I would have to get a motel room!
Other then a fireplace I don't know of anything to heat with when the power is out. I have a generator but my son turns it on & off or I would be in the dark like everyone else.

If you have propane you could purchase a propane heater.

This is a wall heater that does not require electricity. The one we have heats up to 1,000 sq ft or more. They are very good heaters. Only use it when the power is out as we heat by wood.

We have a fireplace and have an insert in it which is a wood burning stove that fits into the opening all nice and snug and heats very well. Ours has enough room on top to cook on if needed as well as a blower to use when you have electricity. We have had ours many years. At our business we have a wood burning furnace. One daughter heats all the time with a wood burning stove and another also has a fireplace insert.

Sue

We have a woodburner. DH has a big garage with all his toys in it, and we honestly call it "The Toy Box", haha. He has a wall mounted propane heater. It can sit on the floor also. The flame is adjustable so you can have a little heat or a lot.

Now, someone just told me this, and I have no idea if it works. You take 4 tealight candles and 2 clay flower pots.
Turn the pots upside down, and put 2 tealights under each pot. It's supposed to heat up a room.

Now obviously you have to have something under it that's fireproof and won't heat up. And I honestly have no idea if this works, just passing on what I heard. Just kind of strange that I just heard this yesterday and then your question came up today.

We have a wood burning stove that has come in handy a few times when the furnace was out. It didn't keep the whole house warm and toasty but it kept it warm enough to prevent the pipes from freezing and it was toasty warm in the family room where the wood stove is.

I am afraid of killing myself with carbon monoxide! I assume the wood burning stoves have chimneys, but how about the propane heaters? I thought they were just for sheds and tents and other "not tight" spaces. I will have to learn more about the inserts.

I can't imagine heating with wood full time. Does someone stay up all night to feed the fire? I presume there is a better way.

I am so dreading this new storm. The prediction keeps getting worse. Perhaps as much as twelve inches, along with ice. Noooo! Maybe I'll just hop a plane to Florida. Sigh -- wish I could.

I have seen the clay pot heater before but haven't tried it yet. Here is a video showing how to do it, seems like it would work best in a small area.

Here is a link that might be useful: Clay pot heater

We have three gas fireplaces, and they have been fantastic in power outages! The fans don't work without power, but there is plenty of radiant heat. Our neighbours rely greatly on their wood burning fireplace for heating to keep their costs down. I will have to ask them how they manage night time heating.

When I had a tent trailer and we would camp at 6500 ft. in the summer, I put a clay pot over a burner on the propane stove when we woke up in the mornings. and it would quickly heat the trailer. We had a thermometer hanging in the trailer and I would watch it rise from 28 degrees up to a comfortable temperature. We sold the trailer in '92 and I still miss it.

Stay warm!

We are not burning our fireplace insert full time this year, saving the wood for if the power does go out. I can tell you my husband would get up once in the night to put wood in the insert. When burning it we would heat our whole house, it is a two story home.

Sue

I remember when we had a week long power outage after an ice storm. I used the fireplace at the time but it was so long ago since I burned wood in it, I usually burn those fake logs now. The mortar on my chimney is broken in places so I worry about that but my brother said my chimney has a liner in it. I have lots of seasoned tree limbs out back that have fallen over the years but I would need someone to cut it up for me.

I always have on hand foot and hand warmers and they do a real good job of keeping you warm. I put one of the hand warmers inside my pajama top when I go to bed and if the warmer is kept enclosed they keep warm for hours. My cat loves them. I can't really go anywhere because I have the cat and the dog.

I remember my Dad would still use the forced air natural gas furnace, but the blower of course wouldn't work. Not sure if that is a good thing to do because I don't know if the furnace would overheat. I remember the warm air would rise through the vents.

I hope all your power stays on.

I worry about this too. I'm hoping to put in a soapstone fireplace within the next couple of years. They supposedly stay warm for up to 12 hours after the fire goes out. Don't know if that's true.

I have a woodstove that goes from Oct- April non stop. The chimney runs inside the house so it warms the upstairs. In this frigid weather , the furnace needs to run too. So many houses in PA lost power and I heard 16,000 are still out on the Phila area. I'd be nuts about now. I have nowhere to go because I have six pets and a betta fish.

We have a generator, really not that hard to use. Keep the fuel tank filled and it runs. Unfortunately some people stupidly bring the generator inside and die from carbon monoxide. Just run an extension cord from what you want to run to the generator and plug it in. Depending on the power of the generator as to how many things it can power. My husband has been wanting a whole house generator since we live in an area where they are often needed during hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding etc. They can easily pay for themselves when a big disaster strikes.

A good quality wood burning stove will keep burning all through the night with out additional wood, they are extremely efficient unlike a basic open wood burning fireplace with a dampener.

kathsgrdn, you say,
" I'm hoping to put in a soapstone fireplace within the next couple of years. They supposedly stay warm for up to 12 hours after the fire goes out. Don't know if that's true."
In your shoes, I'd be doing some research before going to the expense, finding out after you've shelled out for a new fireplace would be more than disappointing.

We have a wood stove and it heats our entire house, both floors, although upstairs at the far end, it can get chilly depending on how cold it is outside. If you load it up right at bedtime and then tamp it down, you can keep embers going all night. Woody usually gets up around 2 AM to let a cat in or out and feeds the stove more wood. Then I get up around 5 AM, usually, and get it all cranked up. Right now, our house is 81ú and it's 18ú outside.

So we don't care if the power goes off, heat-wise. We also have a generator, but I hate listening to it run, they are noisy. We only run it enough in a power outage to keep the freezers cold and to pump and heat water for flushing/bathing.

I'd rather have a snow storm over ice any day. You can't drive on ice. I know this because our driveway is iced up right now and I slid nearly sideways yesterday, coming home from the vet. Our driveway runs alongside a hill and water oozes out of it and freezes and gets thicker every day that we're below freezing. Warm up later this week will help that a lot! I like trees, but not mashed into the side of my SUV!

For those of you who use a heat source with electric blowers consider checking into one of the ecofans. This little fan works great.

Generates its own electricity from the heat of the wood stove
Increase the efficiency of the stove by improving the circulation of warm air.
Costs nothing to operate, with no batteries or cords.
Silent
9â³ H x 5â³ W x 6.75â³ D, 1.85 lb.
a bit expensive but the outcome has paid for itself, we bought one after the electric blower went on the fritz. I also found that if I bought some of the fire logs and sawed them in half it made a great fire starter when the wood was damp. They burned long enough to keep the fire going even if the larger real wood was slow to catch.

We also purchased a few of the three wick candles and placed them in large coffee cans. One goes in the bathroom in the sink for light and it keeps the room warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. Open the cabinet doors and close the bathroom door. Surprisingly how warm it gets. The candle method is used in the kitchen also..keep doors open where the pipes are. All other rooms are kept closed. Once again the emergency car kit comes in handy. Those silver dollar store emergency blankets are great to wrap up in if you must stay in your home. I also purchased a few of the silver reflective windshield protectors. I put one on each of the lazy boy chairs. They are only cold for a minute and your body will reflect back your own heat. So much better than sitting on cold clammy damp furniture. Safety first bring in your outside solar lights and let them be your source of light to move freely around the house at night. You can put them on the back steps during the day or even in a window to recharge. Can you tell we have had more than a few outages? It is winter we have no heat and no water if it goes out. Shower has a large 25 litre bucket that fills and stands ready just in case for flushing when the weather is unpredictable. Two large thermos' filled with boiling water ready for coffee tea or a cup of soup if needed. So much easier to think when you are warmed up.

We run our wood burner constantly. Have oil furnace for back-up. We ususally burn one tank of oil per season. If they fire goes out during the night the furnace kicks on. We keep it set at 65. (a tad chilly for DH but I can't stand it up any higher than that, haha.)

DH cuts, splits, stacks and brings in all our wood. It's a lot of back breaking work, but considering the alternative, $850 to fill our oil tank one time, and we can burn one tank a month if it's really cold, we will do firewood as long as we are able.

We just bought 2 small Honda generators last fall. You can run one or hook them together for more power. My in-laws live a mile away and are older, so we can hook up us and them if need be. Each one gives 9 hours of power off 1 gallon of gasoline.

Good luck everyone. I hope we can all keep our power through this next storm.

I'm another one who heats with wood. Love it--even though I made a royal mess of cleaning the stovepipes yesterday.

I second Marilyn Sue's suggestion about the fireplace insert. I convinced my cousin to get one last year, and it was a godsend for her during a long power outage. If you get one, you won't be able to use your fireplace as a fireplace. But the inserts usually have a glass door, so you'll be able to see the fire.

Regarding the clay flower pots and tea lights.........it doesn't work.

My home office gets cold at nite, when I'm working, I do work on my computer on a contract basis in the evening. I have no idea why, but I get so cold in that room.

I tried the tea lights a couple of weeks ago, 4 tea lights in a small pot with 2 inverted flower pots.......didn't work at all. Just burned out 8 tea lights, no recognizable heat.

We used to heat our home with the cast iron fireplace inserts. It was a qual level home with a fireplace on the main level and another in the lowest level. At night we would add lump coal and we were able to avoid having to get up and add anything during the night. The inserts had a fan but if theres no power there are fans that you can place on top of the cast iron and the heat drives the fans.

I guess we would stay in the RV ...we have propane in the RV. We have propane in the house and I guess we could try to keep the front part of the house warm ..It might work if we shut off the bedrooms and all the doors...

We have a fireplace insert and a generator. Our generator has a battery powered electric start so it's simple to turn on. However you need to keep the battery charged - either with a trickle charger or by running the generator every now and then.

It also has a pull start - like a lawnmower. We got the electric start because I can't use the pull start. While I can start the lawn mower and the snow blower with the pull start, the one on the generator is too high and awkward for me to pull it. Even DH has a little trouble with it.

In this climate you can't just fill a generator with gas and let it sit all year and hope it works when you need it. If we haven't used it in over a year DH cleans out the fuel lines and runs it until empty. It's also recommended that you don't run the generator unprotected - we have an area by the garage with a slanted roof and that's where we put the generator - it's not supposed to be running in the rain or heavy snow. I don't know if there are other models that can be exposed. They are heavy but you can buy a trolley with wheels to move them.

In the storm last week we were ready with the generator. Luckily we can run a 100' heavy duty extension cord from the generator, along the back of the house and through a small window in the basement. Obviously in frigid temps you don't want to open a window so we insulated it. When the weather warms we'll have the electrician install a small sub panel so that we can connect the basics (heat, refrigerator, some lights, phone etc) by flipping a switch.

We had a fireplace insert for about 20 years and it worked well. To make it safer we had a stainless steel pipe run from the top of the insert through the chimney. That way we didn't have to worry about any missing mortar inside the chimney that might cause a fire. It also makes it much easier for the chimney sweep to clean.

When we remodeled a few years ago we decided to run the gas line to the fireplace and replace the wood burning insert with a gas stove It's much prettier and cleaner than the wood burner. Ours is a Jotul , it's ivory enamel over cast iron.

At our vacation place in the PA mountains we have 2 wood burning stoves and a gas one in our bedroom. We can heat the entire home with them and the wood is free since we have a huge wooded property. Since we're not there full time we did install a whole house generator. You're right, they're not cheap. We paid close to $10,000 for one that will run everything in the house. You can get smaller ones that will just run the basics - furnace, refrigerator, well etc.

Seasoned hardwood isn't cheap. In our area (Philly) you can easily pay $150 to $200 dollars to have a cord delivered. I do miss the aroma of a good wood fire in the fireplace but the gas stove is easier and cleaner. We don't have to clean the flue pipe, or stack wood and cart it into the house, or clean out the ashes etc.

Just remember that if you use a propane heater, it will steam up your house - it's damp heat. When we were building our house last year, we used a propane heater during the fall, before we actually had heat in the house - it was like a sauna in here. Very difficult to dry out afterwards.

We also heat with wood heat - in this house we have a wood stove that heats our entire house (2000 square feet); the other night it was cold and snowy (well, cold for Western WA - mid 20s), and the house was mid 70s. Of course, it helps to have a somewhat open floor plan, otherwise you wind up with some areas of the house that are freezing, others that are comfortable. Our stove has a built in, electric fan and also a small nonelectric fan - an Eco Fan. That runs off heat generated by the stove.

we have a small generator...we made a small place for it outside, and run the cords in...but while you actually could do it yourself? it's all the gasoline it takes to keep it going! we ended up getting the biggest gas container we could...(and have a shed we lock it in!) for us it was during a summer of 100+ but we had few choices as to what we could run on it..chose ac,and food!

We have generator that is on a dolly so all dh had to do last week was pull that sucker out of the garage to an outside connection and plug it into an outlet that connects to a inside the house.
It ran the house heater, lights, and other critical stuff. An electrician set it all up a couple years ago, but this was the first time we used it....it was great.

We have a Napoleon wood stove in our family room and it can heat the whole house. In our bedroom we have battery powered blankets stashed away for sleeping. I have headlights from Brookstone, they go on your head like a band and you can walk hands free and do your daily living. We can cook on the wood stove so we're all set. Our lake house has a propane heater and also a wood stove so we're okay there plus we have a generator.

So much good information here. You are all so clever. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes.

I am going to look into a generator. All I really need to run is a lamp and my radiator type space heater. I wonder if I could also run my tv and wifi router? I could also inflate my aerobed and with these items, I;d be snug during an outage. Of course, having AC in the summer is a different matter.

Maybe I could handle a generator on my own. Sounds like it, although constantly having to fill the tank would be a PITA. I definitely could not start it with a pull cord. I can barely start the lawn mower.

Thanks for all of this. I will try to save the thread.

Dedtired - do you need to worry about your pipes freezing during a prolonged outage?

Do you have Comcast too? In the storm last week we lost our Comcast internet and tv early in the day and it didn't come back on until dinner time. My Kindle Fire HDX can connect to Verizon which seems to be more reliable than Comcast.

Our generator will run about 8 hours on a tank of gas which is about 5 gallons. When it needs to be refilled you have to turn it off and let it cool down before adding more gas.

Hoping none of you have more prolonged power outages!

dedtired -- Do you know what to do if you can't keep your home warm enough to keep pipes from freezing? (How to drain everything?) You might 'be prepared' by calling your fire or police department for advice/help.

We once had to go to a hotel after our house was 'meat hanger' cold for three days in winter.

I totally forgot.........We used to use to use Kerosine heaters for years! They worked just fine. DH was here to do it then. It might be a good idea to have one on hand if your concerned

Propane heaters come 2 ways, vented & non-vented. That should answer your question about venting it. We never had a problem with propane steaming up the house. Our heater shuts off itself if there is a problem.

Our wood stove is as big as a oil burner, very large & in the garage. It is connected to the duct work in every room & works with a thermostat & blower. We keep the house at 70. My husband fills this around 6:30 at night & most times it goes to around 9-10 am the next morning. No need to get up & put wood in again. Our weather has been very cold this year..It is a lot of work. Getting wood, splitting it, bringing it in to dry. Cleaning the stove & chimney. We have 2 floors & it is 3400 sq ft. With a wood stove you need a chimney or a stack from stove to outside. A lot to thing about.

On CNN today they said that millions could be without electricity for two weeks in the ice storm areas.

Linda,
We had hundreds of thousands without power just last week - over 700,000 within 5 counties. And the threat of losing it again with this coming storm.

Would a pressed log or logs last longer than a piece of wood? I know they are much easier to light.
Years ago we bought a case of pressed logs made from coffee grind from Sam's club. Can't find them anymore. Anyway,We'd sit on the deck by the firepit listening to the grinds pop, enjoying the faint smell of coffee. There are other kinds of pressed logs but those were the best.

Knock on wood,our outages are short but incase we have a propane fire place that heats up the livingroom very well. We'd have to sleep in there for warmth.

One other thing to keep in mind, you mentioned being snug in an areobed, Just remember that there is cold dead air inside of those plastic mattresses in the winter and if it is on an even colder floor you will be stiff and sore if you don't have a good layer of material between you and it. They are perfect in warmer weather even into the later fall, I bought two of the portable ones on the folding frames for any extras that landed to visit and even off the floor when the hydro was out it was clammy feeling. You also have to blow them up.....mine have electric pumps not much good once the power went out. One option would be inflating it and leaving it in a spare room until you need it. I don't know if you have water when you lose power, but I have in the past during a storm filled plastic pop/soda bottles with HOT water and placed them in each bed "just in case" Just like a big hot water bottle, and if you don't need it your bed will be toasty just the same. I also use them sitting here at the computer, usually have one at my feet and roll it around on a towel.

I was raised on a farm that did not get electricity until 1947, therefore, we and our neighbors had to use alternate heat. We used coal or wood burners installed in the main living space. A wood burning cook stove was in the kitchen. On very cold days, both stoves were fired and on milder days, only the main stove was used. That kept one room very warm and the adjoining rooms above freezing.

Someone above asked what about overnight. We did what was called "banking the fire". An hour before retiring, the stove would be loaded with fuel and the fuel allowed to become fully ignited and then the flue pipe damper was set to slow the draft up the chimney and the air inlets on the stove would be reduced to low air inlets. A properly "banked" stove will burn almost all night and by morning there will still be a healthy bed of coals. By morning, the house will have cooled; Its the job of the first person up to revive the fire. That's how it was done.

Old houses with "modern" heating plants were in luck. Those old furnaces did not have forced air but depended on gravity and difference in density of heated air to curculate heated air throughout the house. No electricity was required, although some had automatice fire-box feeders that did need elecric power, however, most of these did have a manual feed feature. Those old furnaces were 'lovingly' referred to as "octopuses" describing the huge amount of ductwork in the basement. Gravity driven air ducts require large ducts possibly with 3 times the cross-section of forced-air installations, but those work without power. Were these efficent? Nah - a lot heat went up the chimney.

Many of those old house designs did not have any water piping to the second floor. Water was restricted to a pitcher pump at the kitchen sink - no electricity needed. This pump could not raise water much more than 20 to 25 ft (by suction); It drew water from a rain filled cystern. On very cold nights, the pump was 'un-primed" allowing the water to drain back before going to bed. The only water was in the sink trap if you had one. The next morning, after the stoves were re-fired with room temperature rising, the pump could be primed to provide a fresh supply of water. In the winter, one should not leave the house for an extended time without first draining the pump and connecting pipe.

How soon we forget about the life of yesteryear. It takes only one generation to move on to the modern house with plumbing on all floors, a house that is dependent on reliable electrric power, and to forget how to survive without power for a few days. Today's house design makes that very difficult.

I didn't read all the responses here so if this has been mentioned please disregard :)

When we were on Okinawa we had to use kerosene heaters, they put out a lot of heat and we were always comfortable, but and this was a biggie for me, I hated the soot that comes off those things, it seems like I spent the entire winter trying to keep that out of our noses and lungs and off our furniture. They work like kerosene lamps, with big reflective surfaces behind them. I know you can buy them here in the local hardware stores but I'm not sure about the rest of the country. Anyhow it's worth a look into if you think it might help.

I know that Okinawa is a tropical island, but it does manage to get cold in the winter months and it's a whole lot of different cold lol. When we got a house on base we had to use coal oil heaters but the tanks were buried under the ground and the house furnace had a direct line to those. (Not as much soot, but sill....)

If you decide to use a kerosene heater, just like the lamps used for camping, don't touch the wick lol it will disintegrate if you touch it. :)

I hope you stay warm which ever method you use and I hope this stinkin' cold spell is over SOON!! Texas isn't supposed to do this, I don't know what it's thinkin'!

Fortunately I have gas fired water heater, so the water remains hot throughout a power outage. I leave the faucets trickling with warm water during the cold. I have also heard to close the water off at the meter, and drain the pipes. Also put antifreeze in the toilets In forty years in this house, a pipe has never frozen, but I was never without heat for as long a stretch as the outage last week.

Good thought about the aerobed.I could drag the twin mattress down the stairs into the living room where the fireplace is located.

My gas burners continue to work, so I can cook and boil water -- and most important, make coffee.

Hope all this is moot and I will not have another power outage, but I would like to be prepared for this time or the next.

Does a generator have to be plugged into your electricla box? How does it work. I have no idea.

It depends. You can run an extension cord from the generator to an appliance - like a sump pump, a refrigerator, a room heater.

A larger generator can handle multiple appliances. Our generator has 6 or 8 outlets on the side to accommodate extension cords. Just like an outlet inside your house you can't plug everything one outlet.

You can also hire an electrician to rewire your existing electric panel. The electrician can isolate those circuits that you want connected to a generator. He then installs a sub panel with a transfer switch. Then you don't need multiple extension cords - you have a switch and one power line.

Unless you're familiar with generator sizes and how much energy your appliances and circuits draw you'd be better off dealing with a knowledgeable contractor or electrician to advise you on generators.

This post was edited by maire_cate on Wed, Feb 12, 14 at 15:17

Call a heating company and get a quote for a small direct vent wall heater. Depending on where your gas lines are for the water heater and the kitchen stove it probably wouldnâÂÂt cost as much as you think.

We have a fireplace stove, propane, that was costing a fortune so we installed 2 small wall heater one on each end of the house and have not used our fireplace at all so far this year. We are in the mountains of California so not anywhere as cold as you but in an emergency the wall heater would keep you worn enough to stay in your home.

Hope you donâÂÂt lose electricity this timeâ¦stay worm

Here is a link that might be useful: Something like this

Stay worm. LOL. Wish I could just burrow underground until this winter is over. I can't think of anywhere I could put a heater like the wall hung one without it being an eyesore.

Thanks for the generator info. Although I am tempted to run out and buy the first one I see, I can see that I need to learn about them first. I want the simplest one possible.

Oh please let the power stay on this time. I just can't take a power outage again.

Winter has a long way to go and with all changes in our weather systems one thing you must have is a radio...a portable one with batteries or one of the newer ones that has a crank on it to generate power when your batteries go. Most of them all have multi purposes, like a usb port that you can charge your phone or other electronic devices like an ipod or reader and built in flashlights. Nothing is worse than not knowing what is happening around especially if you use internet as a go to for answers. The android cell phones are another great option as you can use it to gain access to the internet if your power is out. The darkness isn't as bad as the silence in the house. Every little creak and noise seems so amplified and the winds are horrible if you are used to having the tv or radio on.

I already didn't have any answers when I saw this title the other day, and now I know I don't know! My house got down to 58 last night and that was unbearable. I can't imagine 38 inside.