by A.F., Survival Blog:
(Continued from Part 3. This concludes the article.)
After securing water and safety, climate control was my next concern. Prior to the storm, we had weather in the 80s and low 90s. Our home sits in a field along a north-to-south bearing. Morning sun isn’t too intense but the long evenings, lots of floor-to-ceiling windows and western exposure were making me nervous about getting the house cool enough to be comfortable in. I was also concerned about the potential for mildew to take hold given the humidity and lack of central air conditioning. Fortunately, the temperatures stayed mild and the humidity quickly dissipated.
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For the daylight hours, we placed box fans in a pair of the eastern facing windows pulling air in and a second pair of fans in the western windows pushing out with the blinds pulled down to the tops of the fans. After sunset, we reversed the western fans to blow the cooler night air into our bedroom. A pedestal-style oscillating fan was kept on anytime the generator was running to move air through the central portion of our house. After not having fans running the first day, it became an Easter egg hunt around the farm trying to find forgotten box fans in the various buildings for the second day. Our habit became to turn off the generator around ten.
I really missed my ceiling fan the first night. On day two I remembered buying a pair of 12-volt clip fans at Advance Auto several years ago for a situation such as this. Given that I have become slack in keeping written records of where different preps are stored, it took me half an hour to find them. The fan cords are terminated with what I still call male cigarette plug ends. Digging through my 12-volt miscellaneous box I found a pair of the female sockets that have wire leads terminated with alligator clamps. I took our bistro chairs at my brides’ suggestion, set them at the foot of our bed and clamped the fans on the upper cross bar of the back rest. Next, I placed a marine deep cycle battery on the floor between the chairs and attached the alligator clamps (Photo of night fan setup). The little fans pulled less than an amp each and the voltage of the battery dropped from 12.8 VDC to 12.3 over the first night. I noticed that with each nightly use, the battery’s voltage decreases lessened as did the time required to recharge the battery each day. Is there a benefit to exercising this type of battery?
Here is another bonehead confession, for the first two days I carried the heavy battery out to the generator to recharge. Only on day three did it occur to me that I had the bedroom circuit on the generator and it was wholly foolish to be carrying the battery in and out of the house when I could plug the charger in only feet away from the fan set up. Tunnel vision anyone? We slept comfortably with just a sheet while awaiting electrical service to be restored. After the power returned it took two full days for the central air to draw the humidity down to an unnoticeable level inside.
