Podcast On How to Keep your Refrigerator and Freezer COLD in a Blackout

Years ago Steven Harris did an audio training (podcast) on the topic of keeping your refrigerator and freezer cold during a power blackout.

This is the overview of that audio interview with Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast:

If there is one thing people OBSESS about when the power fails its keeping their refrigerator and freezer cold.  I tell you all of the SMART ways of doing this both with electricity and WITHOUT electricity.  Simple methods that will make you slap your head and say, “I knew that!”.  I cover pre-crisis methods, you know the crisis is coming methods (Hurricane) and post crisis methods (Its already hit).  This show will SAVE YOUR FOOD and keep you and your family fed with what you have.Steven Harris on The Survival Podcast for 9th Time!

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If you are ready to get more advanced preparedness training from Harris on all things pertaining to energy, then check out his more in-depth video training courses here:

If you would prefer a raw (unedited) transcript of the above audio interview podcast, then you can get the full transcript here:

Let me show you the better way. I felt this check speaker was another additional survival podcast is always one man’s view of a changing world, the changing times and the things that we can all do to live a better life if times get tough, or even if they don’t. Today is Wednesday, July, July 11 2012. And this is episode 939 of the survival podcast and I’m a jazz club. So you got one of my favorite people hanging on the line right now that we’re gonna bring on to talk about dealing with a blackout. And I just had Steve Steve Harris, of course, who’s I’m talking about here, just had Steve’s book for today I had that happened like a month ago, Dorothy book, and we didn’t even know what he was gonna be on about, we know we can always come up with something. And what all of this stuff went on with the storms up in the northeast and blackouts and people without, you know, power and having their food go bad. And everything else. It was like a perfect thing for Steve to talk about. So that’s what he’s here to talk with us about today. And he’s got some great stuff as usual. And returning now for his ninth episode of the survival podcast, again, here today to talk to us about all kinds of stuff to do with keeping our house in order in the middle of a long term blackout. One of my favorite people, Steven Harris. Hey, Steve, welcome back to the survival podcast, man,

Jack, I’m happy. I’m thrilled to be back at what I call the church of Jack. This is my ninth time on the show. And I am really going to rock the world of your listeners. I’m all pissed off at the stupidity I’ve seen on the news and everything else. I’ve been on the show eight times previously. And I’ve always talked about energy and energy from this energy from that. And I’ve always worked with energy, but most people don’t know this. I teach preparedness. I’ve had over 108,000 downloads of my family preparedness class. So I’m going to talk to you tonight all about energy and preparedness, just like those for those 2 million people that lost power in the mid Atlantic States last week, from the duration to and I’m going to tell you what it is what I use, how long I’ve used it, how good it works. And then I’m going to give you the links on solar 1234 on where to buy the thing on Amazon with free shipping and or where to get it at Walmart or Home Depot. And it’s gonna it’s gonna be awesome fact Jack, didn’t you? Didn’t you hear me before I was on the show the first time.

Yeah. And it was like so far back that when I first had you on I didn’t even connect the dots and realize it was you it was I had been going on for about maybe three or four months, I had a couple 1000 listeners if that. And somebody sent me a link to the class you’re talking about. So you got to listen to this guy. He sounds a lot like you. So I was working like 1516 hours a day back then. So it was one of those things where I kind of listened to it while I was dealing with you know, Excel reports on one of my companies it was you know, as usual riding the knife edge between being profitable and, and having to cut employees. But I didn’t remember a lot of it. But there was one thing that I remember really, really well, which was you said it was easier to eat to feed your neighbors than to shoot them. Yeah. And then when I met you, and we were talking, I’m like, I know, I’ve heard this guy before. And that’s what it was. But it took like two two interviews with you before I realized that I went back and listen to it again. I went oh, that’s where it is. Yep,

yep. Yep. It’s easier to feed your neighbors in the shoot them all you do is go off and get some great big bags of corn and wheat and you throw it in hot oil about 350 degrees with a metal strainer and it parches it in about 30 seconds.

And you might not want to eat deer corn, but you can feed it to your neighbors. Yeah, I

mean, this is this is these are corn nuts is what they are. And they’re delicious. He put some salt or some powders on them. And I believe me too. After two days of your neighbors are hungry. They’ll be good. They’ll scarf this stuff down like popcorn, even though it’s not popcorn, it’s parched corn. But yeah, I mean, I always kept a bunch of that stuff just to feed my neighbors. And like I said, I will say later on in the show. You never know what happens when you feed your neighbors. They just might bring the booze over.

Yeah, I think it’s a big part of community building. And it’s something people should be doing in advance. But you know, you’re right about this, this problem. And it was like I had you books. As usual. We’re like, we’ll figure out what we’re going to talk about when we get closer to it. And then we had this major event. A lot of people have been asking about it. So it’s very fortuitous. But it’s a big problem. I mean, one of the things I covered this earlier this week, I talked about there was a report that about 300,000 households were without power in West Virginia alone. And well in West Virginia alone. Yeah, West Virginia. So I looked at the population of West Virginia, and about 1.8 million people. If you figure an average household is four That means about three of 300,000. And he’s only about 450,000 households. So that means 300,000 out of 450,000 households were without power for at least more than 48 hours and some of them for close to a week. So, you know, the first hour is not that big a deal. And then the first days even not that big a deal, but it starts to wind on you after a while, doesn’t it? Oh, yeah.

I mean, the first day, what I say is the first day you’re looking for gas and just you know, find out what’s going on. The second day you are out looking for water. The third day you’re out looking for food the fourth day, you’re fighting for everything.

Yeah, we had some reports come in of people selling bags of ice for $25 A bag out on the road, selling gallons of gasoline for 20 $30 A gallon because even at the gas stations had gas. In many instances, they couldn’t pump it because they didn’t have power either. And, you know, king of all loud mouths, rush limbaugh was on the radio, I heard him yesterday going home. And he was talking about how we still have power out in these areas around our nation’s capitol. You mean we can’t get this up. And I’m like, Dude, you don’t really understand how it works. And it’s amazing to see how much abuse there is in that area in such a short period of time.

Yeah, in fact, one of the things I’m going to show you during this class during the session that we’re going to have is how to make your own ice off an inverter off of your car, all you’ll have, you’ll have your own eyes, and I’m going to show you where to get everything. In fact, we’re gonna talk a great deal about refrigerators and freezers which leads me into my first subject. First, for those of you if you wanted the class, a Jack and I were talking about mine, it’s before the storm hits.com If you can’t remember that, if that so I’ll put a link at it solar 123 four.com I’ve had over 100 1000 downloads of it. So it’s good stuff. Well, this time, power and preparedness. And what I’m going to do is we’re going to talk about how to power all the little things in your life. That becomes useless when the power fails because I mean what fails Jack, your cell phone is going to die your radios gone, your TV’s gone. Your satellite dish is gone. Your refrigerators go on your freezer is gone. Your well pump is gone. Your septic or you sewage might be gone. Your air conditioning is gone. You Your fans are gone. The your electric dog water fountain is died. So you know, Fido can’t get his oxygenated water.

I’m one of those my dogs seem to be content if I forget to close the litter the toilet. Got there. So I’m thinking they don’t need them electric dog water purifying machine. But you’re right about all the other stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it’s just every hour, it’s what I call is everything in your life that becomes useful, or that was useful became useless. And we’re going to talk about how to take those useless things and how to make them useful again. Speaking of animals, my cat just hopped up on my platform, as I talk to you know, he’s doing it the right time, don’t they? Jack? Yep. Yep. Well, we’re going to talk about refrigerators and freezers first and making ice and power in your house, from your car with an inverter and how to have an unlimited amount of double A batteries, you’re going to have all the double A batteries you could possibly want, from your inverter in your car, for your radios for your flashlights, so you’re not gonna have to worry about it. We’re talking about keeping your iPhone and your Android phone powered forever. Because there’s a lot of little great little apps on these phones that will you know, I mean, even your insurance app, you can take pictures of your house and file insurance report right from your phone, which is great if you have if a tornado came about came by. And we got a lot of other hands on stuff that you can get right now at either walmart or amazon. These are all normal items. They’re not expensive survival, things that you have to you know, figure out and read the directions and spend a lot of money on these are all common household things. This is stuff you use in your daily life. Okay, this is stuff you use here daily knife life, not just a disaster. In fact, that’s the best survival stuff to have is the stuff that you use every day. What was it you said on the Glenn Beck show when you asked me about when they asked you what’s the most important thing to have for survival Jack? Yeah,

what I said was, and you know, it was kind of funny because he had a guy there that was from a food company. So he said food, and then he had a ham guide. He said ham, you know, ham radio communications, and I’m like, It’s not stuff, you know, stuff’s just a piece of it. It’s a skill set. It’s a mindset. It’s what you put in your it’s what you put in your mind, your abilities, and what you put in your heart so you prepare to deal with it. If you do that, then you can make use of what you have.

Yeah, well, I’m going to add to that, okay, the stuff that you have, you really need to know your stuff. Okay? And let’s say I pick you up and throw you in California and there’s a big earthquake, you know, away from your stuff. You’re gonna go Oh, no, what am I gonna do? I’m not with my stuff. Well, if you know the first thing you want to find is a good kitchen knife. I mean, you can start In your stuff, you can get cut plastic bags and waterproof yourself plastic bags for plastic for storing and holding water and carrying it rope and wire, you can all cut it with a knife to make things to carry things to wrap up the hole in your shoe. I mean, it’s like it’s all your mind stuff. It’s not what you have, it’s what you know. But if you do have stuff, the only way you’re going to know how to use it is if you have used it on a daily basis for one reason or another. So think of this. Can you just see yourself? It’s cold, it’s raining, your roof is missing from your house, half the back wall is gone. Your kids are crying, they’re missing their favorite teddy bear. Your wife is trying to find a tampon. Your arm is sprained. One shoe is missing, you’re bleeding, you’re thirsty, and you gotta go to the toilet and the toilet don’t work if the toilets even there. And you’re holding the box for this fancy survival widget and trying to read the instructions in small print on the back. You can’t find your reading glasses. You’re trying to figure out how to use this. This is not the time to figure out how to use this.

No, absolutely not. And I mean, it’s the kind of the same thing I tell people like I am big on your first 90 days of self sufficiency she see with food even should be built out of the things that you eat every day what you store in store where you eat. And then we can start looking at Mrs. Freeze Dried long term storage bowls. Because some of us were preparing not just to be without power for a couple of weeks. We’re preparing for much bigger global events. But we got to start somewhere and starting with these ability to make it through a couple of weeks, which is much more likely to happen is important. But even those people I’m like, if you bought a case of Mountain House, freeze dried pork chops. Yep, one day you might want a while your little ass in here, your bunker, whatever, pull out a can of it, open them the hell up, figured out how to cook them so you know how to use what you have. But I’m with you on the short term scenarios, we need to look at using the things that we use every day.

Yeah, you are really better having three days of food that you know how to use and you’re having 30 days of food you’ve never used. You can change after three months. And when you change the entire frame you want. I had some special operations guys teach me a few things I’ll never forget. I just love this, too is one and one is none. If you have to, one will end up getting broken or loss and you’ll have one left. If you have one of something it’ll end up biting the dust and you’ll have none. Heck for this interview, my main condenser microphone started to have a hum like crazy and I couldn’t figure out couldn’t fix it. So out comes my son Heiser, hence my Sennheiser headset. Okay, two was one one is none. My third level backup to do the show, as I have two cordless phone charged up on a hard line. Right either ready to go. Okay, so I had three things backed up for ready to go just for this interview. So I mean, I’m practicing to was one one is not in my daily life, just as a matter of fact. So all the stuff I’m going to talk about with you is dual purpose. Okay, if one fails, it’s cousin that you got that does something else will be will take care of what the first one died from. So most of us will do more than one thing and in reference to you and in your house with no roof that I was talking about. And it’s raining and trying to figure out what to do. There’s three things that all of your preparedness stuff must pass. Okay, everything must pass this test. One, will it work? Okay, does whatever you’re going to buy are going to get? does it actually work? If it doesn’t work? Forget it. Okay? isn’t necessary? Do you really need it? Is it really needed necessary for what you’re going to do? Is a core item? If not, no, you don’t need it. Now, here’s the big one in reference to the house with the rain coming in, you’re bleeding hurt and everything? Can I duplicate it under stress? Can I repeat what I’m going to do here in my house and the comfort with my cat sitting next to my feet? Can I repeat that in that scenario with the house is gone? And I’m opening up? I’m in my bunker and I’m opening up my stuff? And my wife and kids are crying? Can I repeat, then do it underneath stress? The answer is going to have to be yes. And the only way you’re going to be able to duplicate that under stress is if you’re using it on a regular basis.

And we’re going to say something on that, Steve because I think it’s like it’s a perfect example of how the military prepares you for that same situation. A lot of guys have seen these movies were the guys like taking apart putting the get back together the M 16. Or the 45 or the nine over and over and over and a lot of people who’ve never been in they think like that’s just like bravado and whatever it’s not. Because what that means if I can strip a weapon down and put it back together, I can handle any malfunction in a fraction of the time I can completely strip the weapon down. And by doing it over and over and over again. If I’m in a stressful situation. I can do it anyway. Not because I’m some that acid I’m not afraid. But just because my my hands my mind everything about it, the muscle memory has gotten to the point where I can do it. It’s just like people that I don’t think you should. But let’s face it, there’s people that can call us down the highway 75 miles an hour with a Starbucks coffee in one hand, text one handed on a cell phone and do it now if you take a person has never seen a cell phone before you’re gonna end up dead. They’re not gonna pull it off. Once again, I’m not saying you should do it. I’m just saying it’s it demonstrates that when we do things over and over and over again, they simply become second nature.

I agree. 100%. And that’s why they even do the military blindfolded.

Yeah, that’s not good as much as they tell you. But yeah, it is done on some level. It’s not like it’s everybody in every day, though. It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s kind of more theatrical than anything else. Unless you’re like an SF guy or something like that.

Yeah, I’ve seen guys doing this. And they actually had them do jumping, jumping jacks and running rabbits and mountain climbs. They were doing a competition in the wall blindfolded. And that was machine gun class. And they ran, the four finalists had to run up to the machine gun range, and shoot their targets. And they took them out in the woods and they had them do all these things that basically make your legs into rubber. And then they had to run to the machine guns and put them together and they were tripping over each other running into trees because they these exercises all rubberized your legs and disoriented you. And then when they showed up to their guns, guns roll apart, they had to put them back together, and then load them up and shoot them. But I mean, that was called a combination exercise. But I feel that’s what military is doing. But what we’re going to talk about is no it doesn’t work as necessary. And this is going to be stuff that’s going to keep you from going back into the age of Fred Flintstone with communications. And we’re gonna get your kids involved and we’re gonna do this especially when we’re talking about double A battery chargers I want you and your kids to use Double A rechargeable batteries in your remote controls your kids toys and your flashlights and stuff you’re always grabbing and using that way in a disaster. Heck, you’re gonna go to your kid Hey, hey, these batteries are dead Go get me two new ones and charge up these other ones and he’s gonna be like, Okay, Dad, you know, the it’ll be second nature to him going over putting them in charge him because if he does everyday for his toys, r us answers can be second nature.

Awesome. Well, let’s let’s talk about that. But let’s start out with something that I know just pisses you off. Oh, yeah. Okay, let’s start off with because this is the big one everybody’s worried about when the power is off, especially in the summer and a heatwave, I’m going to lose all my food, everything in my refrigerator and freezer is going to be dead. And I have no problem with the person that has the money in the means having a small generator set and been able to run it on and off here and there and extend the life of it. But that’s like, kind of down the path. There’s a lot of things we can do without really any big expenses at all. And in a lot of like power outages up to three days. Which doesn’t be smart. We don’t even have to we don’t need anything. shove a plan. So can you talk about that a

little bit? Oh, yeah, refrigerators and freezers freezers all Does this ever get me pissed and I heard some of these great comments from idiots on the TV and radio over the last week with the 2 million people out of power in the mid Atlantic area. My favorite is one okay, I record this wrote down everything over the last two days we lost everything in our freezer and refrigerator. And now we’re out driving around trying to buy a generator so we might be able to save the little bit of what we what we might be able to salvage. Oh my god, I’m gonna have a conniption fit. First of all, get out of the mentality that I got to save my refrigerator. I gotta save my freezer. Even if you got a generator, you don’t let it sit there run all the time. You want it for a couple hours a day and the refrigerator is not your mother in law it does not need constant life support. For one thing, your refrigerator and freezer insulated, they will stay cold for days even when it’s 95 degrees outside and I’ve done this both in the blackout and and trial situations. It’ll keep the stock in there cool for at least two days. And you only have about two days worth of food in the thing anyways. So it’s my last two days. You got two days when food start eating it. Okay, as I tell everyone start with the ice cream.

You’d like to make the kids happy. You can have all the ice cream you want right now Johnny get eaten?

Yeah, exactly. He’s gonna get to the point where the power fails. The kids are gonna go Yeah, ice cream on a regular basis. This is so easy. The power fails. Okay, you’re stuck in your house, your power is gone. You open up your freezer, you take out the ice cream, give everyone spoons, then you move your milk in your butter and other like dairy products that wants to be colder. You move them from the refrigerator to the freezer section because the freezer is at minus five and it’s warming up and your refrigerators at 40 degrees and it’s gonna start warming up. Okay, in case you didn’t know your freezers, zero to minus five, your frigerators about 3540. Okay, so you move the cold stuff once we’ve cooled it to the colder section. Well, it’s 90 degrees or hotter outside. Like it was just the last week. So I guess you don’t really need your winter blankets, you’re not going to use them. So why don’t you go get your winter blankets, your sleeping bags and put them around your freezer in your refrigerator to keep them cool. Okay. I mean, it’s, it’s an insulated box, you want it to stay colder for longer put more insulation over it. It works. Okay. You know, people come to me, they ask me, oh, I need to power my refrigerator or freezer. You should not be asking Steve Harris, how to cool your refrigerator and freezer, asked me how to keep the coldness inside of them that you already have. But even with that said, just for some people, we’ll talk about some power for your refrigerator freezer in a bit. Okay, this makes sense. Doesn’t Jack start eating what might spoil her mouth and then put blankets over the refrigerator freezer to keep it cool?

Well, it’s what we always did. I mean, I grew up in Pennsylvania, we always had generators, because we lived in a place where power would frequently go out and stay out and you had one. But it was it was never a priority. Let me go plug in the chest freezer in the shanty, right? It was never a priority unless it was a long term outage and then like you saying, Okay, we go plug in the deep freezer, run it for an hour or two. And then and then shut it off because it would stay cold. And like you said we used to throw all the blankets and chin on top of it. And we made it through some of the a week long power outages probably running a generator on it twice a day. It also makes me think about this. Like, it wasn’t that long ago, right? People have this like vision of time anymore. That’s like totally unrealistic. It wasn’t that long ago that your grandparents and great grandparents didn’t know what the hell a refrigerator was. And the concept that if your food is not held at the refrigerators, temperature for 13 and a half seconds, if you eat it, you will die. Just seems to be one of the things that we’ve been lied to about. And people overreact because they don’t know the truth.

Yeah, well, I mean, just what the heck is age meat or age cheese? I’m really tired of the news. And the government’s saying if it gets above 40 degrees, throw it out. I mean, it could go bacteria WHAT THE HELL temperature? Do you think a steak gets to when you thought out before you put it on the grill? I mean, it gets the room temperature. It doesn’t infinitely grow bacteria.

Well, I’m a good cook like Keith snow. When we have him on we’ll tell you absolutely let that state come to room temperature before you throw it on the grill and sear it that way it won’t stick and it’ll cook better. Yeah, and I mean, you cook it the one standard practice you cook is the 160 kills all the bacteria anyways.

I mean, what temperature does milk come out of a cow lab? I mean, pretty warm.

Pretty hard. It’s called body to actually think of cow’s body temperature is a little bit higher than a human so it’s pretty warm. If it’s inside the cow it’s going to you know, I don’t know the word for it. I’m thinking osmosis, but that’s the wrong word. But you don’t I’m saying it’s going to be the same temperature of the body. It’s held in

right right look, I mean, you pull your milk out of the refrigerator and you put it your freezer and two days go by and you pull out your milk you’re going to drink it you go you sniff it first and if you go oh, okay, it’s bad. Okay, give it to the dog to drink before you throw it out. You know the dog would drink it or the cats will drink it just happily. So don’t even throw it out then you know same thing with a can of peaches you open can pictures in it. Oh god it smells horrible. Don’t eat it. Okay, you can open up a can of peaches and so like little discolored is just a little oxidized to taste okay, you can go ahead and eat it. Your sniffer tells you your nose it’s your natural instinct that tells you where things are good or spoiled or not. Well you can eat it or not. What about eggs Jack?

Well it really depends to me. I’m eight aids have a massive shelf life even without being refrigerated in the shot of the eggs we get from the store 30 to 60 days old before we get them all right. Yeah, it’s it’s true. Eggs have a great shelf life because you know eggs sit under chickens and slowly turned into a baby chicken but yeah, a lot of the eggs in the store are much older than you would think. But that also gives you an idea of how long the shelf life is because look at the look of the number that you know the date on the on the carton.

Yeah our grandparents used to have excellent basket on the table all the time but they grabbed them fresh out of the rear end of chicken. The ones that the one caveat I am going to throw in there about stuff going bad is stuff like exile a domain A is things that’s opened up with raw eggs. Raw egg is actually a heavy growth medium for bacteria and viruses. In fact, that’s what we grow you know you get a flu shot. You that flu shot was grown as an anti virus in an egg, the Groman eggs so any opened eggs, go ahead, give that to the dog and let the dog get diarrhea and eat it Uh, other than that, I mean, if it’s regular food, use your sniffer. And if it warms up the room temperature smells good go out and eat it, if not throw it out. So let’s see pile. I mean, there’s another thing in refrigerator called thermal mass. And so if you got a big like you said, Jackie, a big phrase, you got a big cow in your freezer, I mean, that’s a lot of thermal mass with a lot of stored frozen energy. That means you got a lot of cold storage. So pile on the blankets on the freezer, I mean a good six inches to a foot of blankets on top of the thing and hanging around the sides, put it on the top. This can keep beef good for three to five days, maybe more. Okay, it all depends on how much thermal mass is in there. It’s really starts getting warm out and you can tell the beef has already really warmed up to ambient, you know, and you know, it’s gonna get warm over the next couple of days, get out the grill and get the neighbors over have a huge cookout, feed everyone because it might spoil. Remember, it’s easier to feed your neighbors and it’s shoot down. And if you’re feeding your neighbors, you making good friends really bonding. I mean, it could turn out to be a friendship of a lifetime from someone you never met. And who knows it just might bring the booze?

Yeah, I would say and of course if you have even more meat you if you yellow salt and pepper and vinegar and you start making biltong so even if you got more than you can cook all at once there’s always something you can do with it to prolong its shelf life a lot of people would jerk it but Bill tongs easier, takes less energy and takes less materials and it’s faster

than if you have a freezer there’s not like not much and I’m talking like yes small chest freezer or even your your your freezer above or below your refrigerator. There’s not much in it. Fill up two liter soda bottles or any size pop bottle or milk carton with about 80% with tap water and put it in there let it freeze that way when the power fails, you’ve got a lot more thermal mass in there because that ice is melting. It’s actually gone through what’s called a phase change. Yeah, that’s why ice cool, so good because it takes one BTUs to move one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. Well it takes 140 BTUs to melt one pound of water from 32 solid to 32 liquid. So I mean I stores a lot of energy. And when the water does not melt well heck, you got cool water to drink.

I got a good one even for you, Steve, when we used to come up to Arkansas on and off and we would be gone for four months at a time. It is possible its power went out for a week or more and the food in the freezer might have gone bad. And it would be really hard to know that if your neighbors didn’t tell you. Okay, so the little system I came up with was I took a soda bottle filled it up halfway with water, put it up, put it set it upside down. All the water had melted and refrozen in the bottom. You knew it then I knew it had completely defrosted and didn’t mean it was necessarily bad. But discretion the better part of valor because there 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 had not completely melted and re frozen? I knew that the food was going to be good. Yeah,

I mean fabulous.

I mean, that’s a redneck engineering baby.

Yeah, here’s a little here’s another little secret for you. Regarding ice from my thermodynamics background I worked at Chrysler. If you have frozen bottles of ice in the freezer, or even a bucket of ice or if you have Ziploc bags full of ice cubes anything of ice in it. As long as there is ice, as long as there’s 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 go from 32 degrees solid to 32 degrees liquid and there’s no way that ice can exist if it warmed up hot hotter than that. So if you got the open the freezer heats the ice cubes that is at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, okay, which is fine. If you don’t see any ice, you put your hand on your meat, you know it’s warming up, okay. So the freezer will stay if no matter what you do, you’re with all the water in the world, your freezer will stay at 32 degrees as long as there’s ice melting in it, and that’s the temperature what ice melt so when the ice is fully 100% melted in the freezer, then you know it’s going to start warming up. You might have to have a cookout in the next 24 to 48 hours feed your neighbor’s steak. So let me back up a minute. Okay, if you have space in your freezer, put soda bottles 80% filled with water in it or well washed out milk jugs 80% Full heck you can even put a bucket of water just a plastic bucket of water in the freezer letter freeze Okay, or a five gallon pail again about 80% Full because ice is gonna expand 10% You can even take a trash bag, fill it for about five gallons water, tie it off and drop it in the bottom of the freezer. Okay, that will work for thermal mass. You can put multiple of these and you can fill the freezer up. And if you see a hurricane coming in you live in Louisiana The hurricane magnet of the world start filling the freezer with water to freeze. So you can freeze everything and all the water will freeze on a day or two. before it hits that way you got a lot of thermal mass, you get a lot of cooling you get a lot of extra water, which you’re gonna need anyways, you get a lot of cold water. So, I promised you let’s talk about powering your refrigerator freezer from your car in a disaster. So if you really have to, this is what you can do. First of all, you need an inverter. If you don’t believe me in what an inverter is, it converts the DC voltage of your car into an AC voltage, and it clamps onto your car battery or plugs into your cigarette lighter. And it makes the beat an AC voltage almost like what comes out of your outlets right now. So 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 about 150 watts that doesn’t matter if it’s a 400 watt and 800 water or one chicken watt inverter, you can only suck about 150 watts out of the cigarette lighter that’s because of the size of the cable and the fuse that’s in it. Okay, so 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 many fuses or Maxi fuses the newer one new car tech mini fuses, the older ones take the maxi fuses that you and I are both thinking of more like car fuses get a fuse polar as well is to save your fingers. And if you can’t buy fuses, I put a whole bunch of them on solar 123 four.com They’re on Amazon, you get 140 fuses for 10 bucks, and it’s cheaper than buying three fuses. Autozone

so it’s also some of the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy. I just sold my RV. Yeah, had a huge box of fuses in the RV. And the guy said and the guy said, well I get these with I said, Yeah, he goes, how often does this thing blow a fuse? Do you have as many fuses? I said it blew a fuse once he said the Why do you have so many fuses I said, because it blew a fuse once. Yeah,

you have now had a sermon from the house from the Church of Jack as I love that, so if you want to power something that draws more than 150 Watts and this would be your refrigerator, your freezer, okay? You’re going to need an inverter of the right size. So let’s say you need a 750 or an 800 watt inverter and it will have to clamp onto the battery required to give full power you can’t do it through a cigarette lighter because more than 150 So you got to get the the clamps out that came with the inverter and clamp the red on the positive and the black of the negative and don’t cross the streams. I mean don’t cross the wires, okay. The inverter will come with a thick cables for this. I have one of my favorite brand name Duracell 800 Watt inverters, it’s only 80 bucks from Amazon. I use it, I’ve used it for years 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 videos and demonstrations and classes. Okay. It’s on Amazon, I got a link to it. It’s over 123 four.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 750 watt inverter for about 45 bucks from Walmart, I guess you had a whole show on Walmart the other day jack. So I like Walmart, they sell cheap stuff, you know, buy your cheap things and do your politics elsewhere. So what you are going to do to power your fridge or your TV or you double A battery charger and your cell phone, your iPad and everything else that is going to run you’re going to run an extension cord from the inverter in your car. Whether it’s plugged in the cigarette lighter, or clamped on the battery, you’re going to run a power cord like a big sick, like an orange one into your house. And then you’re going to plug into that you’re going to make your own little mini power grid from your car. Don’t try to plug it into your house. That’s a whole nother survival podcast show. I can do on generators and back feeding your house and everything else. Okay. And I know

for 99% of people I do not have to say this, but 1% of you I’m going to say this. If you run your car with an inverter and an extension cord running into your house to do what Steve is saying you and you have a garage, you cars in your garage, open frickin door.

I know I shouldn’t have to say that. But if it saves one numbskull, it’s worth saying please, in fact back the car out of the garage. Okay, don’t even leave it idling in the garage just back the car I believe in your garage. I’ll give you one tip that I learned at Chrysler Corporation and because I used to do stuff with the legal department I did all the instrumentation for the test because people sue the company. If you can make a modern car brand new 2012 car actually back then was 2000 car and you put a whole thing You tailpipe you run it into your interior of the car and roll the window up. Yeah, the emissions are so good on the car you probably won’t kill yourself. You might get you might get a headache from the carbon monoxide.

You know you’re making me think of there is you’ve ever seen the show South Park? Yeah, yeah. The one kids I don’t remember which one it was he said I’m gonna help me kill myself. I think it was Cartman kitty. And he goes he comes back the next day and they’re like, I thought you’re gonna kill yourself. He goes, Look my my mom’s car running in the garage with windows open. Frickin hybrid just won’t do it anymore. Oh, funny. Oh boy. Frickin hybrid. Just don’t get the job done anymore. Something like, it was pretty funny. Anyway, we look back on where you’re talking about.

The thing that will surprise most people today is your good modern refrigerator. Jack, you remember our old refrigerators. They have power cords as thick as your your thumb or your wrist? Tom, you had to have 20 amp sockets and everything to plug them into?

Yeah, we still have one in the Shani, up in Pennsylvania. My dad’s place. It’s it’s probably 80 years old and still working.

Okay, you’re not going to power that off your inverter? Yeah, I mean, new refrigerators. I’m talking like the last 10 years, especially the one say Energy Star compliant on it. They got really smart, they increased the insulation. And instead of saying we’re going to have a compressor that runs and draws 1500 Watts, and it’s going to run one solid every five minutes where they said we’re going to have a smaller compressor, it’s going to run more of the time, and it’s more efficient. So I have with my kilowatt meter, I always get a chance I measure my refrigerators, my freezers, my friends, refrigerators and freezers when they’re running. And I mean, it’s a whole weird thing. But they all draw about between 102 100 120 to 200 Watts when they’re running, okay, that’s not a lot of power. Okay, I mean, your 150 watt inverter could power theoretically power your refrigerator. Except there’s this thing called an inductive kick means to start the motor it wants to draw about 750 watts for about three seconds when the motor starting. So that’s why you got to have the 800 watt inverter to run these refrigerators. Like I said, the older refrigerators that have like 20 amp plugs, forget it, you’re not going to run them at over 2000 Watts, but the new refrigerators you can power. So the reason I said you need 800 watt inverter is because you kick thing kicks on, it’s gonna do a little 150 watt inverter wheel and 800 watt inverter, it can even take a surge to like 1200 watts for about 10 seconds, they have a rating on it. So that’s what you need 800 watt inverter even though it’s only gonna draw less than 200 Watts from your car, again, it’s got to be clamped onto the battery. So Jack, something good. And it will run off the back of your car or Okay, the idling the car. And here’s here’s the thing. If you’re drawing that much power, you’re clamped on the battery and you’re powering your refrigerator, you don’t have to idle the car, the battery in your car, or your 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, you compared it to the amount of energy you’d get from a generator and gasoline. It’d be like two ounces of gasoline. Okay. It’s big and heavy, but there’s not a lot of energy in it. Sure. So the rule of thumb is if you’re drawing this much power, or you’re going to have to have your car idle. And the question is, how long will your car idle on gasoline? When I was at Chrysler, I let a minivan idle for 18 hours overnight for a test that took about 12 gallons of gasoline. So the rule of thumb is when your car is idling, it will take burn between half a gallon and a gallon of gasoline an hour. So that’s why you’re not running your car to run your freezer in your refrigerator all the time. You’re only running it for an hour to cool it down a little bit, put your blankets back over it and then try to turn off your car.

You noticed the this is like the same thing. I’m trying to teach people about food storage. And I say 90 days and people go well, what is it better to be a year? Well, sure if you have the space, the time and the money. But even in a long term breakdown, right, they’ll still be the ability to get some food from the economy to do some barter, some exchange. And if you have to deal with 25%, less of something than 90 days becomes a year of sustainability. As long as you’re only dealing with a 25% deficit. We have to look at things like refrigerators and freezers the same way. Yes, it would be great if there was a magical, you know, unicorn that farted angels that would come and make your house run on free energy. And you could just run things the same way when you’re without power all the time. But actually, we’re using far more energy daily than we really need to get the job done. And in these situations, we have to scale back to compensate and we can you know, like you said run an hour here an hour there and extend the life expectancy of something that already has a much better life expectancy than people think that think it does.

Yeah, your car is a great generator. I mean it’s A $30,000 machine out there with a 200 horsepower engine. I mean, it makes a great low power generator. It’s there, so you might as well use it. No, it’s when you are powering your refrigerator freezer, please remove the blankets that’s insulating them. Okay. refrigerators and freezers are heat pumps, they move heat from the inside of the box to one side of the box to let it out. Okay.

Yep. Yeah, I remember the first time I saw a propane refrigerator, I was like 1819 years old, and hunters in the army. And it blew my mind that I said, like, how the hell is that thing cold and Lady pulled the thing off the bottom and there was fire at the bottom of

it. Yeah, that’s called it’s called an ammonium absorption, ammonia absorption process. And then there’s are lots of refrigerators and freezers out there you can buy right now that run on propane, and natural gas and kerosene. And we can do a whole nother show on that if you want. But the hot side of the remember, you used to see the network of tubes on the outside of your refrigerator. In the old days, that’s all became that’s called the condenser.

And you never wanted to push it to back and smash it up against the wall when you were sliding it into its slot.

Yeah, well, what they did now they built that into one wall of the refrigerator. So it looks a lot better. That’s the hot side. If you actually knew what side of your refrigerator was hot, you could keep blankets over everything else except leave the hot side exposed when you’re when you’re running it. But if you don’t know, pull your blankets off. And then cool it down and put all your blankets on. Well, Jack, you know what people asked me about small refrigerators all the time,

I get the same thing like Will it take less energy to keep the small refrigerator cold? And my response is generally no. And you want to tell people why?

Yeah, this will surprise you. But the small refrigerator often have the same size compressor as the big one. So okay, it takes the same amount of energy to cool the small one as it does the full size one, the difference is the full size one is going to run longer. And it’s got a lot more insulation around it even though you don’t see it. And so the small one has very little insulation. So what it does to compensate is it runs a compressor more, and I’m talking a little under the counter refrigerators you buy for 100 bucks on Walmart, or Home Depot or your local hardware store that is owned by locals.

Or like the little ones that truck drivers use. And I’ve had somebody asked me Well, why do they use those? And I said, because you can’t fit your giant two door Frigidaire and your frickin back sleeper cab of your truck. That’s why

Yeah, well, these are the things draw about the same amount of power as the big ones. So like you said, they have less insulation. They have less and do more work to get the same results. Yeah, well, if you look at a refrigerator, okay, this is a little technical stuff, but that’s what you got me here for the refrigeration cycles kind of inefficient. You’re using electricity to run a compressor that moves refrigeration to the cold wall of the refrigerators is called the evaporator. And that cold wall makes cold air that cold air then makes your food cold. What’s air, it’s an insulator it doesn’t really want to you know cool things very well to heat things very well. So here’s one of my favorite Harris tricks and we talked about making ice Nam I 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’re going to buy an icemaker and this is going to be a little tabletop icemaker that sits on top of your table. It’s like the size of two toaster ovens. Okay, put together. I have been using a tabletop icemaker since about 2007 on a daily basis at work. It’s for ice for my soda drinks that I drink during the day. Hey, my phone’s ringing. I run the thing in the back of my pickup truck, often an inverter when I drove through the country I went around the country a few times in my younger life and I was a camper and a pickup truck and everything. And I had this thing in the back of the pickup truck running off the inverter as I was driving Make an Ice and every two hours I pull over and pull the ice out of thing and put it into my my cooler. So I’ve used some mobile I’ve used some stationary I use them for my own soda drinks. And they work very well they will hold they will make about 25 pounds of ice a day so about a pound of ice an hour and they hold about two hours with ice over two hours ago MTM. So here’s the thing. The technical thing was an icemaker you go electricity moving the compressor making refrigerant cold and it goes to the condenser which 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 and drop into a storage area and if they melt, they melt into the water that’s making more ice cubes so it’s saving the energy so the coldness is preserved. You then take this ice out of the icemaker and you put it into your ice chest or a five day cooler, and 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, then it has ice floating in it. That is the fastest way. And best way to keep stuff cold, have a bit of cold water in the bottom of the ice that’s floating, floating the bottom, your stuff that needs to stay really cold, you put it in a Ziploc bag and you put it in the ice water. And the stuff that does not need to be so cool, you’d have it on top of the stuff that’s sitting in the ice water. So your containers of yogurt go in the water at the bottom of your milk carton sits in the little bit of water, and your hot dogs are sitting on top of the milk jug, just keeping cool. Because it’ll be about 32 degrees in there.

You know at one time I was a construction worker and there’s nothing that keeps your guys motivated like no one they can have a cold beer at the end of the day when they’re done. Yep. And if you take a warm six pack, because that’s all you get your hands on, and you put it in the refrigerator, it takes a day, I got a long time to get cold. And it was just a joke. And nobody ever technically measured it. And I know you’re the technical guy. But we had a joke that beer dumped in ice water gets cold and 6.2 minutes and it was pretty damn close to accurate. It got cold really, really fast, much faster and sit in the refrigerator. In fact, if

you if you take your beer can and you spin it in the ice, you move it around in chicken round in the ice water. It’ll get cold in about three minutes. There’s actually little things out there to cool your can of coke in about two minutes. And it’s ice. It’s ice water is actually if you want to get really good it’s way you make ice cream. You take ice and salt and water and then you spin your coke can in the mixture of ice salt and water. And what you’re doing is the ice makes the ice makes the water melt. Sorry. The ice lowers the freezing point of the water mixture to zero. That’s how we got zero degrees Fahrenheit. The definition is ice in a solution of saltwater. Okay, that’s how Fahrenheit Mr. Fahrenheit, defined zero degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, so that works really, really good. I saltwater saltwater Nice.

So we make ice cream. Ice cream makers, you’d

rock salt tile, you make ice cream. That’s exactly right. So there’s little little point.

So let me ask you a question here on the this little icemaker thing. Yeah. How long can you run that off of you know, your inverter setup thing like that? I mean, you say it works well. But I mean,

I’ll tell you exactly. My ice maker measure just last night just for the show. Okay, just confirm it. Again, it’s drawn 120 watts. Okay, so your again, your car is going to have to be idle 120 Watts is about 10 amps from a DC current from the car battery 12 volts times 10 amps is 120 watts. And so 10 amps off the car battery would suck down your car battery to nothing dead in about two to three hours. So that’s why you got to keep your car idling. In fact, if you just had the icemaker running, you might build I believe car for half hour, turn it off for a half hour idle your car for a half hour, turn it off for a half hour. That’ll work pretty good.

And also point out to people like what Steve’s giving you here you can you guys got to start like leveraging things for yourself in certain ways. So if you’re thinking to yourself, you know, I’d like to have a 4500 watt decent generator, you can get it for a few $100. Think of how much gasoline you could store for half of that. And then use the other part to buy the inverter. I do have one big tip for people with gas cans if you’re buying the ones from the store and all because that’s what you can get or you can afford Fine. Get yourself a daggone nozzle long enough so you can dump the fuel from the can into the car because the daggone nozzles they sell with the cancer they Steve a lot of gas tanks, it’s almost impossible to pour the gas into it directly into the car gas tank because they have these little nozzles now they’re about 40 feet on top. I do a four inch nozzles.

Yeah, I can do all in fact, 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 but people wheeling around 800 gallon $800 generators and they only had five gallons of gas for them. Thank

you got a 30 or $40,000 car.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and this idiot was quoted and start to show his drive around looking for a generator. Well good luck. Do you got fired generator and you can’t find gas in your burning gas? Gas trying to find it and it’s just ridiculous.

He’s still you know, and then I’ve actually seen something worse. I think I’m almost afraid to tell you this. I’m afraid the top of your head is gonna come off. One guy on the news, siphoning gas out of his car to put his generator

Yeah. Oh, okay. There we go. That’s real, that’s really intelligent.

Well, I think it’s just because people don’t think about this stuff in advance. You know, they just don’t they don’t want through it before they’re faced with a situation. So I’m sitting there I’m at a gas my generator. I think I’m going to kill my family if I don’t keep the food cold, knowing you’re watching there, you know, and I just think that’s how people think,

Mel, your wife’s gonna kill you if you don’t keep the food. Yeah, yeah. When? Okay, now the icemaker again, this whole show is about telling you what I have used for years. And it’s telling you how to use it in your situation and how you might be able to use and have used it. I’m also enabling you, which doesn’t mean I’m just saying okay, go find the icemaker on the on the winds. Okay. The icemaker used to be at Home Depot. In fact, it might be in the Home Depot in the south are about $169. I have the icemakers listed on solar 123 four.com. Right now, there’s 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 say oh, that’s it, I’ve seen that at my hardware store, you go down to your hardware store, you can buy it, but I’m gonna enabling you. And again, anything we talked about during the last hour or so regarding refrigeration or freezers is at solar 123 four.com. And if you want my free family preparedness class that I’ll put a link up there to that as well. But guess what, I’ve done it again, I’ve run out of time. So I have what we’re going to do and not what the next step we’re going to talk about on the next show the next day that you’re going to listen to, it’s going to be about your TV, how to power your TV, whereas the 3442 or 12 venture or 60 incher how to, you know power everything else off your inverter, your cell phone, your satellite dish, your radio on, we’ll talk about recharging double A batteries, and we’ll give you the infinite source of double A batteries. And so stay tuned and listen for that. It’s going to be the next show tomorrow.

Yeah, I’m talking about I talked him into IT guys just go ahead and knock this out. This is so topical. And this is so spot on for a lot of people right now. And a lot of people are focused on it. And let’s face it, it’s going to be hot for quite a few more months and hurricane storms for quite a few months. We’re going into hurricane season. We’re not out of tornado season yet. We’re out of like the part where I like hide once a week at least. But we’re not out of that. So we’re going to stick right this with this. I want to point out one thing about the portable icemaker for people. It’s not a 12 volt device, he uses the inverter like he just told everybody how to set it up. So if you buy one of these, you can sit it in your house, start using it right now. And when you have like company over and you wipe out all the ice in the freezer, it’s a nice additional thing and it’s a constant source of ice. And so I think I’m gonna pick one of these off.

Okay, Jack, I mean, tell you what, if you don’t like it, I’ll buy it off your jack. Okay.

What I like is you have the like the tan one and the black one and I like black. So I’m gonna get a black one.

I mean, it’s really a Harris best practice. I’m not BS in you, I’m not telling you to buy it just to buy it. I’m saying look at the whole refrigeration cycle. Okay, it’s a lot more efficient to make ice directly from a refrigerant than to take the ice and put it on your food than it is to run a refrigerator. And so I mean gift these five that you see him that come from a Google called five day coolers, and some are called Seven Day coolers. They’re thick as hell, okay, they want you can go to Home Depot and get some two inch foam. And you can get some liquid nails, you can you can glue the foam to the side of the cooler with liquid nails. And you can have a 14 day cooler. Or you can throw your sleeping bag on top of it and it’ll stay even colder. Okay, you guys get the principle what I’m talking about here?

Yeah, definitely, it just comes down to like you said, what cools better air or water and ice and if you’re in cold air, they literally lose wrap up with this thought, right? So if I give you like a thin shirt and a thin pair of pants and all and you’re standing out and it’s 32 degrees outside, you’re not happy? No, but you’re probably a long way away from hypothermia. If I take a 55 gallon drums will happen with water and then stack ice into like a big giant cold glass of ice water and submerge your ass in there. Unless you’re a highly trained navy seal that’s learned all these techniques to wall off parts of your body and germs generate heat. You’re probably not far from going to the emergency room for hypothermia or ended up dead. And that tells us all we needed to know about the display cooling with air and cooling was water and ice.

Okay, everyone, I’ll be back tomorrow. Listen for it. Alright folks,

who was that this has been Jack spear co today along with Steven Harris help you figure out how to live that better life that sounds good to us. Or even if they do.

http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/harris-on-blackout-1