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The First 100 · Tier Ten of Ten · Items 91–100

The House and the Habit

If you own the building, the systems that fail expensively are addressed. And the ninety-nine items above still work in three years.

Why this tier, in this order

The final tier splits into two kinds of item, and the split is the point. The first kind is for property owners: the automatic shutoff valve, the panel-mounted surge protection, and, at last, the generator, arriving ninety-two items in with its placement rules stated as absolutes because they are. Generator carbon monoxide kills Americans after every major storm, consistently, and the deaths cluster among households that owned the machine and did not have the sequence around it. Every entry between item 5 and item 93 has been quietly building that sequence: detection, then measurement, then battery power, then, and only then, combustion.

The second kind of item cannot be shipped in a box, and the list closes on it deliberately. A rotation calendar is what keeps ninety-seven purchases from expiring quietly in a closet. A neighbor who knows your plan reflects the most consistent finding in disaster research, that social connection predicts how households come through better than equipment does. The communities that fared best after Katrina, after Sandy, after the Paradise fire, and through the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis were not the best equipped. They were the best connected, the ones where somebody knocked on the door of the person who lived alone. And an annual walk-through is the habit that decides whether everything above it is equipment or decoration.

If those last three entries read as a cop-out to a certain kind of critic, we accept the charge cheerfully. A hundred objects without a practice is a storage unit. The practice is item one hundred because it is the item everything else depends on.

The threshold

If you own the building, the systems that fail expensively are addressed. And the ninety-nine items above still work in three years.

Rough tier cost: $50 to $150 for every household. $500 to $3,500 more for property owners taking the installed items, varying with the property and the generator.

Items 91–95

Automatic main water shutoff valve

$$$conditional

Professionally installed, for households that own the property.

Why here. Item 71 tells you about the leak. This one stops it while you are at work or asleep or away for the weekend, which is when the expensive ones happen.

“Overkill. Just turn the valve yourself.”

Only if you are home. The claims that destroy houses are the ones that ran for two days unattended. This is the most expensive item in this tier and the one with the clearest return.

Whole-home surge protective device

$$$conditional

Professionally installed at the panel.

Why here. Power restoration after an outage is not gentle, and the surge that follows a restoration can take out appliances and electronics at once.

“Power strips already do this.”

Point-of-use strips protect what is plugged into them and nothing else, and they do not handle a large service-side surge. The two layers work together rather than substituting for each other.

Generator, outdoor use only

$$$conditional

An inverter generator, ideally with an automatic carbon monoxide shutoff. Placement is not negotiable: CDC and CPSC guidance is outdoors only, more than twenty feet from the home, with exhaust directed away from doors, windows, and vents. Never in a home, never in a garage, not with the door open, not under a tarp that restricts airflow.

Why here. Ninety-two items in, after detection, after a battery system, and after the household has learned what its loads actually are.

“A generator should be item 1. It is the whole point.”

It is the item that kills people. Carbon monoxide from generators causes deaths after every major storm, consistently, in households that thought a cracked window or an open garage door was enough. Every one of those deaths happened to someone who had a generator and did not have the sequence right. This is the strongest argument for the premise of this list.

“Twenty feet is unrealistic on a small lot.”

Then a generator may not be the right purchase for your property, and item 64 is. This is a real constraint that lists rarely acknowledge: the correct backup power for a townhouse with a shared wall is not a generator.

Our review The checklist

Transfer switch or interlock, professionally installed

$$$conditional

Why here. Backfeeding a house through a dryer outlet energizes the utility line outside and can kill a lineworker restoring your power. It is also illegal in most places.

“Suicide cords work fine and everyone does it.”

They work until they kill someone, and the someone is often not you. This is the least negotiable item on the list after the carbon monoxide guidance.

Approved fuel storage

$$conditional

Purpose-built containers with proper seals, stored per local code, away from living space and ignition sources.

Why here. A generator without stored fuel runs until the tank empties and then becomes lawn furniture, and the stations are closed or unpowered in exactly the event you bought it for.

“Fuel goes bad in a few months anyway.”

Gasoline degrades, stabilizer extends it, and rotation through your vehicle keeps it fresh. The technique is a rotation habit rather than a large reserve. Store the smallest quantity that meets your need, because fuel is genuinely dangerous and quantity is the risk multiplier.

Our review

Items 96–100

Generator maintenance supplies

$conditional

Oil, filter, spark plug, and a run schedule.

Why here. An unmaintained generator that has not been started in two years will not start on the night you need it, which is the most common generator outcome of all.

“This is padding to reach 100.”

It reads that way and it is the entry we came closest to cutting. It stays because a generator is the most expensive item on this list and the one most likely to fail from neglect, and because "run it quarterly and change the oil" is the difference between an asset and a heavy box.

Moisture meter

Why here. After any water event, materials that look and feel dry frequently are not, and trapped moisture in a wall cavity becomes a mold problem weeks later.

“Call a professional.”

You should, and you will also be making decisions before one arrives and after they leave. A meter tells you whether the wall behind the baseboard is actually dry before you close it up.

Rotation calendar

A recurring reminder and a written inventory of what expires when.

Why here. Self-filled water gets replaced every six months. Bottled water carries a date. Bleach loses potency in about a year. Batteries, medications, and food all have clocks. Without a system, a household discovers all of them at once, in the dark.

“That is not an item.”

It is not a purchase and it is the reason the previous ninety-seven purchases still function in year three. A supply that expired quietly is worse than no supply, because you planned around it.

A neighbor who knows your plan

A conversation, a phone number, and a mutual agreement to check on each other.

Why here. The strongest predictor of how a household comes through a disaster is not what it stored. It is who checks on it. This holds across the disaster research literature and it is the finding preparedness retail is least equipped to sell you.

“I prepare so I do not have to depend on anyone.”

Self-reliance and isolation are different things. The households that came through Katrina, Sandy, the Paradise fire, and the Jackson, Mississippi water crisis best were not the most equipped. They were the most connected. An elderly neighbor who knows you will knock is worth more than most of tier ten.

100

An annual walk-through

One evening a year. Test the alarms, check the dates, run the generator, open the bag, replace the water, and find out what you actually have.

Why here. Because a list is a beginning and a household is a practice. The hundredth item is not a thing you buy.

“A cop-out ending.”

It is the item that decides whether the other ninety-nine are equipment or decoration. Every emergency manager we read says the same thing in different words: the households that do well are not the ones with the most, they are the ones who have looked recently.

Keep the sequence

One tier at a time, in order.

Tier Nine How this list was built

Back to the full hundred-item list