Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Safest Aux. Home Heating?

Two years ago we had an ice storm come through and was without power for nine days. We run a corn stove and use forced air heat "propane." Since we did't have a wood stove I couldn't use any of them. I didn't use them constantly, but I used the free standing kero heater, which put out good heat, and also used a wall mounted propane heater 35000 btu . They worked good short term but finally got a generator.

There are a number of vented Natural and Propane gas fired space heaters and fireplaces that require no electricity. Ken

I have a laptop and there is wireless in the big house where my daughter and her family live. We have refrigeration, shower and power in my daughters house but my wife chose not to hook power to the cottage we live in. I can run an extension cord if I need for the computer or to charge the cell phones.

We use a woodstove for the main floor. Look into Monitor heaters. We use the kerosene one for the basement. You can get a battery backup (or use inverter, with solar panel to charge). The monitors come in either propane, nat. gas, or kerosene. The kerosene is very efficient. Check it out. Tim.

We had a big snow two years ago and after the first two feet hit the ground the power went out at about midnight. I did have a pellet stove as well as gas heat in the house, but it does little good without electricty. A few years before that there was a gas line explosion a few miles north of me and Crested Butte was without gas for a week or so. In that case there was electricty and no gas. Last winter I did a remodel that required cutting out the baseboard heaters for a month and I relied on that pellet stove for that month. I had purchase a propane back up generator for power outages to run the pellet stove. Well that pellet stove broke one night at 30 mins before walmart closed and I ran out for some electric heaters which we used for some time until the baseboard was back in. Of course in that remodel, I had a woodstove installed. Worst case, I chop up the furniture and burn it should the grid fail. Second would be a zero clearance direct vent propane or gas wall mounted unit if I had to do more.

The camp in VT is in the woods on a dirt road. The power goes out too often. While I use a wood stove there I had a propane 'furnace' put in when I dug the well and put water in the camp. The propane furnace is of course vented and worked without a hitch since 1968. While it has an electric fan built in I never use it. It fires itself off of a pilot light heated thermocouple.

the blanket won't keep my pipes from freezing...

the wood stove, well....

in a good years work, i'm sometimes gone from home but for 4-5 weekends in 12 months... my wife is simply not going to cut, split and stack firewood...
if i had the summer months off, as i sometimes do, i could then keep us in wood for the stove, but when i'm gone in the cold months of outage season, she's still not going to want to run to a wood pile to keep her house warm....
wood stoves are not maintenance free, nor entirely safe either... i know of no one personally who has suffered from CO poisoning from one, but i do have 3 acquaintances and one family member who experienced house fires caused by wood burning stoves... and i see others in the paper every year...

heat involves fire of some sort, as a rule... fire involves risk...
i want something that will preserve my home through bitter weather...
if i could be home, i would choose a soapstone wood stove...
until i retire though, i need an emergency heat source, portable, and relatively safe...

most wood stove fires are either because the person does not realize there is maintenance that needs to be done, does not run them right or does something stupid....properly set up and cared for a wood stove really isnt any riskier than a natural gas furnace....hell given it is installed to manufacturers specifications my home owners insurance doesnt care if i install one and my premium goes up about a buck and a half a month which should tell yah more than anything how safe they are....

as for what will work for you and meet all your requirements......i dont know......around here wood makes the most seance as far as a back up, hell some ppl run wood stoves as their main source and rely on the normal natural gas/propane furnace as back up....

I have a Heatilator ventless fireplace (natural gas, but could be run on propane as well). Requires no electricity and when our furnace went out 2 winters ago, I had a chance to see what it would do. It did a pretty good job of heating my entire 2500 sq ft house. You could either add it to the corner of an existing room, cantilever a floor system or retrofit enough foundation and floor system to set it flush with the current outside wall and build a small roof over it. It's a common construction detail here in TN to save floor space in the room. It works best if the room you put it in has a vaulted ceiling that is open to the upstairs hallway (if your home is 2 story) so that the heat can migrate upstairs more easily. I know it isn't portable and there is an exposed flame, but they are pretty darn safe (you can make them safer if you have a good screen). I sure would like to have a wood stove though...they're just cool.

I see your point but if you were using wood as a backup then she would not have to cut and split all winter. Wood put up properly in the summer will keep for several years and is a great source of heat and can be used for cooking. I am gone a lot of the time too. Truck drivers often are and in trucking making plans is just a waste of time but we use wood for heat and cooking and it works well here. Besides, think of all that good oversize.

Wood stove here.

Get a new wife, then a gen set or wood stove.

Seriously, are you as neutered as this thread indicates?

had the same wife now for 26 years... thinkin' on keeping her...
a gen set is another maintenance issue that i might not be home for...
the wood stove will probly happen when i retire...




not sure what your interest is, or exactly what the thread indicates... but by way of general answer, probly not....

We used a 22,000 BTU kerosene heater for 11 days during the power outage caused by the ice storm that hit KY last January. We were lucky as some went 3-4 weeks and longer before power was restored.

It did a decent job keeping most of the house warm and pipes from freezing. Kept a monitor within a couple of feet of the heater and never once did it register any contamination. The only time I noticed any odor was if a little kerosene was spilled while refilling. Like most things, follow manufacturers instructions along with a dose of common sense and good judgement can make all the difference.

One problem with kerosene was finding a gas station that had power and the ones that did have power kept selling out of all types of fuel. Folks were lined up by the scores carrying anything that would hold fuel for both heaters and generators. IIRC, our heater used around 5 gals. w/36 hrs use.

This winter we bought a dual fuel vent-less gas heater as an emergency back up ProCom Dual Fuel Stove. Chasing around the countryside on slippery roads dodging down trees/limbs and power lines/poles trying to find a place that has both power and a supply of kerosene was no fun at all.

As an aside, during a major power outage, cash is king. Plastic, (both debit and credit) is pretty much worthless. Nowadays, with so many using direct deposit, folks could not access their money. I saw many turned away for both food and fuel because the merchant's bank card scanning equipment was down.

all of my kinfolk moved into one house... they had propane in the tank, and a pto powered 20 kva generator...

it was 24 days before grid electricity was restored to most of their homes

Pellet Stove? You could load the hopper and she could start it. Or you could start it and she could add a scoop or two every few hours.

Honestly, when someone says "backup" I can't imagine it being anything BUT a wood stove, or some kind of stove that can burn wood/pellets/coal. Do folks not sell firewood in your area? Buying a few cords from a local guy wouldn't be all that difficult to do, and a lot of it could be stacked in the house when the cold months come so she isn't running out to the woodpile.

I don't even see the problem there. I had my 120lb girlfriend running an 8lb splitting maul a good many times this summer, and my mom doesn't seem to have an issue going outside for a couple hours every few weeks to fill up her wood racks.

Personally, I'd like an outdoor wood furnace as a primary source, then use either oil/gas as a supplement, with either fireplaces or wood stoves in the house as another backup. If you live in an area with hardwoods, you can get yourself some wood might easy. A good stove and a couple cords will probably still be cheaper than running heating oil.

I use a kerosene heater that is vented for my main heating - it doesnt smell. I used to have a portable no electricity required kerosene heater and yes you could smell it when you refueled it, but it isnt that bad of a smell, soon you dont notice it, and they dont produce all the moisture of natural gas and propane heaters.

They make a non-electric vented kerosene heater you can put in permanently and then plumb to an outside tank.

I am moving to our old ranch house that has one Kerosene heater and I am going to add one of the non-electric types for backup heating and to even the houses temperatures in the various rooms.

The nice thing about kerosene here is they put your tank on a route and it never goes empty. Alternatly, right now I keep my trank almost empty because I am moving, and I can run to a gas station and get kerosene 24 hours a day.

I used to use wood, but have had periods when disabilities prevented me from getting my own wood. And, buying firewood rubs me the wrong way, plus quality and availability are constant issues.

wife your pipes wont freeze but the house ones might

i sell firewood myself, years when i have summers off... i always have storm damage to trees here on the place that has to be cleaned up...
i had to hire a kid to help this summer because of my shoulder replacement, but i sold 6 heaped truckloads from storm damage this year... and got a fair starter pile left over...

when i hang work up i'll burn wood...
from aug of 2005- nov 2006 i spent 22 days at home... and 14 of those were in one chunk when my wife had open heart surgery...
if i'm not gonna be home to maintain it, it's not gonna happen....