How do you get ready for hurricane season?

Share any tips and tricks you’ve learned for getting your family, home or business ready.

I actually just finished a web site for my employer that compiled information from many different sources with the intent of helping people prepare for all aspects of tropical storms and hurricanes.  Hopefully it will assist people with avoiding personal injury, significant property damage and filing insurance claims.

http://www.preparedforhurricanes.com

The Insurance Companies are the best prepared.  They keep raising the rates based on the intense storm coverage in the media.  Somebody’s making a lot of money on hurricanes whether they come or not - and the middle class gets further squeezed.

The Republicans nationally learned how to make money off war.  At the state level the Republicans learned how to make money off hurricanes.

re: thanks your sharing.when the winter comes along with storm , i feel very bored because the winter the most difficult time for us.little jobs,lack of money for daily life and many things

Jim Collins - 10 May 2007 03:40 PM

How do you get ready for hurricane season?

Share any tips and tricks you’ve learned for getting your family, home or business ready.

Grab and Go Kit inventory and battery top off

There are some playful reminders on when to do some things. The State of Florida has your Drivers License and your vehicle tags expire on your birthday. That is a great way to remember to renew them. The local volunteer fire department asks us to change the battery in our smoke detectors (and dust them) when the clocks change. I am lax when it comes to checking my grab and go kit and recharging the batteries in it.

I built a rechargeable 12v battery pack from 5 (7) amp hour gel cells. It weighs about 30 Lbs. and is in a semi-rigid canvas bag with strap handles. Since the idea was to have a ready to go battery bag, I need to remember to top it off monthly. The batteries are in parallel. I know that “eddy currents” within the pack can discharge it as the slightly different charge states/ voltages within the pack take it to the lowest common voltage.  When I built it, I did not put blocking diodes on the negative leads, but I plan too.

To get back to the reminder event, I wanted a monthly event that would remind me when to charge up the big pack, the hand held radio batteries, the jumper box and mega-spotlight in the truck. I was going to pick a date, like the first or last day of the month but they did not seem significant enough. Then I decided I would do it on the night that my radio club meets. I set them up to charge when I get home from work, and charge them until I get back home from the club meeting. Not only am I reminded to charge up the batteries on meeting night, but I don’t forget to go to the club meeting!

Since I do a lot of radio support to non-profit events like marathons and bike races, I use one of 4 hand held radios. Keeping them in a grab and go kit makes it easy to find them and their accessories when I need them. But if there is not an event in a month, the hand held radios might not get charged. I now charge the radios along with the big battery pack on club night. That makes it a good time to inventory the bag contents to make sure all the radio accessories are still in there.

You can see some of the batteries I work with on http://www.freeradiobook.org in the “Solar Project 2009” book down load.  My next step is determining what size and specific type of blocking diode to use on the big homemade battery pack.

i use vusafe panels as as an alternative to plywood. it’s more effective, reliable and ultimately saves you money from buying countless panels of wood. plus they’re easy to put up and take down. the site to look at them is vusafe.com

wouldn’t be nice to have a concrete wall with round bars within it?
regards,
jessica
Simulation prêt

Thank god i’m in a place where there’s no hurricanes. We get a lot of typhoons though.

Regards,
Garry
Placement financier

This is a very interesting find indeed. I will have to check it out when I get the time though. Thanks for the nice tips.

Jessica I was thinking the same thing… how could hurricane penetrate concrete easily? And the bars is a good idea as well.

Joe; Regards,
Pepper Spray

These storms are very dangerous. You definitely have to be prepared. The best tip is to get out of there. The winds are not going to hurt you but the flood water will.
Communication Skills