Winter Power Outage Scenario

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Emergency Heat System

We were pleasantly surprised at how our emergency heat source performed.  It was better than we expected.  Our primary heat is a natural gas furnace, but it needs electricity to operate the blower and controls.  Our house isn't particularly well insulated, so the furnace tends to run all the time when it is very cold outside.  We were concerned that our emergency heating source wouldn't be enough to keep us warm.

Our chosen backup heat solution is a Mr. Heater Portable Buddy heater.  It is indoor safe (with proper ventilation in the room) making it an ideal emergency heat source.  Just make sure you have enough 1 lb. propane cylinders stocked up.  It burns through a bottle in approximately 6 hrs. on low or 3 hrs. on high.

To conserver heat we designated a "warm room" in the house.  At night, it was one of the bedrooms.  In the day, we moved to the living room.  We shut the doors and/or hung plastic sheeting over openings to prevent the warm air from escaping, but made sure we still maintained proper ventilation requirements.

I carried our digital, battery operated, carbon monoxide (CO) detector around with the heater and constantly monitored for safe CO levels.  The highest it ever reached was 17 PPM, which is well within what is considered safe.  In fact, most of the time it read 0 PPM.  I never actually saw the 17 PPM reading or any level above 0 PPM, but the detector reported it as the maximum level reached.

I attached a small battery operated fan to the handle of the heater to help circulate the air.  I realized that I hadn’t stocked any spare batteries for it.  The batteries I used  were partially discharged already, so I didn’t get a good idea of how long they will last, but it seemed to run through them fairly quickly (as in they were not going to last for several days).

Battery operated digital clock/thermometers were handy for monitoring the indoor temperature. Outside temperatures dropped to 12°F (-11°C) overnight.  The temperature in the living room had dropped to 53°F (12°C) by morning.  We opted to turn the propane heater off when we went to sleep as I was afraid one of the kids would accidently kick a blanket on the heater in their sleep.  It was about 60°F (16°C) in the bedroom when I cranked up the heater again around 5 AM.  In truly cold weather I would probably not have been able to leave it off that long.

Temperatures hovered in the mid to low 60s (16-18°C) as long as we operated the heater on low.  Occasionally I would run it on high if it had been off for a period of time or we moved to a new room.  Overall we were quite comfortable with a few added clothing layers.

Did we fare as well without running water?  Continue to find out…

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