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To: moovova; Hardens Hollow

A pressure cooker will of course work, but in an emergency situation when you don’t have your regular stove top and power is out, a pressure cooker needs steady heat to do its thing and your method of cooking without power may not give you that steady heat. Plus, having several methods to cook beans means one should work if another doesn’t.


123 posted on 08/29/2015 6:59:20 AM PDT by Marcella (CRUZ; Prepping can save you life today.)
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To: Marcella

“...having several methods to cook beans means one should work if another doesn’t.”

Exactly. Redundancy is a good thing. It’s just like ensuring you have water. A person should have several ways to provide water when the “faucet” doesn’t work anymore...rain collection, filtering, disinfecting it by boiling or chemicals, etc.


126 posted on 08/29/2015 7:11:57 AM PDT by moovova
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To: Marcella
What to do when your clean water supply runs low and/or is depleted. Ponds, streams, puddles, downspouts have to be filtered and purified. Within 6 months regular household bleach will lose 20-25% loss of effectiveness. In the ensuring weeks/months your bleach will lose even more of its effectiveness. You will need bleach for other disaffecting purposes also.

So one cannot store too much bleach. There are many internet sites that set forth the mixing of granular Calcium Hypochlorite and water to make just the amount you would need for a few weeks. Therefore no need to stockpile a fading expiring resource.

How to Make Chlorine Bleach
First off, liquid chlorine bleach is a solution made from mostly water and 3-6% Sodium Hypochlorite. This homemade variety is made from Calcium Hypochlorite which you can easily find as “pool shock” at your pool-supplier store or Walmart. Both are used throughout the world for water purification and are the main chemicals in standard household cleaning products.

THE BENEFIT OF CALCIUM HYPOCHLORITE
The major benefit of using Calcium Hypochlorite over Sodium Hypochlorite is shelf life. Calcium Hypochlorite (pool shock) is sold in a solid granular form and has a 10 year shelf life when stored in a cool, dark place. This will easily meet your long-term storage needs.

The other benefit is the amount of available chlorine. The concentration of chlorine is much higher with Calcium Hypochlorite. For example, a small 1-pound bag of calcium hypochlorite can disinfect up to 10,000 gallons of drinking water. That’s around 5 gallons/day for one person for 5 1/2 years! Not bad for only 1 lb of granules.

To make a chlorine bleach solution using calcium hypochlorite, here are some formulas I got from the Army Technical Bulletin entitled, “SANITARY CONTROL AND SURVEILLANCE OF FIELD WATER SUPPLIES” (TB MED 577).

From the Army manual, to make a concentrated chlorine solution that you can use for disinfecting water (or to be used in maintaining a clean and sanitary living environment), you’ll want to use calcium hypochlorite that has around 70% available chlorine.

If you’re buying pool shock, on the back of the bag it will tell you what percentage of chlorine is available. The one I use is called “Zappit 73 Pool Shock, it is pure calcium hyphochlorite that contains up to 73% available chlorine and sells for around $5 for a 1lb bag.

To make the homemade chlorine bleach solution, you’ll need to do the following:
• Mix 2 level Tablespoons of Calcium Hypochlorite to 3 cups of water.

After you’ve made your stock of chlorine solution, you’ll want to follow the formula from the Army Technical Bulletin in determining how much of the above stock chlorine solution you’ll need for your desired number of gallons of water to be disinfected. *Note: I’ve updated the formula to calculate the same concentration that household bleach has. If you have questions, fire me an email and I’ll be more than happy to explain the math.

mL of stock chlorine required = (desired concentration (mg/L)*number of gallons to be treated)/18.12

The desired concentration refers to how much chlorine in mg/L you want the disinfected water to have. A recommended amount is 7 mg/L of concentration. This equates to adding 8 drops of household liquid bleach to 1 gallon of water (the recommended amount when disinfecting water with household bleach).

Given these amounts, if you wanted to disinfect 1 gallon of water with the homemade chlorine solution, the formula would be as follows:

(7*1)/18.12

This equates to .38mL or 8 drops of the concentrated solution per gallon of water. Just like normal household bleach!

So the 3 step process is as follows:
1. Place 8 drops of homemade chlorine bleach in 1 gallon of water
2. Let stand for 30 min
3. If water is still cloudy, repeat steps until clear; otherwise it is ready to drink

Keep in mind, that once the homemade chlorine bleach is made it will follow the same shelf-life limitations as standard household liquid bleach. So be sure to only make amounts you will be using within that time frame.


144 posted on 08/29/2015 10:53:18 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen (When the going gets tough--the Low Information President Obie from Nairobi goes golfing/fundraising)
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To: Marcella

I bought a thermal cooker that you heat for a few minutes and then put in a thermal holder that keeps them hot for hours. I hope this cooks beans.


229 posted on 08/30/2015 4:35:38 PM PDT by goosie
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