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Living in a comfortable, heated house is something a lot of us take for granted. When the cold weather hits, we just put on thick socks, turn up the thermostat (or take other steps), and go about our business. But most modern homes rely on the electrical grid to keep that heat flowing. Even if your home is heated by natural gas or heating oil, there’s most likely an electric component to your heating system.
That means that when the power goes out—say, in the middle of a fierce blizzard—so does your heat. Even recently built homes can lose interior heat pretty quickly, dropping to uncomfortable (and even unsafe) temperatures within a day at most. If you’re not sure when power will be restored, you’ll need to find a way to keep the place as warm as possible if you and your property are going to come out of the experience unscathed. Here are are four ways to keep your house warm if your heat goes out.
If you have some warning that a power loss is possible during the cold months—a winter storm warning, for example—it’s a good idea to “pre-heat” your home. The warmer your house is when the power goes out, the longer it will remain at a safe and/or comfortable temperature. You don’t necessarily want to make it tropical, but a few degrees higher than usual will buy you some time if the power goes out. Combined with sealing the house as tightly as possible—by hanging thermal curtains or blankets over windows, applying plastic insulation kits to windows, and deploying draft stoppers under doorways and anywhere else cold air is getting in—this strategy can be very effective.
Isolate your family to a single room
Trying to keep a large house warm without an active heating system is a fool’s errand. Instead, focus on a single room where everyone in the house can gather, because a small room is a lot easier to warm up. A few considerations about which room to choose:
Since heat rises, rooms on upper floors will be warmer than rooms on the main floor.
A room that gets a lot of sunlight can be warmed during the day by opening up the curtains and letting that solar energy do its thing.
Smaller rooms will be easier to heat up, but consider how many people will need to live and sleep in there.
Rooms near bathrooms (or with en-suite baths) offer a bit more convenience, especially if you’re going to be hunkering down for a while.
Once you’ve selected the room you’ll be using, try to keep it closed up as much as possible (covering windows, stopping up drafts, keeping the door closed). Introducing an indoor-safe heater is a good idea if you have one (or you can make one; see below).
If none of the rooms in your house are ideal, you could also consider setting up a tent indoors. Tents are designed to hold in heat, and can create a small, controllable environment that will be easier to keep warm in a pinch.
If you’ve planned ahead and have an indoor-safe propane or kerosene heater (or even a solar-powered portable heater), that will obviously help to keep your home warm (just be certain to follow all the instructions for ventilating whatever space you’re heating up). If you haven’t, or you discover that your propane tanks have leaked and you have no fuel, don’t despair. You can still generate heat by building a candle-pot heater, which is an old-school way of generating some quick heat.
A candle-pot heater is pretty easy to set up: You’ll need 1-3 clay flower pots (or similar ceramic containers) in different sizes, some non-flammable materials to set up on (bricks or stone tiles will work), and some candles. Then arrange everything:
Set up your bricks or other materials to create a raised platform, with plenty of airflow.
Place your smallest pot upside down on the bricks and cover the hole in the bottom (if it’s a flowerpot).
Place the larger pot on top, and then the largest on top of that if you have three pots.
Place your candles underneath and light them.
The candles don’t produce much heat, but the clay pots will absorb that heat and slowly start to radiate out. Instead of the candles’ heat just rising up to your ceiling and being cooled by the frigid air already in the room, the pots capture it and intensify it.
Will this replace your home’s heating system, or even a portable propane heater? Not by a mile. But it will make a difference, especially in a small space.
A few things to keep in mind here:
Candles are open flames, so never leave your heater unattended, and always be conscious of fire hazards.
You can place a foil-covered panel behind the heater to help reflect the heat in a specific direction (say, toward the chair you’re sitting in).
Get a furnace battery backup
If you have a gas furnace, it’s not that hard to keep it running even during a blackout if you have an alternative power source like a generator or even a power bank. The furnace needs electricity to run the ignition, the blower, and communication between the thermostat and the furnace or boiler. A decent generator or robust battery can definitely keep your furnace running for a while—and those extra hours or days could be crucial in an extended cold-weather blackout.
If you can see an obvious on/off switch on your furnace, you can pretty easily install a transfer switch like this one (here’s a video demonstrating how it’s done). This allows you to plug in a generator or power bank and keep your furnace running even when the power’s out—all you have to do is plug it in and flip the switch. If you’re not entirely comfortable with electrical wiring, you can hire a licensed electrician to install it as well, of course. Once it’s done, you’ll never have to worry about a cold house again—as long as you pair the switch with a generator or battery solution of sufficient power to keep things running.
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