1072 – Keep things running: Tom talks Power Out

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of Screw the Commute, Tom Antion focuses on power outage and disaster preparedness, prompted by a major storm impacting large parts of the U.S. He emphasizes that most people assume disasters won’t affect them—until they do—and urges listeners, especially entrepreneurs, to prepare in advance to protect their safety, comfort, and businesses.
Tom walks through power-preparedness options from least expensive to most expensive:
• Basic preparedness starts with stocking a variety of batteries and using rechargeable battery stations placed in multiple areas of the home.
• Small solar panels can keep phones and battery banks charged during outages.
• Battery backups (UPS systems) protect computers and networking equipment from power spikes and allow safe shutdowns or limited continued operation.
• Gasoline generators provide significant power but come with serious safety warnings: never run them indoors, never connect them directly to a breaker box, and be aware of noise and security risks. Proper electrician-installed cutoffs are essential.
• Battery-powered generators are safer, silent, usable indoors, and often rechargeable via solar panels, making them ideal for extended outages.
• Whole-house solar systems with large battery banks offer high-end resilience, though users must still manage power loads carefully.
• Alternative energy options include small hydro generators (if near running water), small wind turbines, and inverters that convert battery DC power to household AC power.
He then covers heating and cooling during outages:
• Wood stoves, fireplaces, rocket stoves, and propane heaters (such as Buddy heaters) can provide reliable heat when used safely.
• Electric heaters consume large amounts of power, but electric blankets, heated gloves, and hand warmers are efficient alternatives.
• For cooling, fans—especially battery-operated or DC camping fans—use minimal power.
Tom stresses the importance of carbon monoxide detectors, especially when using propane heaters indoors.
Finally, he explains how even large, professionally installed generators can’t power an entire home and why prioritizing critical systems (refrigeration, limited lighting, communication, and workspace) is essential. He closes by warning that waiting until a storm hits is too late, as supplies sell out quickly, and reminds listeners that preparedness is crucial not just for comfort, but for business continuity and financial survival.

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Episode 1072 – Power Out
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1072 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about Power Out. The reason I'm thinking about this is because one of the biggest storms in history is blanketing the USA, and I just want to remind you about how you need to be prepared for this power wise and heating and cooling and all that kind of stuff. This is disaster preparedness that nobody ever thinks it's going to hit them and then it does. So let's talk about that and I hope you didn't miss episode 1071. That was how you can give away 4000 books and become successful is basically, I'm donating a lot of my books to the library, but it's a bigger it's a much bigger broad idea that I'm giving you in that episode about being successful. All right, let's see. Pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Pick up version 3.0. That's the latest. And check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school, IMTCVA.org, where you will save hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than going to a four year indoctrination camp they call college. Okay, now my school was certified to operate. I think it's been 13, 14 years now by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning.

[00:01:56] All right. Let's talk about when the power goes out, how you can be prepared for this. And I'm going to go from the least expensive to the most expensive. One thing you should always have is a bunch of batteries for whatever stuff you have. Triple A's, double A's, nine volts. There's some other ones. 123 A's I have for some of my flashlights and things like that. So get stock up with batteries. I actually have a two different areas in the house where I have battery stations where I'm charging batteries. I have spare batteries in case for some reason a tree fell on one end of the house. I could go to the other end and and get Ahold of my batteries. So. But at least have a battery station where you can charge stuff up, get rechargeables when you can. They're a little more expensive, but they save you in the long run. Okay, the next thing is small solar panels. They have these fold up solar panels that will charge up a battery bank or charge your phone. They're not very expensive. They vary in quality, so it's one of those things that you get what you pay for, but they're tiny, and then they can be just put out on your porch and keep your cell phone charged for you, or charge up a battery bank that'll keep other things going for you if your laptop and things like that.

[00:03:24] Now your computer should have battery backups on them. So I mean, that's just a safety thing for your computer anyway, if the electricity glitches or just, you know, cycles on and off, it doesn't spike to your computer. A lot of them have a conditioner that catches any kind of spikes and smooths it out before it hits your computer, and then your computer doesn't get lost in the middle of some important document that you've been working on and keeps running. And the bigger one you get, the longer your computer will run. And same thing for your internet connection. If the internet is available but your modem doesn't work well, where are you? See? So those are fairly inexpensive ways to be ready to protect your electronics and to keep going for at least for a little while, to shut them down properly if the the electricity goes out. All right. So the next thing would be a generator a gasoline generator. Now this has got a lot of warnings involved with these generators. Uh, first of all, never, ever, ever run it in your house. You'll die of carbon monoxide. It's okay with me if you open your garage door just above the height of one of these and have the muffler facing outside. And if you don't hang out in your garage, and you can close the door between your garage and your house, it's okay to keep it out of the elements a little bit.

[00:04:54] Or just put a big piece of plywood over top of it right Now, the other thing about generators, don't you ever, ever, ever with a capital V ever try to hook a generator into your breaker box? That is something that you could get arrested for. You could possibly kill one of the linemen working on the lines, trying to get your electricity back. So you never, ever, ever, ever do this. Except if you have what I have over in my garage. So I have a a mechanical cutout that cuts out my breaker box, but allows me to plug a generator in to run the garage. For me. That's where I have my deer meat and my freezers and stuff like that. So that's one way you can, but that has to be installed by an electrician that it's a cheap, mechanical way to safely run a gasoline generator and have it power your house or your, you know, your shed. Or in my case, the garage is separate, so that's okay. Okay, now the next one would be a battery operated generator. Totally safe to use in your house. You can charge it up before the electricity goes out with electricity. And many of them you can charge with solar power. So that's great because first of all, there's no noise involved. That's another bad thing about gasoline generators. They're going to make a lot of noise. Now, maybe the noise doesn't matter so much from bothering people from the noise.

[00:06:48] However, you know, I'm a self-defense expert and have seen some pretty nasty things in my day. If things are really, really bad and you're the only one that has electricity. And they hear that they can hear that generator from a mile away. Then people might come to you that you don't want coming to you. Okay. But anyway, that's, uh, gasoline generators, but the battery power generators are totally quiet. You can keep them inside. They don't make any kind of gas, and you can keep it charged up with electricity. And then if the electricity goes out, it'll run for so many hours, depending on how big it is and what kind of load you put on it. You don't have to worry about anybody hearing it or anything. Now people will see lights on in your place at night if you're not careful about that. If it's really, really bad and you live in a bad neighborhood and there's marauders and you know, I'm not trying to doom and gloom you. But these things happen all the time. But anyway, that's a way to get out of the gasoline part of it. Uh, it can run forever, pretty much depending on the load you put on it. If you have a solar panel attached to it and there you go. Okay, so jumping up, uh, quite a bit in money is having solar installed in your house. So you have these massive battery banks that can run stuff for you even if the power grid goes out.

[00:08:17] Even even doing that, you shouldn't try to run everything full blast, like air conditioning and electric heat and things like that. Now, if you happen to have gas heat, then you're not worried too much about the power being out other than the fans that blow the heat around. See? So that could be solar. Now some really off off beat ones would be. If you have a stream running very close to your house, you could put a little hydro generator in it and have constant power just from the stream running, unless it freezes over, and then you're stuck there. And if you're in a windy area, you could have a small wind turbine up. Now, I'm not in favor of wind. You know, all these gigantic towers that that are it takes 20 years for them to pay back. And in that time, they're they're broken and not generating any wind or wind power. So I'm not in favor of those. But if you had one or a couple in a, in a ranch or a, you know, a place where you have a lot of wind constantly, why not? You know, they're not that expensive for small ones. And another thing you should know what an inverter is. An inverter can take DC, which is like batteries, and change it into AC, which is like where you plug in a a, you know, your laptop or a toaster or, you know, or a coffee maker or something like that.

[00:09:50] Now you do a toaster and a coffee maker too much. It's going to drain your your battery in no time. But I keep a little one in my car, which I can stick into the cigarette lighter and have AC power. If I had to run an electric drill or something that only took electric. Um, or normal AC power like is in your house. I can run it from my car and you can get really big ones of these. I have a much bigger one in my hunting trailer back there. So those are, uh, things you can do from least expensive to most expensive. Now, let's talk about heating and cooling. Well, everybody's worried about staying warm in this latest storm that's coming across the country. So one thing is you could have a fireplace and wood, or you could have a wood stove, like I have, even though I don't have a wood stove or a fireplace that's usable. My podcast is right in front of the fireplace here, and you couldn't really use the fireplace. I got tons of firewood out there just in case. I could build a rocket stove, which just looked that up. If you see what rocket stoves are. Or a or a hobo stove to keep warm if I had to. You also could have electric heaters, but they take a lot of juice. So, um, so you're going to drain your power very quickly with electric heaters.

[00:11:17] But electric blankets don't take that much electric throws. They're very low wattage. So you could run them off an inverter if you had to hand warmers. You have electric ones that'll last quite a few hours. And if they're charged up before you need them, but you also have the ones that take the lighter fluid and they go for hours and hours and hours and they're really hot. It's just it's hard to get them started. But once you do, they last for a long time and they're super cheap. We also have a pair of battery operated gloves that'll they're really nice, I think. We use compressed press and within 30s there you have three levels of heat. They'll go on the lowest level. They'll go for almost a whole day, you know. So those are possible ways. Now for cooling. You'd want to have fans around. They don't take a lot of electricity and some are battery operated. Some are DC. A lot of the ones that are camping are DC like for tents and things like that. And propane is good. We have a gigantic like a three times as big as a normal propane jug sitting on my back porch with a with a hose that can come in to a buddy heater. Buddy heaters are one of the safest kinds. Now don't get ridiculous and just stick your, you know, sleep next to it with your head next to it or something. But they're, you know, considered usable indoors.

[00:12:53] They're so clean burning. So we have a buddy heater in in the living room that I can run the hose from the propane tank outside through a crack in the window into this buddy heater, and it'll heat hundreds of square feet, you know. So so those are possible. But if you were going to try to sleep with one of those, you'd want to have a carbon monoxide detector or couple of them running. So you you'd get, you know, notice if the concentration in where you're trying to sleep is too, too heavy. All right. So there's just a little bit of stuff to you know, any one of these things could save your butt in a, in a real bad situation weather wise or power out. I mean, even high winds take out power as much as ice and snow do, because the trees falling down on the power lines. See? So so it doesn't. You could be in a beautiful area that doesn't snow or get cold and still get high winds that knock down trees. See? So so being ready for this stuff can keep you going, keep you comfortable, and keep your food from going bad. That's another thing. See, we have a gas on the big building here on the retreat center. We have a gas natural gas powered, uh, whole house generator. But it's still not big enough to run everything in this whole house. This is just the main building is 7500ft².

[00:14:24] And, uh, so we've took sections of the house and the kitchen, refrigerator and freezer and things like that stove. Um, I don't even think we did the oven. The microwave will work, but not the main oven, because that just takes too much electricity. And then up in my master bedroom and down in my lower office and various plugs around the house work, but not the whole thing, because we have just this building alone has four heat pumps. Okay, um, I'm not even talking about my garage, which we have the portable generators over there. So, anyway, all this stuff is, uh, you have to think ahead of time, because if you go at the last minute, you can't find a portable generator anywhere now because they're all sold out. Plan ahead and be ready for this kind of stuff, especially if you're in an area that's prone to these things. And and we're not really prone to it. But I was still ready because it's it's too important to me to stay in business, okay? It's too much money on the line. All right. Well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Uh, do what you can now with this is you'll hear this like, after this big storm is over. But maybe you'll have learned your lesson. That boy, it could have been a lot easier on you had you prepared. All right, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.