A cold snap accompanied by strong winds and heavy snow or ice often results in the power going out. This can be very dangerous for people who rely on electricity to heat their homes in the winter. It’s important to have a plan in place to keep yourself and your family warm while riding out a power outage.
Hypothermia is a very real possibility that claims the lives of over 1,000 people in the U.S. every year. In fact, it often sneaks up on them before they realize what’s happening. They fall asleep and never wake up. This is why you need to be prepared to keep warm without relying on your furnace. Here are 17 ways.
1. Layer Your Clothing
Wear thermal underwear, a couple pairs of socks, several shirts, and a hat that covers your ears. This will make it harder for heat to escape and keep you much warmer. Also wear a coat and gloves if you’re outside.
2. Use Hand Warmers
Put the warmers in your gloves and socks to help keep your hands and feet warm. You will need to replace the warming packs every couple of hours. These gloves come with pockets for the hand warmers.
3. Close Rooms You Won’t Be Using
Close the doors of every room you don’t have to get to. The more sealed up your house is, the less cold will be able to get in.
4. Huddle In One Small Room
Pick a small bedroom (preferably one with as few windows as possible) and have your whole family gather there. Close the door and cover the vents to trap the body heat generated by everyone. If possible, pick a room on the south side of the house so the sun’s rays can warm the room naturally. Also, if you’re dealing with a wind coming out of the north, you don’t want to be on that side of the house.
5. Use Duct Tape and Plastic to Cover Windows
If you don’t have a roll of plastic, you can use garbage bags. Better yet, use bubble wrap if you have it. The extra insulation will stop drafts from seeping around the smallest cracks in the sill and keep the cold glass from chilling the room.
6. Close All The Blinds and Curtains at Night
Once you’ve covered the windows with plastic, don’t forget the curtains. If there’s a window without curtains, use a heavy blanket instead. A few nails in the corners of the blankets won’t hurt them. Doing this will block drafts as well as stop the cold air from seeping in through the glass. As long as the sun is shining, you can uncover the windows during the day to let warm sunlight in.
7. Use Towels to Block Drafts
Roll up towels and place them under doors to block cold drafts from coming in. Put them on window sills as well. You can use pillows, blankets, or even old shirts. Put them anywhere a draft might sneak in.
8. Burn Candles (Safely) to Help Generate Heat
Several candles grouped together on a table can provide some warmth and comfort. Just make sure they’re not in a place where they could be knocked over.
9. Invest in Solar Heaters
These hand devices rely on the sun to heat a house. However, they’re much more effective if you use them to warm a single room. Unfortunately, they’re pretty expensive. If you don’t want to be out a couple thousand dollars, you can buy a single panel and use it to heat one room or a small section of the house.
10. Invest in a Wood Stove or Fireplace
Make sure you have plenty of seasoned, dry wood to burn in the stove as well. A wood stove can easily heat an entire home and provide a way to heat food.
11. Get a Portable Generator
A large standby generator can be enough to run your furnace, but a portable generator can run a space heater or two. Keep extra fuel on hand for your generator, and NEVER put your generator inside your home. Keep it under a porch or awning to protect it from heavy snow if necessary.
12. Drink Warm Liquids
Hot coffee, hot chocolate, soup, and tea will keep your body warm from the inside out. Use your candle or camp stove to heat the liquid. Drink hot liquid every hour or so to keep your body temperature up. Avoid drinking cold water or other cold drinks.
13. Pile On The Blankets
Get comfy on the couch and put on several blankets to keep warm. Make sure you keep your head covered as well. Wool blankets are best and provide the most warmth.
14. Use Heated Water Bottles
Back in the day, people used heated water bags to keep warm while they sat on the couch or lay in bed. You can do the same by heating up a water bottle and putting it next to your body. Another option is a bag of beans. Put it near your heater or fire (but not too close) until it gets nice and warm, then snuggle up with it.
15. Get Some Exercise
Five minutes of jumping jacks or burpees will warm you up really fast. If you have kids, play a game of Simon Says. Not only will this warm up everyone, it will boost morale.
16. Put Your Tent Up Indoors
The small, enclosed space will trap in body heat. Burning a candle in the tent will provide more heat (just be careful). If your tent is sturdy enough, add a blanket over the top to help trap the heat inside.
17. Pull Out Your Sleeping Bags
Blankets are great during the day, but at night you’ll want some high-quality sleeping bags to trap in every bit of body heat.
First I noticed the lack of mention of what was originally called “NRC Space Blankets” – do not confuse these sturdy 17 oz blankets with cheap so-called “emergency survival” blankets, flimsy things that are little more than aluminized (Mylar) sandwich wrap. I call them “Single use money wasters.”
The quality blankets, generally called “Space All Weather Blanket”, are getting increasingly harder to find and are moderately expensive today. REI sells them for about $17 + S&H (6/19/19) – They can also be found on Amazon dot com and a few other places at prices from about $17 to $20 each.
Although I prefer the red / silver blankets (useful for signaling for help if needed) the blue / silver or green / silver may be preferable for concealment reasons. I strongly suggest two blankets per person (I keep 4 in my vehicle “just in case” my wife and I get stranded someplace).
I once used two of these blankets and a “summer weight” sleeping bag for a shelter while on a hike – it was 20 below zero (F) at 4:00 PM when I crawled into bed, I can only imagine what it was at 2:00 AM when I woke up sweating and opened the flap (my backpack placed in the opening) to let in cool air. (My “shelter” consisted of one blanket laid in a trench stomped into the snow, and another suspended above my sleeping bag on the first, by a length of para-cord to make an “A” frame tent.) As a “Scout Master” in the 1970’s, I found two of these blankets better than a surplus U.S. Army “Arctic” tent. (The stories I could tell!)
Next, I respectfully disagree that solar air heaters have to be expensive, and good for only one room. There are many examples of low-cost air heating solar collectors to be found on the Internet, especially at YouTube. However, solar air heating has been a hobby of mine since the early 1970’s and I believe I have developed one of the best. I have posted free comprehensive instructions on ‘How To” build a “DIY” air heating solar collector at first-beartooth-ranch.info/JimsCollector.pdf.
I have built a number of collectors based on variations of those instructions and have found they all have about a three year payback – even here in Wyoming where winter temperatures can dip to forty below zero. Although materials for a full size, elaborate, unit CAN be costly, a simple basic unit – without differential thermostats and expensive ‘blowers’ is very possible. My best unit cost me about $300 to build using all new materials and kept my 1,200 sq foot house above 72F until 2:00 AM for an entire winter in Salt Lake City, UT.
I could have saved money and improved performance by using recycled materials. Such as glass begged from professional glass installers (see “Glass” in the Yellow pages – some professionals will let you haul off their defective pieces rather than pay to have them disposed of).
I think the only things that MUST be purchased “new” would be the paint, the glue, and the special paper cones. Even the cones could be omitted, at a serious sacrifice of efficiency.
Might want to keep the coffee to a minimum as it’s a diaretic and makes you pee peeing is one of the fastest ways of dispelling body heat.
Make sure you have a few cans of expanding foam on hand to eradicate those air gaps your going to find use it to block off any doors you are not going to use down beside any drains remember cold always comes from below don’t use water bottles or bags if you get a leak at night you just killed yourself use rocks around your fire they stay hot longer and will not freeze when they cool have some mouse traps available as the wee beastie will try to join you and you good is his target as well as your heat and he will not close his entry point his droppings will cause illness you don’t need use peanut butter in the traps he loves that stuff.
If you have a dog, get close to it and sleep beside it. A dog’s normal body temperature is between 101 and 102 degrees. That much heat can make you a lot warmer. This is coming from a prepper who slept with a dog two nights during an ice storm, and got positively hot from dog heat.
Bags of tea-light candles are a pretty good deal. You can get bags of 50-100 for a few bucks. It also allows for trading, if needed.