell you how to make ice. If you really want to buy something, if you just have to buy a thing that is going to keep your stuff cool, you are going to buy a ice maker. This is going to be a little table top ice maker, that sits on top of your table. It is the size of two toaster ovens put together. I have been using a table top ice maker since about 2007, on a daily basis at work. It is for ice for my soda drinks that I drink during the day. <phone rings> Anyways, the phone is ringing... I have run the thing in the back of my pickup truck off an inverter when I drove through the country. I went around country a few times in my younger life, with a camper and a pickup truck and everything. I had this thing in the back of the pickup truck running off the inverter as I was driving making ice. Every two hours I would pull over and pull the ice out of the thing and put it into my cooler. I am used them mobile. I have used them stationary. I used them for my own soda drinks. They work very well. They will make about 25 pounds of ice a day, about a pound of ice in an hour. They hold about two hours worth of ice, so about every two hours you need to empty them. Here is the technical thing, with an ice maker you got electricity moving a compressor making your refrigerant cold. That goes to the condenser, with is a piece of cold metal. This cold metal is directly sitting in a pool of water. That directly freezes round ice cubes around it. The ice cubes then drop into a storage area. If they melt they melt into the water that is making more ice cubes. It is saving the energy so the coldness is preserved. You then take this ice out of the ice make and you put it into your ice chest or a five day cooler. Then you put what you want to keep cold, your food or your milk, directly on ice in contact with it. Or you put it in the water at the bottom of the cooler that has the ice floating in it. That is the fastest and best way to keep stuff cold. Have a bit of cold water in ice that is floating in the bottom. The stuff that needs to stay very cold, you put it in a Ziploc bag and put it in the ice water. The stuff that doesn't need to be so cool, you have it on top of the stuff that is sitting in ice water. Your containers of yogurt go in the water. The bottom of your milk cartons sits in the little bit of water. Your hot dogs are sitting on top of the milk jug, just keeping cool because it will be about 32 degrees (Fahrenheit) in there.
<50:56>
Jack Spirko: One time I was a construction worker. There is nothing that keeps your guys motivated like know they can have a cold beer at the end of the day when they are done. If you take a warm six pack, because that is all you can get your hands on, and you put it in a refrigerator it takes a daggon long time to get cold. It was just a joke and nobody ever technically measured it. I know you are the technical guy, but we has a joke that beer dumped ice water gets cold in 6.2 minutes and it was pretty damn close to accurate.
<51:22>
Steven Harris: It is.
<51:23>
Jack Spirko: It got cold really really fast. Much faster than sitting in the refrigerator.
<51:26>
Steven Harris: In fact if you take your beer can and you spin it in the ice and move it around and shake it around in the ice water, it will get cold in about three minutes. There are actually little things out there to cool your can of Coke in about two minutes. If you want to do it really good, it is the way you make ice cream, you take ice and salt and water. Then you spin your Coke can in the mixer of ice and salt and water. What you are doing is the ice lowers the freezing point of the water mixture to 0 (degrees Fahrenheit). That is how we got 0 degrees Fahrenheit. The definition is ice in a solution of salt water. That is how Mr. Fahrenheit defined 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That work very well. Salt water and ice is 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
<52:21>
Jack Spirko: That is how we make ice cream. Ice cream makers use rock salt.
<52:24>
Steven Harris: That is how you make ice cream, that is exactly right. There is a little point.
<52:28>
Jack Spirko: Let me ask you a question on the little ice maker. How long can you run that off your inverter setup? You say it works well, but...
<52:40>
Steven Harris: I will tell you exactly. I measured this last night just for the show to confirm it. It is drawing a 120 watts. again your car is going to have to be idle. A 120 watts is about 10 amps of DC current from the car battery. 12 volts times 10 amps is 120 watts. 10 amps off the car battery would suck down your car battery to nothing dead in about two to three hours. That is why keep your car idling. If you just had the ice maker running, you might be able to idle your about half hour and turn it off for a half hour and idle your car for a half hour and turn it off for an half hour. That will work pretty good.
<53:21>
Jack Spirko: I will also point out to people, what Steve is giving you... You got to start leveraging things for yourself in certain ways. If you are thinking to yourself, "I would like to have a 4500 watt decent generator." You can get them for a few $100 dollars. Think of how much gasoline you could store for half of that. Then use the other part to buy the inverter. I do have one big tip for people with gas cans. If you are buying the ones from the store because that is what you can get or afford, fine. Get yourself a daggon nozzle long enough so you can dump the fuel from the can into the car. The daggon nozzles they sell with the cans today, Steve, a lot of gas tanks it is almost impossible to pour the gas directly into a car gas tank. Because they have these little four inch nozzles.
<54:06>
Steven Harris: One of the things I should do for you in the future is a whole show just on generators and gasoline. I have photographs during the blackout of people wheeling around $800 generators and they only have 5 gallons of gas for the damn thing.
<54:21>
Jack Spirko: <laughs> Like you said they have a $30,000 to $40,000 car.
<54:25>
Steven Harris: Exactly
<54:26>
Jack Spirko: With a full tank
<54:27>
Steven Harris: This idiot that I quoted at the start of the show, is driving around looking for a generator. Well good luck. You got to find a generator and you got to find gas. And you are burring gas as you try to find gas. It is just ridiculous.
<54:39>
Jack Spirko: I have actually seen something worse. I am almost afraid to tell you this. I am afraid the top of your head is going to come off. One guy on the news siphoning gas out of his car to put in his generator. <laughs>
<54:58>
Steven Harris: There we go... that is really intelligent <hint of sarcasm>...
<55:03>
Jack Spirko: I think it is just because people don't think about this stuff in advance. They don't walk through it before they are faced with the situation. So, I am sitting there out of gas for my generator. I think I am going to kill my family if I don't keep the food cold. Your car is sitting there. I think that is just how people think
<55:23>
Steven Harris: No, you wife is going to kill you if you don't keep the food cold.
<55:26>
Jack Spirko: Yeah
<55:29>
Steven Harris: The ice maker. Again, this whole show is about telling you about what I have used for years, telling you how to use it in your situation, how you might be able to use it, and how I have used it. I am also enabling you. Which mean I am not just saying, "Go find the ice maker on the winds." The ice maker used to be at Home Depot. It might be at the Home Depot in the south. They are about $169. I have the ice makers listed on Solar1234.com right now. There is a white one and a black one. You click on it. You can go over to Amazon and you can buy it directly from Amazon if you want. Or you can go "Oh that is it. I have seen that at my hardware store." Then you can go down to your hardware store and you can buy it. I am enabling you. Anything we talked about during the last hour or so, regarding refrigerator or freezers is at Solar1234.com. If you want my free family preparedness class, I will put a link up there to that as well. Guess what? I have done it again. I have run out of time.
<56:36>
Jack Spirko: You have.
<56:37>
Steven Harris: What we are going to do, in the next stuff we are going to talk about in the next show the next day that you are going to listen to, is going to be about how to power your TV. Where it is a 34 inch, 42 inch, 12 inch, or 60 inch. How to power everything else off of your inverter; your cell phone, your satellite dish, and your radio. I am going to talk about recharging AA batteries. I am going to give you an infinite source of AA batteries. Stay tuned and listen for that. It is going to be the next show tomorrow.
<57:09>
Jack Spirko: Yep, I have talked him into it, guys. Let just go ahead and knock this out. This is so topical and spot on for a lot of people right now. A lot of people are focused on it. Lets face it, it is going to be hot for quite a few more months. There are going to be storms for a few months. We are going into hurricane season. We are not out of tornado season yet. We are out of the part where I hid once a week, at least. We are not out of that. We are going to stick with this. i want to point out one thing about the portable ice maker for people. It is not a 12 volt device. It uses the inverter, like you just told people how to set it up. If you buy one of these, you could set it in your house and start using it right now. When you have company over and you wipe out all the ice in the freezer it is a nice additional thing. It is a constant source of ice. I think I am going to pick one of these up.
<57:59>
Steven Harris: Jack, I tell you what, if you don't like it I will buy it off you.
<58:04>
Jack Spirko: <laughs> What I like is you have the tan one and the black one. I like black so I am going to get a black one.
<58:11>
Steven Harris: It is really a Harris best practice. I am not B.S.ing you. I am not telling you to buy it just to buy it. Look at the whole refrigeration cycle. It is a lot more efficient to make ice directly from a refrigerant and take the ice to put it on your food, than it is run a refrigerator. Get these coolers from igloo, they are called five-day coolers. Some of them are called seven-day coolers. They are thick as hell. Then if you want, you can go to Home Depot and get some two inch foam. Then you can get some liquid nail and you can glue the foam to the side of the cooler with liquid nail. You can then have a 14 day cooler. Or you can throw your sleeping bag on top of it and it will stay even colder. You get the priceable that I am talking about?
<58:58>
Jack Spirko: Definitely. It just comes down to what cools better, air or water and ice? We will just wrap up this this thought. If I give you a thin shirt and a thin pair of pants, and it is 32 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside. You are not happy, but you are probably a long way from hypothermia. If I take a 55 gallon drum and fill it halfway with water and stack ice into like a big giant cold glass of ice water, and I submerge your ass in there. Unless you are a highly trained navy seal that has learned all these technique to wall off parts of our body and generate heat. You are probably not far from going to the emergency room for hypothermia or ending up dead. That tells us all we need to know about cooling with air and cooling with water and ice.
<59:44>
Steven Harris: Ok everyone, I'll be back at the church of Jack tomorrow. Listen for it.
<59:49>
Jack Spirko: Alright, with that folks this has been Jack Spirko today along with Steven Harris. Helping you figure out how to live life, if times get tough or even if they don't.
<59:56>
<closing song>
