A Partial Solution to our Winter Heat Problem

Thanks to all who weighed in on my Sun Oven woes. You all gave me food for thought and I have not given up the fight! Now, for something completely different...
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I spent the majority of my prepping budget this month on a few tools to help keep us warm if the power goes out.

This is the Mr. Heater Big Buddy, plus a hoseand propane tank. The good thing about this heater is that it is approved to use indoors and it automatically shuts off if it tips over. You can run it off 2-1 lb propane canisters OR a 20 lb tank (like those for grills). According to the manufacturer, one 20 lb tank will heat 400 square feet for 25-110 hours, depending on how high you have the heat turned up.

I use the major ice storm we had a few years ago as the benchmark for a winter power outage. That time we were without power for 8 days. Assuming that is the length of an archetypal winter disaster, two 20 lb tanks would provide enough heat to get us through. Four tanks would give us considerably more cushion.

But wait! We have one of these in our yard:

We always keep our 500 gallon propane tank topped up during the fall and winter. Wouldn't it be handy if we could find a way to refill our little propane tank from this big one? I did a little online research, and it appears that it is indeed possible to fill grill-type tanks from a big tank like this one. You need to have a special hose or something (love my technical terminology?) installed, but it can be done if you own your propane tank rather than rent it. I'm thinking about calling our propane co-op and seeing if this is a possibility.

A wood stove and a generator are definitely in our future, but a propane heater is certainly better than nothing.

Now that it is officially fall, it's time to be thinking about the challenge of keeping warm during the winter. What preparations have you made in case your heat goes out in the winter? 

Baby, it's COLD outside!

NASA satellite photo of the huge February 2011 snow storm 

Like much of the United States, the Harried Homemaker Acres got a deep blanketing of snow last week. It disrupted our lives slightly, but otherwise left us unscathed. Hubby Dear chose to spend the night at work Tuesday. He was on-call that evening and things could have been dicey if he had to drive back to work during the blizzard. I also was unable to make my usual mid-week grocery run. No worries - we had plenty to eat in our food storage. Woohoo! Time to break out the Girl Scout cookies!

The only thing that gave me pause was the thought of what I would do if we lost power. Sure, I had plenty of food I could cook on my gas stove and non-electric playthings to keep the kids busy, but how would I keep them warm? The only source of heat in our house is the furnace. It burns propane but it also requires electricity to function. I wouldn't even be able to drive somewhere that still had power or a generator since my mini-van would be no match for the large drifts of snow in our driveway.

That sick feeling you get when you realize you've forgotten something important lodged in my stomach. Oops. That's a rather large hole in my preps. Thankfully, the layer of ice we received wasn't enough to bring down the power lines and a potential crisis was averted.

I hadn't totally forgotten about the issue of keeping warm during the winter. I just blithely decided that food storage was more fun pressing since inflation is rising rapidly and we are getting a wood stove sometime in the next couple of years. Anything I bought now to heat our house during a power outage would simply waste money, right?

WRONG! I failed to remember the Rule of Redundancy:  you need to have back-ups for all vital preps! Even something as old-fashioned and simple as a wood stove could fail. What if you run out of wood? Maybe you get sick and become physically unable to cut wood and haul it inside. Having a back-up plan for heating your home in such a situation could make all the difference.

One of my prepping goals for 2011 is to start saving up for a small house renovation that would include one of these fabulous soapstone wood stoves. We'll do this, but we also need to get something like one of these Mr Heater "Big Buddy" Propane Heaters. It's safe to use indoors, shuts off if it tips over (important with my crazy rugrats), and can be hooked up to the kind of propane tank you'd use with a gas grill.

How would you keep your family warm if the power went out? If you haven't thought about it (or if you've ignored it because it's not one of the "fun" preps ), it's time to think it through. Especially if you read one meteorologist's predictions for the next five winters.