Doing The Apocalypse Shuffle: Southern Prepper Adventure Fiction of Survival Grid Down (Old Preppers Die Hard Book 2) (4 page)

A simple method for getting water out of a deep well without electricity is shown below.

Attach a rope to the PVC pipe and lower the bucket down the 4 to 6 inch well shaft

and let it sink into the water.  The rubber flapper will act like a foot valve and rise up against the wires when it hits the water.  This will allow the water to enter the

pipe.  When you start to pull it up, the weight of the water will push the rubber flapper down against the reducer and seal the bottom of the bucket.

Another way to do this is:

From the inside, the valve looks like this. Notice the rubber flapper is covering the holes in the cap but is still a good way from the edge.

Here’s the outside view of the valve. You can use a nut with a nylon insert so you don’t  lose parts down the well.

Test the valve by filling the sink with water and slowly forcing the end cap into the water. This flapper valve works by uncovering the holes slightly when water pressure from the bottom is applied. In practice, the weight of the finished well bucket is enough to open the valve.

When you lift up, the weight of the water inside the cap causes the rubber flap to close and seal off the holes. Here you can see as I lift the cap out of the sink that there’s water staying inside the cap.

“That sounds like a great idea, Farley, how much gas do you think is in that tank?” Jeremy asked.

“I have no idea, Charlie should know and they probably have one of those long square wooden sticks with calibrations on it to figure out what it’s holding exactly. That gas won’t stay good forever and lots of times you can get water in those kinds of underground fuel tanks from condensation I have heard but unless Charlie knows how to determine that, I have no idea.” Farley declared pondering just how long they would have access to that precious non-renewable commodity.

“Oh, by the way Becky, Charlie and I cut us a side deal on the gas for my van and to fill up your car so don’t worry about that. I am trading him some cans of dehydrated Sweet and Sour pork of all things for Miss Feng’s birthday next week. That is our big secret and she can’t find out about any part of that deal or Charlie will have our hides. As far as she knows we paid some cash and barter for the gas so we will just leave it that and say nothing further if she ever brings it up. Now back to our list. When you get back to where you were staying, grab anything and everything you might find useful. Normally I would say get the bed linens and towels, etc. but it looks like we got enough of that sort of thing around here already. Uh, wait a minute, Becky, do you have something special that you need to be adding to my list?” Farley asked, regarding her.

“I don’t know yet Farley, I am still thinking on it. What are you hinting at anyway? Oh, I get it, feminine products. You’re right I will be out soon; you think they had some in the store here?” Becky asked.

“I imagine they might have had some in stock but certainly not an aisle full like a drug store or something. Ask Miss Feng about that and I will keep it mind if I run across any. I can’t think of nothing else in that cottage you need then except collecting everything that you brought with you. I think we have pretty much everything we need right here but for the hell of it Jeremy, remind me to lend you my linesman pliers so that you can cut the cords off any electrical appliance in there. You can strip the insulation off them cords later and harvest the copper wire so I can show you how to make some animal snares out of that easily replaceable item. That reminds me, we might have us a raccoon when we get back but I doubt it. They are mostly nocturnal creatures so it’s rather doubtful. Could be we might get a muskrat or nutria but that trap hasn’t been set too long.” Farley said.

“I told Fong about our trap Farley, and he told me that we weren’t going to catch anything, he even laughed about you saying you could do it. We are going to show him big time how good of a trapper you are ain`t we, Farley?” Jeremy said confidently with a grin he was going to show up his new friend.

“That remains to be seen; you can’t just set one trap and hope for success. That’s the thing I am going to teach you boys, you need to set out many traps to insure even a little bit of success by increasing your chances of a possible catch. Besides, I know more theory of how to do it than actual continuous tried and true practice. I am pretty rusty and have probably forgotten a lot of what I used to know. Yes, I have indeed trapped and snared animals many times but that was many years ago. However, I remember a story my buddy Buckshot Hemming told me a long time ago. He was a commercial fur trapper, which means he did trapping for a living and has years more experience than me knowing the ways of animals and how to set traps and snares. Now commercially manufactured traps and snares can get expensive and one year when he wanted to extend his trap line he spent the summer carving figure 4 deadfall trap triggers and hauling rocks and logs to likely places for the winter trapping season in Dakota, I think it was. Well, I forget how many he actually set or his number of successes per trap he had but it was pretty dismal and he said he would never do that again and couldn’t believe all the time and effort he had put into it. Now listen to me, Jeremy, and have some patience before you get your hopes up too much and get discouraged with the trapping ways I will be teaching you. That story came from a man who was well versed and experienced with trapping a specific territory and an old woodsman that had been doing that sort of thing since he was young enough to run a trap line to bring in income.” Farley said deflating the boy’s ego and his confidence in his new found friend’s trapping skills for the moment.

“But you did say that he had successes, you just got to set a bunch of them to increase your chances right, Farley?” The boy said looking for further hope and clarification on the mastery of such skills.