It’s Cold Out: Prepping for a Warm House and Hot Food

It’s a Friday night.  Unusually, the whole family is home, because the weather forecast wasn’t good.  It rains through dinner, and while you’re doing the clean-up, the world goes dark.  The power’s out.  You peer out the window.  There’s no street lights, no house lights.  Not much traffic either, but from the headlights of the occasional car creeping by, the whole world shines.  It’s all encased in ice, more by the minute.  The temperature’s down to 25 F and dropping fast.  As you break out the board games and lanterns, the house starts to pop and creak with the cold.  

How are you going to keep your family warm tonight?  There’s no driving on that ice; and a quick check of your phone app shows power’s out in the three-state area anyway, so there’s no place to take them anyway.  It may well be days before the power crews get to your problems, with ice-laden lines coming down throughout the region.  How do you keep the family warm, the pipes unfrozen, and food on the table?

But I use gas heat!

Ok.  Does the heater require an electric fan?  Many models do; and if the fan won’t run the heater turns itself off as a safety measure.  It would be good to know if your model will run without an electric fan.

Don’t trade a bad situation for a worse one

First things first:  Let’s not fix the most likely ‘uncomfortable and inconvenient’ cold problem by creating a ‘could easily kill’ carbon monoxide problem.  Non-electric heat sources involve burning something, be it wood, propane, kerosene, or whatever.  In an enclosed space or when appropriate ventilation is otherwise blocked, trying to burn these fuels can result in incomplete combustion that creates carbon monoxide.  

Carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless.  It takes up the space in your blood cells that should be carrying oxygen around, so carbon monoxide suffocates its victims, even though they’re breathing and look nice and pink (or sometimes, redder than usual).  Its prime symptoms are headache and sleepiness, so it’s often overlooked.  If levels of the gas build up while people are sleeping, they often just don’t wake up.  

There are two main defenses against carbon monoxide poisoning.  One approach helps no matter what heating method you use:  Have an good quality carbon monoxide heater with fresh batteries near the heater.  You can get them for $16 delivered.  We change the batteries every solstice, as that’s a good way to remember to do them.  While you’re at it, make sure the fire alarms have fresh batteries and cover the house well.  Smouldering electric fires in walls are another carbon monoxide source.

The other defense against carbon monoxide is to be sure whatever appliance you’re using to produce heat is designed for indoor use and is appropriately ventilated.  For that reason, Salty and I won’t ever use kerosene heaters (mostly designed for shops and barns, much larger and draftier spaces) in houses. Trying to use a grill or anything similar indoors is also a recipe for disaster.

There are some good choices for non-electric heat

If it’s a propane heater, make sure it’s designed to be a ventless model.  We have a wall-mounted unit that runs off a tank in the back yard that requires no electricity at all, and it works very well in our small home.  The only trick with this approach is making sure the unit is appropriately cleaned, since the units attract dust that can clog up the gas delivery system, particularly during months of non-use.

Fireplaces have heated human homes for thousands of years, of course.  Most families don’t use them regularly though, so there are some things to keep in mind.  First, make sure your fireplace was installed by someone who know what the heck he was doing and intended it to not just be for show.  Those pretty little gas logs in decorative fireplaces don’t require nearly the ventilation of a heating fire, so a fireplace designed only for them might not actually safely support a real wood fire (and the gas logs won’t heat effectively).

Also, remember the chimney sweeps of Charles Dickens fame?  We don’t make tiny kids scramble down the flues to clean them anymore, but the flues still do need to be cleaned.  I’ve seen several reports of house fires caused by clogged chimneys.  (Sometimes birds are Not your friends; a couple of those fires were caused by nests in the chimneys.)

Don’t forget the food

Sometimes you don’t want to mess with cooking, so having some emergency foods that require little or no cooking is important.

Since hot food is a big comfort issue, it’s also nice to have a way to make it without power. The obvious answer is a barbecue grill.  So long as you use it outdoors and have plenty of fuel, Great!  (When buying, you might want to give extra credit to models where you don’t need to run multiple burners for every little job.) . Propane stove-top style burners, either attached to a grill or as stand-alones, are also good options.

Once again I’m going to bring up one of my favorite preps, the Kelly Kettle (reviewed here).  It boils water and/or allows small-scale over-the-fire cooking (outdoors please) fueled by nothing more than a minimal amount of sticks/pine cones/wood scraps.

If you plan to use a fire for cooking, please think about logistics ahead of time.  Does your fireplace have one of those nifty swing arms to move a pot over the fire and back?  Do you have a tripod and/or grill top that will work, and ways to get stuff on and off the fire without burning yourself? (This kind of burn is a common camping injury; more on that here).

Situations like the Friday night scenario above aren’t rare; Salty and I have been through several.  Here’s to being cozy and well-fed; and wishing you success in the Board Game Challenge!

 Note: We here at 3BY have no financial interest in any products.