I ce storm power outage, what do you do?

Pick a central or south-facing room in the house in which to live, then close off the other rooms. The closed-off rooms will act as further insulation between whatever heat you generate in the designated room, and the outside.

Move mattresses into the designated room for sleeping, put sleeping bags on top of those. Enough insulation in the form of bags / blankets, and you should be able to sleep warmly enough.

Even with no heating devices whatsoever, that arrangement should be far, far warmer than being outside in a rigged structure with a campfire. Your house is (or should be!) totally wind- and water-proof, it has insulation in its structure, etc, etc.

I'd eat and drink like I was on the trail - lots of fat and some protein at supper, plenty of water, etc.
 
i would start brining wood in from the pile out back and light up a fire in the old fireplace (well maintained just in case of emergency)

i would really like to get a proper woodburning stove in here for general heating. with the way gas prices are going, wood or pellets make much more sense. it would also save us some trouble if the power/oil went out.
 
Would it be possible to put a propane burner inside an older boiler to heat the water in the tank, and thusly heat the house?
 
FoxholeAtheist said:
Rich, being that natural gas pipes are underground, it normally takes more of an upset to knock them out. That having been said, I imagine if they did get knocked out, it would take more work to get them up and running again. I would think that unless a large pipe got whacked, any line break would be fairly isolated (i.e. one town, not a whole region). Of course, any major break would mean immediate emergency work on the part of the pipeline company to repair it... .and they're pretty quick at that.
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I wasn't thinking so much about a pipe rupture, more how the lack of electricity would affect gas distribution. Somewhere a pump is running to pump the gas into the pipeline and maintain pressure. I just wonder, in the case of a large scale sustained blackout, how long that will continue.
 
I'd huddle in the house. During the day just wear warm clothes and drink hot tea made on my MSR campstove. At night I'd do what the Chukchi do - construct a small insulated sleeping chamber and put a candle inside it. If it works in -50F weather in a reindeer-hide tent, I'm sure it'll work just fine with an inner chamber constructed of blankets inside a solid wall house. But more than likely my sleeping bag would do just fine.

"The traditional Chukchi form of housing was the yaranga, a cone-shaped or rounded reindeer-hide tent. Inside was a box-shaped inner sleeping chamber made of fur that was large enough for several people.

The Chukchi presently number slightly over 15,000, all of whom live in the Russian Federation. Most Chukchi live in the Chukchi Autonomous District within the Magadan Region at the eastern tip of the country. The territory is mostly tundra (treeless arctic plains), with some taiga areas (plains with scattered trees) in the south. The climate is harsh, with winter temperatures sometimes dropping as low as –65° F (–54° C)."
 
Rich_S said:
I do have a question about natural gas though, since that is what my house runs on - how frequently does natural gas go out? In the 5+ years I've lived here, I've had my power go out many times - usually for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, a couple times for a whole day, but I have never had my natural gas go out.
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I see what you meant about your question referring to the general delivery of natural gas, but this caught my eye as every time the electricity goes out we can not use the central natural gas heat or stove/oven because they have electric starters and won't come on once the lights go out.
 
I don't know if any of you know this, but in January, 1998 an ice storm occurred in eastern Canada (and a bit of up state New York and also Vermont), centering largely on southern Quebec. For up to three weeks a few hundred thousand people--people in a largely rural area and in small towns and cities (including members of my family and a lot of friends)--went without 20 century luxuries like electricity.

A book has been written about it: Stories from the Ice Storm by by Mark Abley. I've not read it. But I figured you may want to know what it was like.
 
annr said:
I see what you meant about your question referring to the general delivery of natural gas, but this caught my eye as every time the electricity goes out we can not use the central natural gas heat or stove/oven because they have electric starters and won't come on once the lights go out.
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You can use the stove just fine - you just have to light it with a match instead of relying on the electric starter. The oven, not so much.

The heat is a different story, because even if you lit the burner manually, you still need a pump or fan to push the heated water or air, and that requires electricity.
 
Do what we've done before, make an insulated sleeping shelter with a wood stove, or just a couple candles. My mom makes 'em as a hobby, so it's not like anyone in the family is lacking in nice smelling candles. For more room or people, just move out all the furniture and put all the mattresses on the floor. Got a BBQ outside with 3 full tanks in the garage. We're good for about a month with that kinda setup and proper rationing.

Also have tons of Coleman stoves, water filters, extra water filters, plastic sheeting, tarps, blankets, frozen/durable foods, and such to help make things a bit easier. Not to mention if the wood pile gets thin, we do have bad furniture, and tons of wood scraps to keep up some semblance of heat and warmth.
 
You probably don't have enough gas to run your generator for 2 weeks. Gas stations will be shut down because of no electricity. Food stores are shut down due to no electricity. Your gas furnace needs electricity to run. I have two 5 gal propane tanks that would provide enough propane for my coleman stoves that they would run at least 6 weeks for 3 meals a day. Put your food outside in the cold to keep it frozen as your fridge might go above freezing. I have plastic sheeting that I put on inside door openings, so I have to heat just a small area. I move mattresses to the small area I just made. I cook in the small area. I live in the small area and dress warm. I have enough food to last for a year and 6 weeks of water. I have lived for more than 2 wks without power in the winter and if you are prepared its not to tough. It is cold but you can do it. It's a whole lot better if your pretty gal is with you.
 
racer944 said:
Do what we've done before, make an insulated sleeping shelter with a wood stove, or just a couple candles. My mom makes 'em as a hobby, so it's not like anyone in the family is lacking in nice smelling candles. For more room or people, just move out all the furniture and put all the mattresses on the floor. Got a BBQ outside with 3 full tanks in the garage. We're good for about a month with that kinda setup and proper rationing.
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Racer, what is an insulated sleeping shelter? sounds like it is inside the house.

thanks
 
Lawlor69 said:
I don't know if any of you know this, but in January, 1998 an ice storm occurred in eastern Canada (and a bit of up state New York and also Vermont), centering largely on southern Quebec. For up to three weeks a few hundred thousand people--people in a largely rural area and in small towns and cities (including members of my family and a lot of friends)--went without 20 century luxuries like electricity.

A book has been written about it: Stories from the Ice Storm by by Mark Abley. I've not read it. But I figured you may want to know what it was like.
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Been there, got that t-shirt. I feel sorry for the poor folks in the midwest who got hit with that ice storm a few weeks ago. I'll bet most of them were not prepared for that...snowstorm yes, icestorm no.
 
Yeah, it's inside the house, family room that has a fireplace, south-facing. Can be completely cut off with blankets/sheeting to use the rest of the house as a buffer for the cold. Worked really well in 1993 when we got hit by snow/ice for about a week.

Not that scary to people that live to the north, but we weren't prepared in the least. A foot of snow in our front yard. More details here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_of_the_Century_(1993)

It kinda scared my parents, which is why I believe so much in the preparedness thing now. Especially for ice/snow.
 
Just a few things to add,

I would stay in the house.
Things to do,
drain all your pipes down, leave all the valves and faucets open. Turn the water off at the source.

Natural gas won't go down unless the main pumping areas are affected by long large scale power outages. If they are then you will loose pressure in the gas lines, effectivly loosing your gas. If this happens shut the gas off at the main coming into the house.

Propane you won't loose, unless your tank runs dry. then shame on you if your using it for generator fuel and/ or cooking heating. You should have a schedule to have it filled regurly and call if a bad storm is forcast to have it topped off.
If you are using propane, please remember that it is HEAVIER than air. The normal training of get low to avoid smoke or gas will get you killed if you have a propane leak.

Water, if you are on a well and loose power you are SOL unless you have preplanned for it. For those on city water, you aren't safe for long power outages either. If they can't supply power to the water pumps of filtration system you will either have no water or contaminated water and might not even know it. Everyone should have at least a 2 week supply of water on hand for each family member and pet .

Just my 2 cents worth.
 
Depending on just how cold it was I would either close off one room and hunker down there or if it was really cold I'd pitch my tent in the living room and pile all of our blankets in and on top of it to crate the smallest possible space to keep warm in.
 
Did this twice in the last year (2007) we had the luxury of a wood stove on an enclosed porch.Kept the house about 60 degrees. Falling limbs are a HUGE danger, 8 incher fell where me and my father were standing after we ran. We were getting more wood for stove. Send only ONE person out to do outside chores, that leaves someone to help if something goes wrong.
Stay in the house, and close off part of it with blankets across doors. I simply dig out camping gear, sleeping bags, coleman lanterns. We have added two propane radiant heaters mounted on tanks. Don't run them constantly, or you will loose oxygen in room.
Just don't loose your head.....
 
Happened last year, for 3 days, it would be no big deal for me but I was on crutches and could not load the wood furnace or gas up the gas powered welder w/gen. I closed off my bedroom and used candle lanterns, ate MRE's, and heated water with the alcohol burner from my Swiss mess kit.
This winter, it went out for a night but that is nothing.
For anyone that uses the small propane bottles for stoves or lanterns, you can get an adapter to refill them from a 20lb bottle from harbour freight
 
Oh, but we do have a woodstove, for this very contingency. Makes lovely heat.

Please do not run a white gas stoves inside a house. The CO will jack you up. My butane stove and alcohol stove threw off MUCH LESS bad stuff into the air, by experiment.
 
When our block lost power for a several days a few winters ago, we still had gas, but no heat because the electric solenoid gas valve won't open. We stayed at a friends one night and a hotel another. When the house got down to 32, I had to drain the entire heating system. Of course, the power came back on just a few hours later. If the whole city was down, then I suppose we would hunker down in the living room, and I would scare up some wood for the fireplace. We could cook on the grill or the stove, until the gas distrubution went down, too.
 
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