Tag: Energy

The Best Way to Cut Firewood to Length

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Reviewing the Mingo Ultimate Firewood Marker As much as I love cutting firewood, I hate measuring and marking firewood. Yet, I’m obsessed about a neat, orderly stack of firewood. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think? So I started searching for the easiest, quickest, most efficient way to mark firewood. My goal was to put away my measuring tape and chalk and get on with the cutting. What I found was the Mingo Ultimate Firewood Marker. This plastic tool uses a can of inverted, landscape paint to accurately mark your cut points at 14″, 16″, 18″, and 20″-24″. It really is handy. Here’s the scoop: PROS: Fast Accurate Works in snowy / wet conditions No measuring tape CONS: A little pricey

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Mother Nature Doesn’t Care That It’s Cold

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Nature doesn’t care that you’re cold.  Nature doesn’t care that you can’t feel your toes.  When it’s time for a tree to fall, it falls.  When it’s time for three to fall, that happens too.  And unless you want to try to work around them for the rest of the Winter, clearing them up can’t wait until Spring. Today we work in twenty degree temps to split the biggest rounds from the biggest tree.  On the upside, we completely filled up not only all of our firewood bins, but stacked three pallets about four feet high.  Gettin’ it done, even when we don’t want to do it.  And walking the path.

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Generator Transfer Switch – Part 2

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In part two of this series on wiring a house for use with a generator Mountain State Prepper takes us through the hookup process. Wiring home service to incorporate a manually switched generator is not rocket science.  But it’s not without risk either.  Remember, you’re dealing with sufficient power to cause permanent injury or death if you don’t know what you’re doing, or if you’re not careful.  This is NOT an instructional video; but merely the way MSP did it.  Do your research.  If you’re not comfortable taking on a project like this, hire a professional. With that said, I hope you find this post helpful.  Please like/reblog, and please subscribe to our YouTube channel to get more videos on

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Generator Transfer Switch – Part 1

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Mountain State Prepper shows us how he wired his home so he can safely use his generator to power (some of) his house’s circuits in the event of a power outage.  Whether you’re facing a 24 hour outage, or it lasts five days or more (as happened to us just a couple of years ago), electricity can be the difference between riding it out in relative comfort or being miserable until the lights come on.  This is even more true if you have small children.  Trust me. Reliance Controls Transfer Switch Kit Amprobe AM-510 Commercial/Residential Multimeter Generac 5940 GP6500 Generator Wiring home service to incorporate a manually switched generator is not rocket science.  But it’s not without risk either.  Remember,

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