Blizzard warning -- How can we heat our Condo in a power outage?

I would purchase a generator my friend! I saw the weather channel’s forecast… tough stuff. Oh, and some small electric heaters. I’ve a couple in my office and they work quite well.

I went through a 3 day power outtage last Dec. with the snowstorm of the decade in my neck o’ the woods.

Short of a generator it’s all about BLANKETS, and lots of ‘em.

I was able to heat water for coffee or cook simple foods on my gas range manually lighting the burners with a match, but, my propane heat is on an electrical starter sooo, SOL on that one.

I just snuggled up with the cat under about 8 blankets and read by kerosene lamplight.

Hey…a great excuse to eat out and get naked under the covers with your wife!

I once was stuck without power in a snowstorm. I was lucky and had a gas cooktop. The ignition wouldn’t work because it takes electricity but I manually lit the burners. It worked fairly well.

Fill many containers or a bathtub with water. You then can at least flush the toilet from time to time.

Have enough food that can be eaten without cooking or heating.

Keep one corded phone working in order to call all your friends and neighbors.

I use a wood-burning stove for the times with no power.

Have many strong flashlights and dozens of extra batteries, many candles, and a LCD miner’s head lamp to wear in the dark, thereby freeing your hands.

Have a battery-operated or crank radio to dispel boredom and keep in touch with the outside world.

Bed is the best place to be.

I keep a kerosene heater for emergencies (my birds will die in the cold). I spent 3 days locked in a room with a heater and 2 parrots during an ice storm – I hope to never have to do that again!

A good kerosene heater needs no ventilation.
Also,look into converting 12 volt DC into AC for your furnace.;)

Addendum: I just hardboiled a dozen eggs. And I am about to have a quick shower and shampoo and do a laundry.

Consolidate. Find the most inner room and make that your hunker down room. Lots of blankets even pitch a tent if you have one. The smaller the space the better chance you have of using your body heat to stay warm. IMO it would take a couple days of no heat at all to become bitter cold. If or when that does happen call up friends to stay at their place and remember to let the faucets drip so pipes don’t freeze.

@lucillelucillelucille I was thinking of checking for either an unvested propane or kerosene heater, or one with a window vent. Thanks. I can deal with cold with blankets and covers. I’d just like to keep the place warm enough the pipes don’t freeze and burst.

@Cruiser Thanks. We’re not far from City Hall, and it’s the designated emergency shelter for this area. They have back-up generators. But we’re atop a hill in the North End, and there are electric pumps that push the water up here. When power is out, leaving faucets dripping is no help.

@ETpro

Yes, it took about 36 hours for my house to become VERY cold, and the worst was having to get up and go to the bathroom, sitting on a 20 degree toilet seat. lol

I figured I must have a strong heart to withstand the shock. haha

I have insulated ‘cups’ on all my outside faucets that tighten with drawstrings, but…burst a pipe in the garage that fed my washer and the power surges after the power came back on blew up the computer circuit board on my Maytag dryer. Big fat bummer!

If your windows aren’t well-insulated, do it now. Plastic taped on, bubble wrap them, or even a well-secured thick blanket help – that’s why they used tapestries in the middle ages, to cover drafty castle walls. :)

@Cruiser gave excellent advice as well. Find ways to stay in one central room, wrapped up as much as possible. If it gets that cold, think creatively: mattresses turned up on the outside-facing wall, couch cushions, etc., can provide some insulation.

We had no heat in our (Michigan) townhouse for several days last winter when the furnace broke between Christmas and New Year’s. It sucked, but we got by. Something else I did that helped was take an old towel and cut a toilet-bowl sized hole in it to sit on when I had to “go.” Sure beats sitting on that freezing seat directly!

@laureth

Hah! GREAT idea for the toilet!

I just hovered, went for the isometric effect. lol

Concentrate all of your warm gear into one area, and be prepared to move in.

A few candles will give you light if not much heat. If you have time get in some extra duvets and an electric storage heater.

Twice in the last few years, we lost power in the winter for a week or more. The only thing that will work is if you have a gas stove. This can be dangerous, as a gust of wind down the vent can extinguish the pilot, so don’t plan on heating the apartment by leaving the stove on as a heater; you need to be attentive if you do this. I have an electric stove, this was not an option for me.

The temperature in the house dropped to 40 degrees. I could have won a scout merit badge for winter camping.

Do you have camping gear? Candles? Flashlights? Batteries? Get everything organized and checked for working condition now. I cooked on a propane camp stove so I at least had tea, soup, etc. Most of the time was spent under a big pile of blankets, sleeping. Once the snow stopped, I headed for the nearest coffee shop that had power, and hung out there with my laptop. They were nice about letting people charge up and hang out.

Shoveling snow was a pleasant diversion because it was something to do, but I had to take care not to get too wet because there was no way to dry out. For us the galling part was the people down the street had power. We were still expected to get to work.

Second addendum: God bless the gas burners. I could not sustain life here in the frozen tundra without mine.

@gailcalled

Yep, get a kettle ma, time to melt the morning coffee. haha

I am surprised that no one offered this solution…...........your automobile. it has a heater, it has lights, it keeps out the cold air and snow, you can sleep in it(with windows partially down), and if need be, you can cook food on the cars engine. just think of your auto as a little house on the prairie.

@john65pennington Yikes, just remember not to sleep in your car in the garage or any enclosed space. Carbon monoxide poisoning would be a real possibility. Here in Alaska, we’ve had people die in their homes simply because they started their car and left it running in an attached garage and it emitted enough carbon monoxide—which is largely undetectable to the human senses until it’s too late—to kill an entire family inside the house. One of the things they drum into us here, too, is that if you’re stuck in a vehicle somewhere, if you have to run it to stay warm, check that the area around the exhaust pipe is clear of snow or blockage so the gases don’t build up inside the car.

Do you have a gas or electric oven? if gas, you could partially heat the house with it.

Maybe overheat the house now, so it will take time to cool if there i a power outage.

@john65pennington

I’m forever changed by your answer. lol

I always thoguht you’d end up gassing yourslef…well, I might.!
Oops, forgot to crack the windows or open the garage door! hahaha

I second what @gailcalled says about filling the tub with water to fluah toilets if need be. Make sure it is not slow leaking, watch to see if the water goes down in an hour.

My hot water stayed hot about 3 days with a huge tank and warm weather outside. So I figure you get a day at the most, and in an apartment the water heater is smaller. My point is, take a hot shower now and get clean and comfy. So the thing can heat the water up again. You will hopefully be able to take a warm shower tomorrow also if you electricity goes out. Which can take you through another day or too if need be.

@john65pennington I agree to get a blast of warm heated air, the car, with garage wide open can be a respot after being very cold. But, I think all cars let air in, you cannot seal out the air from the outside. So, several minutes with the car off and back to outside temperatures I think?

Everyone should have a small generator but I figure it is too late to get one now. Instead you can use a car battery and a 500W inverter to power your gas system. It only takes about 80 Watt to run the circulators but you must cover the 300 Watt (typical) surge to get it started. A 500 Watt inverter will do that. The ignition requirement is nil. I recommend you measure this before you need it – you have the meter in your storage room .
If you don’t have a spare battery you can use the car battery in place and make a zip cord that you can plug into a good extension cord. Run you car periodically to keep the battery charged and your furnace running in tip top shape.
Typical battery is 42 Ah. Furnace draw of 100 W will be 8 amps (Check this for your furnace) on the inverter. You can expect to get 5 hours of solid use from your furnace without running your car at all. I’d recommend manually running the unit. Start it and get it up to temp, then coast for a few hours..

Another solution is to use a good, modern kerosene heater that will put out about 15,000 BTU/hour. That should be plenty of heat for a small place. However, some people don’t like the odor.

I love my wood burning stove. It works without power. I use a battery back up to run a small fan.

Did i really have to say to keep the garage door open because of carbon monoxide poisiong?
i assumed that the intelligent class of people here, would know not close all the doors. just to be on the safe side,,,,,,,,,,,,leave the garage door open and the car windows down abour 3 inches for safety sake.

@john65pennington Why the car windows down? The exhaust goes out the exhaust.

Pocket hand warmers from an outdoor supply store and/or heat wraps will really warm the bed and keep your extremities toasty. Keep a slow drip going from taps that are on outside walls to keep the water flowing.

We used to lose power all the time when I was a kid. Good luck and stay safe.

JLeslie, some cars have faulty exhaust systems and the carbon monoxide will seep out of the muffler, which is under the car, and enter into the body of the car. always, leave the windows down.

@john65pennington When you are driving too?

They just reported a funnel cloud spotted in the snow along with snow thunder out on the cape.

Thanks everyone. So far, no outages. The power has been on and off on the Cape and up along Gloscester Point where they are getting the strongest winds and a rain/snow mix. It’s weighting down trees and bringing linbs and whole trees down on power lines. But here in Boston, it’s all snow and they are thinking now we are going to get the jackpot, perhaps near 2 feet.

@worriedguy It’s too late to do that for this event, but that’s a great idea. I already have a 1250 watt rechargeable jump-start unit. All I need is the AC converter. I will get one at earliest convenience. If I dodge the bullet this time, there is no sense pushing my luck.

@ETpro those hand warmers @Blueroses recommended really work. Great to have around the house.

@JLeslie That’s another thing that’s on the list for when we can again get back out.

Good luck, @ETpro!

@ETpro How did you make out?

yeah, we are interested to know…. looks really bad that way!

I have drifts up to 5 feet around doors and on deck, but I still have power. I live slightly south of the line between Boston and Albany. It is still snowing but it’s powdery and therefore shouldn’t bring pine branches down on the power lines.

We’re very drifty too and probably about 20–24 inches on the ground but nor power outages, thank heaven!

Wow… our 2 inches was just right.

Clear and 43 degrees on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas this morning…but, excited…maybe snow here by mid-week.

Hoping for the ‘just right’ fun amount and not a repeat of last Decembers snowstorm insanity over this way. haha

We survived just fine. Never lost power here. Most of the woring in the North End is underground. We got 18.2 inches at nearby Logan Airport and probably 20 inches right here. The pressure in this storm got down to 963 millibars, which is like what’s expected in a category 3 hurricane. Winds exceeded 80 MPH out on the Cape, and the North facing beaches like Scituate south of Boston took a terrible beating. They got a big storm surge plys 21 fit waves, so heavy flooding. But we came through it and it was beautiful to behold today—particularly for someone like me who didn’t have to try to dig out a car and go anywhere.

Wow… a bad dude! Glad you guys made it fine my friend!

Fabulous! Isn’t snow like that beautiful? It muffles all the sounds and makes it feel like a brand new world. Happy Winter! I’m glad you survived with the basics…. Now go make yourself an emergency kit :)