My power just came back on today. Amazing levels of damage from the storm here in Virginia. Some homes are expected to be without power for another week or more. To add to that, every day the temps are in the mid 90s with 50% humidity. It's been miserable but a good learning experience. I need to build an outdoor camp shower and a latrine. Believe it or not, having those would have been a great luxury.
The following kits might be of interest to you. Scale to as many people/days as you are interested in. (Be careful, though, campingsurvival.com can be _very_ addictive)
Thanks for those links. I have the luggable loo thingy that fits a 5-gallon bucket and the doodie bags. I just need a place where they can be used outside privately and during bad weather. I rigged another 5 gallon bucket with a spigot and a water hose for a quick shower. That worked OK for the most part, still needs more privacy though.
I feel like I'm missing something. Why is a portable shower preferable to a cold shower in the bathroom?
edit (since I can't reply below) I didn't realize portable showers were commonly heated, and didn't think about the possibility of gas-powered heating. That makes sense.
Admittedly, in 100+ degree weather, a cold shower is pretty darn nice. But in the morning, when you just want to get clean (at least for me - maybe this is a personal preference) nothing beats a hot shower + soap + shampoo.
The advantage of the gas powered shower, of course, is that you can use a lot more water than you can fit in a solar shower bag. The _downside_ of those gas showers (I have a coleman one) is the zillion warnings telling you not to use them indoors. Maybe if you had really good ventilation (or could run the water hose from the outside?) then you could use your internal shower stall + Hot water from outside?
This is where all the people who have Solar Powered Hot water heaters must be chuckling - though, in a broad power outage, I don't know if they have pressurized water in all locations right away. And definitely not always water that you can trust without boiling.
That's the other thing that almost _no_ people are prepared for - Day 3+ without water for hygiene (A lot of people have their emergency drinking supplies, but never even think about what they would do if they can't flush/shower - things get grim pretty quickly)
My neighborhood is still out (upper NW DC), which has been fun.
This is definitely the longest outage I've seen since living in the area (I actually don't think I've seen a power outage last more than a night in 12 years)
I lived in Charlotte, NC when Hurricane Hugo came through. IIRC we didn't have power for over a week, perhaps closer to 10 or 14 days. Our front yard and general neighbourhood looked like a battle ground. Trees and limbs were everywhere! It took several days for enough trees to be cleared to be able to get a car out to the main road.
The point of all this is that I feel your pain. At least it was cold during that time, so the fireplace got a lot of use and kept us warm. Hope your power is restored soon!
