Preparing for Winter

[FrugalFannie]

So here in the Northeast I think one of the highest, most immediate threats would be surviving an extended loss of electricity due to a winter storm. My family mostly lives in Maine and frequently loses power for a day or 2 at a time. We really haven't had that problem in my town since I have been here. Also, my house is old and our son's bedroom just doesn't get warm in the winter. If we lose electricity I believe we would lose our heat since it has an electric ignition and blower fan. With this in mind I was looking into getting 2 space heaters - probably propane - for use in an emergency. My thinking is that a generator is very expensive, storage of gasoline could be complicated, and while needing to be careful with a space heater I am very familiar with them from growing up in Maine and feel I would be able to take the proper safety precautions. Anyone have any recommendations/comments?


I appreciate the comments so far. Let me add a few restrictions. Our house is not very large - 1400 sf. We need a way to warm up our son's bedroom all winter anyway. Even if it is just a warm up before bedtime. We don't want to spend a lot of money - can't afford it. I proposed a propane space heater because of the low cost (seen $100-$200 models), no need to ventilate, ease of storage of propane (right now we have 2 grill tanks and could easily buy 2 more), we could also buy a propane cook stove for camping which we could cook on if the power went out for a few days. Installing a fireplace, woodstove, or generator would be out of our price range at this point. I guess I am looking for any comments if people are familiar with this type of space heater, how well they work, safety of, and specific product recommendations. I am not looking at this as a long term SHTF solution. I am looking at the mostly event which would be a major winter storm and loss of power for 7 days or less. Oh yeah, any idea how much propane one unit would burn in 24 hours - I know it's relative but an educated guess?

Thanks again.

 

[Fsorrent]

I'd vouche for the back-up generators. You'll never know if heat is the only thing you'll need if their is a power-outtage.

 

[Adam_MA]

Personally, I have a generator, but the expense if having a transfer switch installed will turn most people off from that idea. As a back-up, I also have one of These heaters, with the adapter hose so I can run it off large propane tanks used for your gas grill.

 

[Chris]

Gas stove. Even if you need to have 100 lb tanks delivered, Go with gas. Cheaper in the long run than electric, and when there is no power, the most you'll need is a match.

Keep your emergency foods easy to prepare. Canned sauce over pasta is much easier to make over an open flame than a canned ham. That said, learning to use a Dutch Oven with wood coals is a skill I'm still trying to master. Nothing like fresh hot cornbread. (I still burn a little on the bottom, but its a LOT better now. Key is to use a lot less heat than you would think) And Hot cast iron makes a nice area warmer. (^_^)

Keep the propane full. I have 3 20 lb tanks above the 200 lb tanks attached to the house. During the summer, I use them all the time for all kinds of outdoor cooking. During the winter, I'll usually just run the grill (although I have been known to fry Turkey for New Years) but with the exception of the current 'in use' tank, I never leave an empty around.

Also, try to keep all the gas devices and cans full. Use a fuel stabilizer so that if they do just sit, you won't get gunk. If for some reason you run out of fuel in the gas cans, you can more easily drain fuel from a lawn tractor than your vehicle these days. Multiple small cans are usually much more stable than larger cans you might leave with small amounts in. Easier to handle too. Those 5 gallon Eagle cans I used to use for the snowmobiles were a PIA to pour from.

Fireplace. Better yet, a wood stove. You don't need to heat the house to 70 degrees, just keep the important stuff from freezing. A cord of good wood is about $200 and will last quite a while if you keep your flames under control. Be aware that an open flue can also suck out warm air making the house colder. Be sure the firebox has it's own vent for that reason. Have a nice sized piece of plywood you can cover the fireplace with if you decide you need to let the fire die.

Layers in the attic. I don't know if it is still in effect, but when I boosted our attic insulation a few years back, I was able to get a tax break for it. I now have a MINIMUM of R52 in my attic, many areas are better than that. I can't begin to tell you how much I've noticed the difference in both winter AND summer in terms of how well the house maintains a temp. I've also finished a room where I did all the insulation from under the floor to the walls, to the ceiling and went well over the "required" insulation and what a difference that made too.

Heavy curtains. Not only do they help keep the heat from getting in or out of the windows, but it hides the fact that there is someone there by keeping the house dark. (now if I can just get the wife to finish the curtains for the living room)

While not technically legal, it's not that hard to hook up an emergency generator to your heating system. Just find your shutoff switch near the unit and wire into the downstream of the switch. Just have a 50' coil of 12 gauge Romex around and some proper size wire nuts. No permanent damage. Be aware that you might have another circuit that runs a blower or something. Certainly not for everyone, but if you can learn to just start a car, you can learn to deal with basic electrical for survival.

I can also hook up my well and have constant water. Since the tank is what provides the pressure, I can easily power the heat, shut that down for a bit, power the well pump, go back to the heat, etc. Allows a smaller, quieter, and more efficient generator to do a lot of jobs.

I always keep the camping gear in "ready to go" condition. Mostly that is for having lanterns, candle lanterns, etc ready for use. It also makes it SO much quicker to pack for a camping trip when you KNOW it's all set.

That Coleman Camp oven works great on the house stovetop when the power is out to cook up stuff in the fridge that Might otherwise go bad. Serving hot pizza, appetizer type snacks, and other stuff is a real treat.

Make sure you have one phone in the house that doesn't have to be plugged in. (ie, it's powered off the phone line) Even if you don't ever use it, HAVE ONE, most times I find the phone line is OK when the power is out. Hard to charge a cell phone with no power, save that for real emergencies.

If you need to replace your water heater and have a forced hot water heating system, consider getting a storage tank rather than an electric hot water heater. An electric unit uses a LOT of electricity so you'll save there, plus since it will heat off the boiler, you get hot water during a SHTF as a side benefit when you run your heating system. (most people do not have a generator that can power an electric water heater)

Being able to take a quick hot shower after a few days of no power is a MAJOR luxury.

In winter, never let things go under half a tank (propane excepted, but only because you should have backups) If you have natural gas, look into adding a backup propane or LNG tank. Some appliances need a nozzle or valve change to work on Propane. Learn how to do this on your important ones. (the clothes drier for example isn't worth it usually)

Stash cheap LED flashlights that operate of AA batteries in easily accessable places and put Energizer Lithium batteries in them. You want to be able to get to one in the dark no matter where you are. When we had our son, we added some LED nightlights to allow for easier night operation. We stuck one on each floor that is an automatic nightlight, but when the power is out or when pulled from the wall is a fairly nice flashlight. Doesn't last long, but it's enough to get to and set up something better.

Use an 'airlock' when you enter and exit the house if you can. For example, go through the garage. This allows less heat escape and allows a place to shed cold wet clothing.

 

[hminsky]

We're pretty lucky to have a relatively modern (1980 maybe) gas fired steam boiler, which operates with a "millivolt" thermocouple powered valve, so it doesn't require any external power to run (the thermostat we use takes a battery, but in theory we could use a mechanical one). I don't think anyone installs these things anymore, as they use a huge pilot flame to run the thermopile.

We have two efficient woodstoves in the house, which can heat the ground floor pretty toasty.

I worry about the electricity going out, I think it is a lot less likely that the natural gas will be interrupted. We can cook something small on the woodstove if needed, although it is a pain in the neck. We keep a propane grill outside for bbq, which can be used if needed.

We don't have a generator, so the fridge contents would go bad in a power shortage of more than 24hrs, though in winter the food could be stored outside.

For electricity, we have a couple of lead acid cells, maybe a car battery's worth, and a pair of 40w 12v solar charger panels, which is enough to run a ham radio or computer intermittently, but not much more than that.

I'm not sure what we'd actually need an AC generator for. I should try powering the house down for 24hrs and find out.

 

[PatMcD]

Generators aren't all that expensive, but buy a good one (=Honda). If you have town water and oil or gas heat, you don't need a 220-capable unit (even cheaper!) I could go into safe ways around the need for a transfer switch, but that's not for those who don't know their way around a breaker panel.

Gas storage: Always keep your vehicles full or above half, at least. A 4-ft chunk of garden hose can get you as much emergency gas as you need. Doesn't taste all that good, but we're talking survival situations here, right?

 

[dwarven1]

Penny, for just your son's room, consider a down comforter. My wife and I got one when we lived in a house with electric heat and wanted to turn thermostat waaay down at nights. We can let the temp go down to the 50's at night and not worry about it because that goose down keeps us nice and toasty. We got ours from www.thecompanystore.com.

We also used to use an oil filled electric space heater, but I never really thought that they were worth the money. I'd avoid them (and of course, they're useless when the power is out!).

 

[coastie]

Do you need to heat the whole house? in an emergency you can live in a couple of rooms in sleeping bags. If you get a heater make sure it is rated for indoor use and get a good CO monitor. Seems like every year a couple of folks die up here from CO poisoning. Also dont leave it on at night.

If you worry about your pipes freezing you can let the faucets drip. And also run the heater in the basement once in a while to heat the pipes. If you are on a well and cant keep it running do you know how to drain your house? It5 is a pain but can save big bucks if your pipes freeze.

As for losing the stuff in the fridge. It is winter. You can put it in coolers and pack snow around it. Or leave 2 liter bottles filled with water out at night to freeze and then put them in the cooler.

 

[Mikey]

I worry about losing power in the winter b/c all we have is electric heat. There is a stainless chimney that was used at some point but we don't have a stove. I tried to find a deal on one last year but everything was either too big or too small. I really only want one for emergencies.

 

[dwarven1]

Penny, I debated before posting this because I don't want to come across like a scaremonger, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Many years ago a good friend of mine, one Luke Knapp, was killed, along with his entire family, by a kerosene heater. Seems that the furnace was broken, and Luke's dad put a kero heater in the living room. From what the Fire Marshals reconstructed, Luke's little sister got cold in the middle of the night and came down to sleep on the couch in front of the heater... and one corner of her blanket was resting on the heater.

Result: closed caskets for 7 people.

If you MUST use a heater that burns some kind of fuel, PLEASE be careful - smoke detectors, CO2 detectors, put the heater well away from ANYTHING - I never want to see another headline like this ever again.

 

[FrugalFannie]

Absolutely. That's one of the big things with space heaters. I don't know what we are going to do. Guess we'll have to save up for a generator and get our son a better comforter. His room is really cool though.

 

[dwarven1]

Just a thought - an electric space heater (either filament/blower or the oil-filled kind) while the power is on, and a couple of the propane ones for emergencies where you lose power? That way you only use the propane ones IF you lose power. I don't know about Westford, but the power here in Marlboro is VERY reliable - in 9-10 years we've maybe had a total of 2 hours? And most of that is when we're at work! We only notice it because we have to reset clocks.

Also, my buddy has a natural gas powered heater in his upstairs that has a small - like 3" wide - vent pipe. Maybe one of those would fit in your son's room?

I'm just thinking back to the electric oil-filled heaters that we used in our old house, and I think I need to retract my statement - they actually did work well for small rooms. I do recall that we did have a couple of them in 8 years, though - had to replace one because the thermostat stopped working.

 

[KMaurer]

Power reliability in Westford is probably similar to a lot of other places. I'm on a main street and have only lost power for more than a couple of minutes twice in over 20 years: one severe ice storm and one hurricane. In both those incidences it was less than one day. People on small side streets were out for up to 4 days in those two cases, but don't seem to have any worse experience with shot outages (usually just long enough to leave everything not on my UPS blinking 12:00). +1 on the comforters. Cold rooms and warm bedding is the way humans were always supposed to sleep.

Ken

 

[sksguns]

Power reliability in Westford is probably similar to a lot of other places. I'm on a main street and have only lost power for more than a couple of minutes twice in over 20 years: one severe ice storm and one hurricane. In both those incidences it was less than one day. People on small side streets were out for up to 4 days in those two cases, but don't seem to have any worse experience with shot outages (usually just long enough to leave everything not on my UPS blinking 12:00). +1 on the comforters. Cold rooms and warm bedding is the way humans were always supposed to sleep.
Ken

My house works perfectly then...lmao....

 

[CFFuts]

Penny,

Have you considered an electric blanket? While in college, we would often run out of money to fill the oil tank and would try to go a week or two without heat until our paychecks came in. I stayed warm with an electric blanket inside my sleeping bag. A e-blanket with a heavy down or synthetic (allergies) comforter should do the trick.

I'm always nervous about using portable heaters since I've heard so many horror stories, so be very careful if you get one.

Good luck

 

[dwarven1]

I don't think you're supposed to use an electric blanket under another blanket. and of course, it's useless when the power goes out.

 

[CFFuts]

I've been using electric blankets under blankets, comforters and sleeping bags for years without a single problem. The new ones even turn themselves off after X hours, so you can save money.

Agreed, it's not a solution to a power outage, but the generator is the only solution for that (IMHO, since I don't trust portable heaters). If I had similar financial constraints, I'd get the electric blankets, look into fixing the son's heating problem and save for a generator in that order.

 

[MrsWildweasel]

We live in a 210 year old house.It only had oil heat for half of the house. I always joke I know why way back when why they died at early ages,cause there was no friggin heat,or insulation in this big house. We have gone and insulated most of the house now at this point. We also have 2 pellet stoves, one upstairs and one downstairs. Now when we first moved into this huge money pit we lost power,phone etc. We are on a well also. For 4 days we learned that we needed a generator. I also hqave kerosene lamps in every room,and I also have the ability to cook with propane in my motorhome. Hoping at some time to change our stove. I also live next door to my mother in law and can cook there if need be.
With each outage I have learned and revised things as we have needed to. We also have our pellet stoves on UPS's.
We borrowed a small generator from a friend of ours and we went around town being able to keep peoples fridges and freezers going for awhile so they would lose everything.
A generator is a small investment in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Migmojo]

Where I live in Chelmsford, the power goes out a lot. It's not much of an issue except when the ground water level is high. This past spring I had water in my basement twice. Cleaning up is no fun. I went out and bought a generator which will come in handy if there are any long power outages this winter. We have gas heat so having hot showers and being able to cook are a plus. A large woodstove in the basement and one in the master bedroom keep things toasty. I strongly reccomend an efficient woodstove for anyone worried about power outages. Wood can be gathered if necessary and pallets are easy to come by if you know where to look.

 

[csharpdev]

If we lose heat I have a mummy style sleeping bag (for backpacking) rated to 25 degrees, my fiancee has one rated to 20. We also have a double wide sleeping bag (sleeps 2 people quite comfortably) rated to 35 degrees. I also have a down comforter. I'd just put the mummy bags inside the double wide sleeping bag and sleep in my skiing base layer and wear a hat to bed. We have a gas stove so as long as the gas still works we can cook, if not I have a coleman stove and about 3 gallons of white gas to run it and a liquid fuel lantern for light. The stove will also burn regular unleaded gasoline, but the lantern will not (or at least isn't designed to be dual fuel).

 

[dixidawg]

I can't believe nobody mentioned a wood stove! You can heat the house and cook with it. Although cordwood is getting expensive, it can be had cheap by scrounging after storms and through the state's cut a cord program...

 

[dwarven1]

Bob, she mentioned that woodstoves are out of her price range for now. That's why no one has been talking them up.

 

[dixidawg]

D'oh. It helps to actually READ the thread eh?

 

[dwarven1]

 

[Prepper]

I've used a kerosene heater quite a bit up in a vacation house (now sold) way up in Maine even when it went well below 0, now I have it here as emergency backup heat. I tested it once at home when it was about 30 outside and it kept my whole house reasonably warm (75 in basement where I put it, 65 first floor, 60 second floor.)

I like that it's pretty easy to store kero and I don't have to worry much about it going bad. If I ran it 12 hours per day (one filling), I'd use 2 gallons a day. So 20 gallons would be good for 10 days, easily enough for nearly any "normal" weather emergency around here. Post SHTF, though, you'd either need a LOT of kero or some other plan.

They're fairly safe if you put some thought into them. You MUST make sure nothing is within 3 feet of it especially a blanket, curtain or the fabric of some furniture. Just place it in the middle of the room all by itself. My cats had no interest in going anywhere near it. Children need to be taught about it. They have a tipover safety switch, which I accidentally trigger all the time when I move it while lighted, but I wouldn't want it to tip fully over... might be messy or set the floor on fire, although the one I have (Omni/Kero-Sun 105) does have both an inner and outer tank just for the purpose of containing a tipover. I still don't want to test it though.

You MUST use good kero (must be K1 and not contaminated with anything). CO detector (and smoke detector) is a MUST. If it suddenly has any trouble burning properly and/or starts smelling bad (I mean more bad than it usually smells when all is well), investigate immediately. It may simply be in need of cleaning the wick.

BUT, in my case, I had a second one I was using and I tried some different kero than I had been using... there was an old kerosene tank connected to the cabin but no longer any furnace to use it, and I wanted to use up that kero so that I could then dispose of the old tank. Bad idea! A few hours after filling, while we were asleep, the CO and smoke alarms went off. That woke us up and the thing was smoking badly and had hardly any flame. What happened was that the new kero was contaminated, probably with heating oil (who knows what the previous owner of the cabin was really doing!). It turned the whole heater's insides completely black, and to this day I haven't figured out how to clean it up fully to get it working again.

 

[Cuda444]

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but in regards to generators: What size are you guys talking? Like a small single or v-twin honda generator? (ie something that could be carried by 2 people) or something larger? What should one expect to pay? I don't have one yet and I'm just now starting to look for one. Any guidence is appreciated!

Again, don't mean to hijack, just trying to expand on some of the mentioned info for people using the search feature later on down the road.

Thanks!

 

[PatMcD]

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but in regards to generators: What size are you guys talking? Like a small single or v-twin honda generator? (ie something that could be carried by 2 people) or something larger? What should one expect to pay? I don't have one yet and I'm just now starting to look for one. Any guidence is appreciated!

Again, don't mean to hijack, just trying to expand on some of the mentioned info for people using the search feature later on down the road.

Thanks!

It depends on your need. If you are not on town water, then you need a unit that is 220-capable (well pumps run on 220). The smallest 220 generators are usually 3500 watt (can be carried by one person with a good back). All you really need is one to run your heat, water, and refridgerator. Everything else is luxury.

 

[sksguns]

We live in a 210 year old house.It only had oil heat for half of the house. I always joke I know why way back when why they died at early ages,cause there was no friggin heat,or insulation in this big house. We have gone and insulated most of the house now at this point. We also have 2 pellet stoves, one upstairs and one downstairs. Now when we first moved into this huge money pit we lost power,phone etc. We are on a well also. For 4 days we learned that we needed a generator. I also hqave kerosene lamps in every room,and I also have the ability to cook with propane in my motorhome. Hoping at some time to change our stove. I also live next door to my mother in law and can cook there if need be.
With each outage I have learned and revised things as we have needed to. We also have our pellet stoves on UPS's.
We borrowed a small generator from a friend of ours and we went around town being able to keep peoples fridges and freezers going for awhile so they would lose everything.
A generator is a small investment in the grand scheme of things.

My b-in-law put one in last year. Never saw one before that...I love it. it does a great job for him. I'm looking to get an insert (if they make them) for my basement fireplace. Haven't started shopping yet but there is a place up the road from my house.

 

[Migmojo]

My b-in-law put one in last year. Never saw one before that...I love it. it does a great job for him. I'm looking to get an insert (if they make them) for my basement fireplace. Haven't started shopping yet but there is a place up the road from my house.

Inserts work very well........... when you have power that is. Their heat output depends on the electric blower. Best to stick with a traditional unit.

 

[Migmojo]

It depends on your need. If you are not on town water, then you need a unit that is 220-capable (well pumps run on 220). The smallest 220 generators are usually 3500 watt (can be carried by one person with a good back). All you really need is one to run your heat, water, and refridgerator. Everything else is luxury.

5000-6000w work well for most situations. You'll want the extra power for the extra wattage needed when the motor/compressor starts. Most have a handle and wheel kit so moving them around is easy.