worked more on my friend's shipping container today. I didn't get a picture at end of day. By end of day we had plywood walls on the cieling and one wall.

He bought a buch of 4x8 x 3" poly iso foam sheets years ago and we're finally getting to use them. Note the walls are 3-1/2" thick and the poly iso is 3". He placed 1/2" alumimum backed foam against the metal walls as a thermal break.

Tomorrow we will finish plywood on the right hand wall and lay poly iso foam down on the floor. I ripped a handful of 2x4s today down to 3" to support the plywood floor at the seams.

He's still got to close off the wall at the far end. The last 8ft of the shipping container will become a bathroom next year, but winter is coming here and we're just trying to get him squared away for when it gets cold a month from now.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UkEEybifIAE

Another Australian preserving jar comparison

Got floor insulated in the shipping container today. This foam is rigid enough to be a floor but there are variations in thickness between panels. I ripped the 2 by’s you see to be 3-1/8”. We screwed them to the floor and screwed plywood onto them. We also shot expanding foam around the foam blocks as we were placing the plywood.

yesterday, one of our local guys drove to the bottom of a meshtastic tower and was able to use bluetooth from his phone to update the firmware and convert it to meshcore without climbing the 300ft tower. That's the C50D repeater in the bottom center. It's pink because it's new and the other one that was converted yesterday is just north of it.

The network is growing.

For reference this screenshot is 100miles 160km wide

You all may recall a few weeks ago I put a repeater on a grain elevator at 130ft (60m). It is hearing about 10miles 16km around with one outlier at 42km. Bear in mind these sample pings are transmitted from inside a car moving at 60mph or 80mph on interstate 20 at 4ft tall. There's a lot of flutter. Stationary repeater to repeater traffic goes much further.

All of this is done with 160mW solar powered radios.

A couple of textbook examples.

There are also (flowing) artesian wells where once you drill into the formation, the head is enough to free flow.
Those aren’t common and likely quite rare where one would have enough head to omit using a pump.

What would you do if your cell phone and internet stopped working during an emergency? How would you get updates or keep in touch with family?

I thought this might be worth sharing. It's called “Emergency Communication Equipment Inventory: Could You Stay Connected During a 14-Day Emergency?” and covers different emergency communication options and how to find out if your backup methods would actually work when you need them.

There's a free printable Emergency Communication Equipment Checklist included, along with links to other free preparedness guides and printable checklists covering food, water, first aid, backup power, and more.

Hope you find this useful!

https://preppingcommunities.com/emergency-communication-equipment-inventory/

Additionally, my sister has hired a guy to clear 2 acres across the street for her house. Gotta clear it enough to do a PERC test for septic. I'll get photos as the work progresses.

Her plan at the moment is a walk in basement into the side of a hill. The basement will be flanked by 8ft wide storage areas that are covered by a concrete porch. So we've got to dig into the hill 10ft deep.

At this moment the plan is ICF walls EVERYWHERE... in my house the outside of the basement is 8" concrete blocks. But ICF straight blocks replace 6 CMU blocks. Once you pay $2.50 a block and pay a guy $2.50 to lay it, 6 x $5.00 is $30... and ICF is $25.

The main floor of the house may end up being from SuperFloorUSA. It's a steel joist system that will hold the concrete floor and not need shoring during the pour. I've mentioned several times before that my house costs $350 a year to heat and cool. With the additional thermal mass of a concrete floor in her house, she may end up with even less energy needed.

More about sis.... We are looking at building a pole shed like the one I recently built that will cover two shipping containers, likely 40ft wide and 50ft long. That way she can open the doors of the 40ft shipping container and still have a roof over it. They'll either run power to that pole shed or we'll do a temporary solar setup, haven't decided yet. She and her husband will move their camper up here to live on site while building.

Rural South Carolina hardware store.