#Lightsoutchallenge - Equipment
I do challenges for myself where for an extended period of time I will go without gas, electricity or water from the mains supplies. This helps me to work out if my preps are ready in these areas should any or all of these supplies fed into my home be cut off for whatever reason. There are and have been times when the water has been shut off unexpectedly and unannounced for example, and this hasn't affected me personally because I have my preps in this area to fall back on. The same goes for electricity and gas.
But as it's a rare thing that these things do go down and when they do it's not usually for a very long time, it's therefore a good idea to turn them off yourself and go for a period of time without them. If your preps are not on the scale needed or if there is just any other sort of problem with the preps you've put together, it should come up during this period, then you can evaluate what went wrong and fix it. It's a good idea to makes notes of your experience, then you can reflect on what went wrong and why. So in my example I went without lights in this challenge and I found out that my Goal Zero Nomad 7 panels are just not enough for my current needs, I will need to get a minimum of a 20watt solar panel. I did this challenge in summer, so in winter it would be a lot harder to maintain the charge on my lights I used if I replicate the conditions in winter.
If you are going to check your preps in this or a similar way you could be overwhelmed turning off electricity and gas and water all at once, so just decide what area you'd like to test and do that one area. Then once you've done them all and plugged the problems with your setup in each area, then you could try 24 hours completely off grid and then if that all goes well keep increasing the duration. You'll find more aspects to fix the longer the time is that you use your preps.
This is a very important thing to do checking and using your preps because if an emergency does happen you are not going to be able to fix the problems that come up and should problems come up during a real emergency there is the potential for them to have a lot more serious consequences. If you practice and use your preps then you'll be in a much better position, you'll know what to do, how your preps perform and you'll be a lot calmer and better equipped to deal with any unforeseen problems only a real emergency is going to show.
Be safe and be prepared.
Geordie Prepper
