Cold Truths Of A Fragile Grid

The kind of cold that gets into your bones also gets into your house—and reveals every weakness you didn’t know you had. After nearly three weeks of single digits, iced-in streets, and sold-out heaters, we put our prep plans under a microscope and turned frustration into a blueprint for resilience. From window drafts that felt like open sashes to the moment an axe, not a shovel, finally cracked the ice, we share the simple fixes and smarter upgrades that kept the heat in and the bills down.

We zoom out to the grid that’s supposed to keep us warm and ask hard questions about capacity, reliability, and the growing power appetite of data centers. Cities love the jobs and tax base, but the electrical truth is messy: massive new loads on an aging network, and policies that increasingly require facilities to drop off the grid during brownouts so neighborhoods keep the lights on. It’s a practical look at infrastructure, not a rant—how underground lines saved parts of the Outer Banks, why Nashville struggled for days, and what that means for your home plan when storms stack up.

Back at the house, we map out a layered approach: low-cost weatherstripping and window film that pay off immediately, safe use of propane heaters as a bridge, and longer-term upgrades like pellet stoves and crawl space encapsulation to stabilize temperature and humidity. We talk through stocking strategies before shelves go bare, the real limits of heat pumps in deep cold, and how to turn a harsh winter into a dry run that exposes gaps without becoming a crisis.

If you want a practical, no-drama guide to staying warm, cutting waste, and planning around a fragile grid, this conversation is your field manual. Subscribe for more common-sense prepping, share this with a friend who’s freezing right now, and leave a review to tell us the one winter fix you swear by.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Brutal Cold Reality
• 2:20 Outer Banks Storm And Power Resilience
• 3:55 Data Centers And A Fragile Grid
• 7:10 Backup Power And Public Priority
• 9:26 Richmond’s Ice, Access, And Supply Strain
• 13:01 Heating Gear Shortages And Timing
• 15:01 Home Weak Spots And Quick Fixes
• 18:01 Long-Term Upgrades And Crawl Space
• 21:01 Prepping Mindset And Dry Run Lessons
• 23:41 Stocking Propane And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:17

To the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, where prepping doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Coming to you from a well-defended off-grid compound high in the mountains. Coming to you from his Florida room in Richmond, Virginia. Neither off-grid nor well-defended, unless you count as chickens and cats, here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Hey y'all, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast, February the 1st, 2026. And as my father would say about this cold weather, let me clean this up a little bit. No, I can't see that one. Here's this one. It's colder than a well digger's ass. That's about the least profanity-laced analogy or weather description that my father would provide in a situation like this. Yeah, this cold. I'm about over it. I'm a pretty tough guy when it comes to weather. It really doesn't affect me but so much. But maybe the older I get, the more it affects me. And this bone-chilling cold, this is just this is the cold that just goes right through you. And just like I said, just kind of settles in your bones. And I'm over it. I'll be the first one to say, I'm done. It can warm up a little bit, but unfortunately, it's not. We're looking at at least another week to 10 days at night of single digits in the teens and low 20s. For a high, I think later on this week we might hit 45 degrees. I'm not sure. I don't know what to do with myself. But the big thing is that it has been so cold for so long. I'm not sure if it's any record or anything, but it has to be close to a record here in central Virginia, not just single, single digits every now and again at night. But as far as a prolonged cold, this has got to be getting up there for a record. I've been in Virginia since 88, and I don't recall a cold spell like this. It may have been, but I certainly don't recall. So let's just go ahead and get right into what I want to talk about tonight. So this is week three. So we're starting week three of these sub-freezing temperatures, Arctic blast, whatever the heck you want to call it. We dodged a bullet. The outer banks in a lot of North Carolina got absolutely hammered. Eight, 10, 12 inches in the outer banks, plus the wind coming off the coast. If you've seen some of the videos, it's like a hurricane with snow. And one saving grace, I guess, there's a lot of folks in North Carolina that kept their power, especially in the outer banks. And I attribute that to that area obviously is prone to hurricanes and tropical storms. And over the years, the electrical infrastructure, the grid has been buried underground, like a lot of cities on the East Coast, Florida. You guys know that as well as anybody else. So there's no power lines necessarily to knock down. Trees can fall, but they're not going to run into any power lines. The power lines that are above ground, the power poles are these huge concrete structures that can withstand hurricane force winds, sustained winds for a long period of time. So if there's a saving grace, I guess is the fact that the folks in the outer banks have, for the most part, not lost power. Now, that is a very touristy part of the country. A lot of rental homes. So when it is off season and the dead of winter, the population down there is very, very, very small. Obviously, spring, summer, it shoots up tremendously, bumper-to-bumper traffic, getting in and out of the outer banks. A little too touristy for me, but you get the picture. So I was thinking about how frail or how fragile the infrastructure is or our electric grid infrastructure. And I was thinking today, all of these data centers, you can't surf the news and not run across a lot of states that are building these data centers as fast as they can put them up. And when any major company or corporation comes to a town or wants to come to a particular state or particular city or county, this is what normally happens. So they put out these bids. Hey, ABC Data Center is looking for a place on the East Coast. And then what happens, all these cities and counties, their development committees or economic development partners, reach out to this company and basically provide them a bribe, I'm sorry, incentives to build in their city. Okay, you guys won't have to pay personal property tax if that state has it. You don't have to pay it for 10 years. Here's a tax break. We'll do this, we'll do that. And it's kind of an incentive to bring that industry to that particular city. It'll provide jobs. And of course, then the city, if they're picked, they count that as a win. The new ABC 123 data center will employ 750 people from our town, and it's great. And then the people move in. Then you have to think about the infrastructure, the roads. Is it near an interstate? Are you going to need to build more schools, more utilities, that type of thing? So it's not, it's not very simple. It's a very long, drawn-out process. And the reason I bring that up is our electrical grid is archaic and well, well overdue for some sort of overhaul. Just like the infrastructure, the highway infrastructure, the bridges, bridges are falling apart in certain parts of the country. And the electrical grid is very, very fragile, very, very susceptible to cyber attack, physical attack, or just flat out breaking down. So I got to thinking about these data centers with the electrical grid being as fragile as it is. Where do these data centers get their electricity? They don't necessarily just plug into the grid, but I found out that that's exactly what they do. So if you have a city or a town and they don't necessarily have the finances to do a major upgrade to their grid, these huge data centers are going to put a stress on an existing grid that probably needs to be reworked anyway. So in researching somebody's data centers, if the power was to go out in the town where this data center is housed, a lot of these data centers have backups, dozens and dozens of diesel generators, thousands and thousands of battery banks, all sorts of different ways to keep them online in the event they lose their grid tie. I even read whether some states that in the event the power goes out or there's a brownout or an electrical infrastructure problem, the data centers are required to drop off the grid and go to their backup power. So Bobby Joe and Lindy Lu down the road don't get affected. Because you can imagine the amount of power and the amount of stress these data centers put on the grid that if there's a situation, the first person to lose power are going to be the people living around these data centers. And the data center potentially is still going to be tied into the grid. Some states are requiring these data centers to go to their backup. So any power that's available can be routed back to the public, which I think is an absolute great idea. And we can get, and we can talk for days about the data centers, the environmental impact, and all that stuff, but that's not what I want to talk about. So I was thinking about these data centers. Big huge draw on the power grid, a power grid that's already very fragile. But it's nice to know that in the event of some sort of grid failure, that they'll probably be on their own. So that's that's nice to hear. So as I think about the past two, two and a half weeks going on the third week, I think about the folks in the outer banks, I think about the folks still in Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee. They're going on week two, a lot of folks without power. And basically just winter in general, a lot of these winter storms and how this cold is really kind of set in for a while. And there are people still out there without power. They're going on two weeks without power. And these sub zero temperatures with the wind chill, it was negative five with the wind chill here last night and early morning today. And that's no joke. Like I said before, my house was built in 1959, so it's sturdy in a sense, but and I'll get to this in a second. I have found a couple weak spots, I guess, in the structure, a lot of drafty windows, drafty doors, drafty thresholds that I really wasn't aware of. So we talk about the storm and how the cold has set in. Here's a few things that I've noticed. Last Friday, just a few days ago, Friday morning, I went to Home Depot and they had restocked their propane heaters, their gas heaters, their diesel heaters, their generators, propane cylinders, the small ones, the big ones, just wall to wall. It looked like they were ready for any type of disaster. So less than 48 hours after that, I checked online because I was not completely prepared for week three of these sub-zero temperatures. My local Home Depot was sold out of everything. In fact, there was only one Home Depot, and I checked Lowe's as well. They didn't have anything. There was only one Home Depot in the Richmond area that had any generators, propane heaters, propane cylinders, the one pounders, and then the 20-pounders. Only one Home Depot here in Richmond. And then I got to thinking if it was a situation where this storm that hit the Outer Banks hit Richmond, or we got more snow and ice, we kind of we kind of dodged a bullet uh last week as well, and most of it was to the south of, I'm sorry, most of it was to the north of us. I can imagine if we got a lot of that snow and ice, and then if this little cyclone bomb or nor'easter, or whatever they're calling it, hit us instead of the outer banks. If you're looking at a significant supply chain disruption, meaning the trucks can't get back to the Home Depot like they did midweek and late last week to restock, the people here in the Richmond area in center of Virginia would be in a very, very hard way. Luckily, we did not get the brunt of the storm a little over a week ago. And luckily, the Nor'easter did not hit us. Instead, it hit the outer banks. Downtown Richmond, folks cannot get their cars out. Very narrow streets. And when they finally did plow, there are thousands of cars that are plowed in. Now they plowed the snow that turned to ice. There are hundreds and thousands of cars that are encased in ice. These cars are not getting out. I tried to shovel the ice off of my stoop. I tried to shovel the ice off of my sidewalk. It is a skating rink. I weigh 240 pounds. I got out there in my front yard and jumped up and down. Luckily, I didn't bust my ass. I jumped up and down. I could not break the ice. It is literally a solid sheet of ice. And now you're saying, well, Keith, you know, it's winter, and that's what happens. Well, it does, and you are right. But it is rare, and I don't recall the last time I saw ice that was this thick, that was this set, that I can't even break it up with a shovel. I had to take an axe. I took an axe and I busted up the ice on my front steps and part of my sidewalk, and then went around to my HVAC unit and busted up some ice around that to make sure it was well ventilated. Those folks downtown, and it's funny because there were just a few cars on the road over the weekend, and I think, well, it's extra cold. People are just gonna go in and stay in. All the last week, even after the roads became a little more passable, my commute to work, I just sailed, I just sailed to work. I'm like, where is everybody? And then I realized some neighborhoods have not been plowed. And if you live in downtown Richmond, your car is probably encased in ice. So you're either working from home, you're Ubering, going with a friend, or maybe you're not even able to get to work. So can you imagine if we got more snow and ice than we did about a week ago, and that little Nor'Easter Cyclone Bomby thing actually hit us harder than it did the outer banks, we would be up a creek without a paddle. The grocery store shelves would be even more bare than they are now. But for the most part, because we did get a bit of a break and we didn't get hammered last night, the stores are pretty well stocked. And the Home Depot and the Lowe's and that sort of thing were able to get their supplies back in last week. I really feel for the folks, especially in Tennessee and in the Nashville area, that are starting week two without power, and the temperatures that they're experiencing are very similar to the temperatures that we are experiencing here in central Virginia. So it's not necessarily the storm itself, the amount of snow, or the amount of ice. It's the fact that the snow in the ice is still here, it's not gonna melt, and it's like a grind. At this point, it's like a grind. So I was able to go out today, ordered one of the buddy heaters, I ordered the the big buddy or the I don't know, the big buddy's uncle or whatever it's called. It's the it's not the little buddy, little cousin buddy, whatever it's called. It's not the one that has one tank on the side. It's double, and you can put a tank on each side of it. So maybe it's the big buddy. Or with that four-foot adapter, you can hook up the larger propane cylinder, the 20-pound cylinder, and obviously you get more bang for your buck. It lasts a little bit longer. So I was able to order one of those online, went and picked it up, and they had propane there. Now they were picked over pretty well by the time I got there. I ordered it online and was able to pick it up without having to worry about will they have it once I get to the store. Talking about my house. So I've been in this house about 12 years, give or take, built in 1959, like I said before, brick in front of cinder block. The house is solid, and I love this house. But with old homes come these little nuances, I guess. I had the roof replaced. When I purchased it, the gentleman came in, refurbished it, hardwood floors, new windows, not the fancy windows, not some double pane windows filled with argon or neon or whatever fancy windows folks have these days. Just a single-pane window. The heat pump is sized for the house. But I went into the office last night where I'm recording, where I record all my podcasts and I have my gaming computer, and I noticed that it was really, really cold. So I started looking and actually feeling around the windows. And damn, if it wasn't like it almost felt like the silly window was open. And as I messed around with the window, it was closed, it was locked. But I think with the cold temperatures, the window and the frame shrunk a little, and there's these little gaps. And so I had to go out to the garage, get some window caulking that I had, bring it inside, let it warm up, because there was no way in the world I was going to be able to put window caulk from the garage, the temperature it was, and have it actually stick. So I let it warm up for a while, went and put it on the windows, brought in the little buddy heater, warmed up this room, and it's done a lot. Don't get me wrong. So in the meantime, I had closed the office door. When I closed the office door, I put my hand underneath it, and you could feel a breeze. You could feel the draft. So that is going to be a huge help. Now I have checked it since then. Feels like it's doing a lot better than it was. So here we are going on week three, and I finally figured out that's an exploit, I guess you could call it. In my so going on week three, so that's definitely an issue in this room that I've been able to take care of. But for the last two weeks, I've been losing all sorts of heat, and my energy bill is gonna go through the roof, but I've got it taken care of. So, what I'm going to do is come spring, I'm gonna get a little clipboard and I'm gonna walk the entire house like I've done before. But obviously, I've I've overlooked things, and I'm gonna check every door, every window, every threshold, and do everything I can to be ready come winter. Now, by going over the house with a fine tooth comb, this will also help me come summer when it gets really warm. And hopefully, by filling up these cracks, literally filling up these cracks, I'll be able to keep the AC in the house. And come winter, I'll be able to keep the heat inside and not have to worry about the HVAC unit and the heat pump not keeping up. Again, it's an older home. The heat pump is only about 14 years old, so it'll do what it needs to do. I just need to be a little more responsible and make sure that I'm giving the heat pump, the AC unit, the HVAC, I guess, a good starting point. I don't want to waste any more energy than I already am. Now, I'm certainly gonna look at a pellet stove insert or a freestanding pellet stove here in a couple weeks. Once the weather breaks, chimney sweeps got to come by, check out the chimney, that hole nine. So that's something that I'm gonna look into. I'm also gonna look into encapsulation of my crawl space. Now, I do keep an eye on that as far as humidity and temperature. I have a couple hygrometers and thermometers down there remotely that I can check because I certainly don't want any sort of moisture, a huge moisture problem in the crawl space that leads to mold, and then that's a whole thing. And that in the end could cost a ton of money. So I'm familiar with crawl space encapsulation. Again, something I'm gonna look into. It's not at the top of my list because that can be very, very expensive. But I'm gonna have some folks come out, crawl underneath the house, and see how much it is to replace the vapor barrier, seal up the crawl space foundation vents professionally. I have sealed most of them on my own, the ones I can get to, and it's hell. Even with all these cold temperatures going on week three, the temperature under the house is 38 degrees. You're probably saying to yourself, Keith, that is way, way too cold. And you're right, it is. And that's something that I need to do better on. So I'm not basically just throwing money out my leaky windows. So in the meantime, I've got draft snakes, hoodies, jeans, socks. I don't think I have any underwear stuffed under doors to keep any drafts. That'd look, that would just look terrible. Not that the hoodies and the jeans look much better, but it just it just got me thinking. My friends, they're doing fine, and here I am in this cold drafty house. And I thought, I thought I had it all taken care of. It's never been, I don't recall it being this cold for this long. And I think where the real gut check came in when I found out we're going on week three of these sub-zero temperatures, single digits, negative you know, five, ten below with the wind chill. And I think that's when it really hit home that I need to be a better steward, a better homeowner, and do what I can to try to make things better. Because I look at it, I kind of look at it like this. I don't think I failed as a homeowner. I think I could have done a better job. And so I use that same kind of mindset about prepping. I look at my pantry, the go bags, and you're constantly evaluating where you're at. Do I need this? Is this too much? Am I overthinking this? Am I being hyper-vigilant? And I'm gonna take that same approach, and appropriately so, take that same approach to my preps. Do I think I have what I need? Or is it gonna take a grid-down situation? Is it gonna take an SHTF situation to really expose any weaknesses that I might have in my preps? Well, to a lesser extent, this cold weather snap has done that as far as maintaining a comfortable environment, a comfortable temperature inside my home. So I consider this a dry run. So kind of a blessing in disguise. So when I do decide to sell this house, the drafty bits will be taken care of. Maybe the maybe the crawl space will be encapsulated. And when I put it on the market, it'll be much more appealing to folks. If I could say, oh, these windows were replaced, crawl space, whatever I end up doing with it. So I think this was kind of a wake-up call, a wake-up call that I became becoming very uncomfortable with the temperature in the house at times. I'm under all my quilts and stuff thinking, I don't remember it being this bad. Again, it's just something, there's something I need to tweak, something I need to fix. And if it had not been for this cold snap, I would have continued to throw money out the door and out the windows to the power company when it wasn't necessarily needed. And I could have fixed it. But I didn't know how bad it was until it got as cold as it is. I have more of the window films coming in tomorrow. I don't have a hairdryer that works, so I'm gonna get those installed tomorrow. The first one is gonna be on the windows here in the office, just to make sure. And those should make a significant difference. But it's funny how things work. I the cold temperature hits, we're going into week three, and then I start doing some troubleshooting and I realize that the house is not as sealed as it could be. And granted, like I said before, heat pumps, when it gets below a certain degree, certain temperature, it's like diminishing returns. It's not going to keep up. Some folks have dual zones, you know, two floors, two heat pumps, single-story rancher here, just one big heat pump, a lot of windows, a lot of windows in the Florida room. I love my windows, love my big trees in the back. And it's just a trade-off. But I think I can do better. And again, it's just the mindset of this is my home. I own it, I need to take care of it. And I just don't want to, oh, it'll be fine. I'll do it next winter. Oh, I'll just tough it out. I'll just buy more propane, I'll buy another little buddy heater. I don't want that to be the norm. I want to be able to fix the problems so they don't happen again. So, speaking of propane and buddy heaters, I think also what I'm gonna do come spring, every other trip to Home Depot. Once a month, or whenever I go to Home Depot, I am going to grab a two-pack of the propane cylinders, the one-pound propane cylinders, just so I have them in the event something happens next winter and I need them. I won't have to check the website at Home Depot or Lowe's. I won't have to run by in the morning before we go to work or on the way home from work or call to see if they have it. I will have them. I will have the propane cylinder stocked up. I will have my two buddy heaters. And in the event they are needed next winter or even later on this winter, I'll be set. All right, folks, as usual, please reach out, practical prep podcast at gmail.com. I'm on the Twitters. You can always search Common Sense Practical Prepper or Prep underscore Podcast. And please don't forget with August and Farms, I do have an affiliate link. There's probably going to be a commercial within the podcast. I'll put the affiliate link in the show notes. And if you use the affiliate link to purchase anything from Augustin Farms, some of the proceeds, a commission, I guess, there's a chance that a part of that commission will come to me. At checkout, you can also enter podcast prep for an additional 10% off your order. My folks, thanks again. I really do appreciate it. If you're in a part of the world that's cold, please stay warm. If you're in a part of the world that's warm, enjoy the warmth. Please take care of one another. Be safe out there. And until next time.

SPEAKER_01: 23:56

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