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Back-up Heat?

MaverickNH

MaverickNH

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Two story colonial 2250 sqft home in SoNH. Oil heat and 6500W gas generator with transfer switch. Generator runs about 90min/gal, and I have 50-60 gal gas in tanks & cars. What's a good back-up for heat?

Would I be better off with a tiny gas generator that can run my oil burner, plus candles, batteries & solar rechargers for lighting? I have 200lb propane and a 2-burner stove for cooking. It seems that 250gal fuel oil can keep my house (1st floor) above freezing a long time if I can keep electricity to the oil burner circuit.

Woods around my house are a decent fuel source, but not much cut/split on hand for a fireplace stove - I have a fireplace, but no stove. I could hang plastic to cut convection heat loss and just heat the 1st floor by water boiler, or wood stove (if I had one).

I have 2-1/2+ months food, water sources, but would be bummed to freeze to death with chow and water on hand. Not to mention thousands of un-shot rounds!

Family of five right now - Back-up, spare 20r-old Daughter with SO moved back in until they move out in Jan15 (hopefully).

Funny story there - they wanted to look at a place on Beacon Street in their rent zone ($700-800/mo). A few blocks down from the Statehouse, next to the Greek Embassy. I sez, I don't think so... They went up anyway. Yeah - 700-800. Thousand. For a 900 sqft studio condo apartment. I remember when I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and stupid. But I digress...
 
Lol. I dont think you could find anything within a 20 mile radius from Boston for $700-$800/mth. There are people in housing projects that are paying more than that.
 
In terms of backup generators to keep your oil burner circuit on you can't get much better than a Honda EU2000i. That's what I use to keep my oil burner, power vent, fridge, chest freezer and a couple lights on. I burn a gallon every 10 hours. That plus 15 gallons of gas in 3 cans keeps my house running for almost a week. Good enough for an ice storm situation, but you won't keep your house warm all winter. For that you have few choices other than a wood stove and several cords of wood.
 
Little honda generator for the oil burner. Look at a fireplace insert as well. You could store a pallet of biobricks pretty easily for fuel.
 
Like others have said, either a wood stove or a fireplace wood/pellet insert.

You can store firewood now. I keep a couple cords of wood for my wood stove as a backup to my pellet stove heat.
 
Propane no-electricity direct vent heaters

Two story colonial 2250 sqft home in SoNH. Oil heat and 6500W gas generator with transfer switch. Generator runs about 90min/gal, and I have 50-60 gal gas in tanks & cars. What's a good back-up for heat?
Click to expand...
I'm in pretty much exactly the same situation, but I don't have a gasoline generator. Since you have propane on-site, have you considered a propane-fired direct-vent heater? You can also run a mini inverter generator on propane.

I'm looking at the Empire "gravity" wall furnace, these use a pilot light and millivolt thermostat, will function without AC power, silently keeping the temperature at your setting for as long as you have propane. Or you can add a AC-powered blower for faster heating of a larger space.

cstockwell said:
Woodstove insert for the fireplace. Best use of the fireplace and far more efficient.
Click to expand...
+1. If you're not using the fireplace much now, converting it to a stove/insert (wood or pellet) will make it useful and efficient, if not nearly as aesthetically pleasing nor romantic.

A pellet stove insert is even less pretty, but is great if you don't have acres of trees and/or outdoor storage for several cords of wood. One drawback is nearly all pellet stoves require power; Some run on 12VDC or are even designed to run for days on a car battery.
 
Kevin_NH said:
A pellet stove insert is even less pretty, but is great if you don't have acres of trees and/or outdoor storage for several cords of wood. One drawback is nearly all pellet stoves require power; Some run on 12VDC or are even designed to run for days on a car battery.
Click to expand...

I bought this for a backup to my Honda EU2000, it's main purpose will be keeping the pellet stove going. http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/264048-Product-Review-Earthquake-IG800W

It sips gas.
 
Stove or fireplace insert , obvious choice.

I live in a colonial house. I have two fireplace inserts and a small coal stove. They are cheaper to run than the oil heat furnace. Some people make " wood mongering " a hobby. Once you start looking for free wood its abundant.

I went with Bio blocks this year. 3 tons , and 1000 pounds of anthracite. Furnace went on for the first time a few days ago. We leave it set one click above " off" , and bump the heat with fire.

Some time in the history of my house the wide pine floors were gone over with oak strip hardwood.
They are almost due for refinishing , and in the event of real trouble , I have no problem beginning the restoration of my floors by burning all this oak I don't really want anyway. .

.. Burnables are everywhere depending on your level of need. Books , furniture , fences , your vacant neighbors whole house ( one piece at a time ) ... A wood stove is versatile for heating.
 
I made up an extended run gas cap / fuel hose assembly for my little Honda EU2000 and tested it out at our camp up in Maine. It worked great, ran all afternoon, overnight, and all the next morning until it was time to go home. Run time is limited only to how many jerry jugs I have on hand.
 
OP:

First, what is the anticipated worst-case power outage that you can expect? You say S. NH, but that covers a lot of possibilities.

If you're new to the area, ask long-time residents what the reliability is like, and make a decision based on data. If Mr. Oldpeson that grew up in the family homestead says it's never been more than 2 days, then, barring TEOTWAWKI, you should be able to make a better choice.
 
MisterHappy said:
OP:

First, what is the anticipated worst-case power outage that you can expect? You say S. NH, but that covers a lot of possibilities.

If you're new to the area, ask long-time residents what the reliability is like, and make a decision based on data. If Mr. Oldpeson that grew up in the family homestead says it's never been more than 2 days, then, barring TEOTWAWKI, you should be able to make a better choice.
Click to expand...

This is the survival forum. You can't bar TEOTWAWKI.
 
If you are considering a pellet stove, the Honda EU2000i will be great for keeping that running. That is what I do. I guess I could also run the boiler with it, but that would be pointless since my generator cant power the well pump so I would not have any water needing heating.

One of those wall mounted propane heaters someone suggested could also be good for you. Just get one that works if the fan has no electricity. (It can have a fan but you want it to work without one.)

I even have a kerosene heater that will heat the house effectively. But that is not likely to be used again since pellet stove plus generator is so much better. It is still there as a backup though.
 
I have a kerosene heater I never use anymore. The cost of kerosene is stupid and propane keeps just as good.
 
MaverickNH said:
Two story colonial 2250 sqft home in SoNH. Oil heat and 6500W gas generator with transfer switch. Generator runs about 90min/gal, and I have 50-60 gal gas in tanks & cars. What's a good back-up for heat?

Would I be better off with a tiny gas generator that can run my oil burner, plus candles, batteries & solar rechargers for lighting? I have 200lb propane and a 2-burner stove for cooking. It seems that 250gal fuel oil can keep my house (1st floor) above freezing a long time if I can keep electricity to the oil burner circuit.

Woods around my house are a decent fuel source, but not much cut/split on hand for a fireplace stove - I have a fireplace, but no stove. I could hang plastic to cut convection heat loss and just heat the 1st floor by water boiler, or wood stove (if I had one).

I have 2-1/2+ months food, water sources, but would be bummed to freeze to death with chow and water on hand. Not to mention thousands of un-shot rounds!
Click to expand...
Bigger generator? We have a 10000W gas generator and can run our gas heater (not AC). In fact, we can pretty much run the whole house, except for the dryer. I have 50A hard line running from a dual-input 200A Reliance Controls TTV2005C (http://www.reliancecontrols.com/ProductDetail.aspx?TTV2005C) load center with watt meters on each bus to a weatherproof external interface mounted on the exterior of the house. From there we manually roll out 50A cable to a dedicated generator shed 25' from the house. We keep 6 20L containers of gas on-hand. Also have a wood stove in the basement that can heat the whole house. For small change you can put in a utility alarm so you know when the power has come back on. Ours is a mechanical bell bolted to a floor joist that basically rings our entire house when activated.

My thinking at the time, which was right after a 5-day outage, was it might be far more difficult to acquire propane for the generator during a long term outage. If not for that I would have gone with a propane-fueled generator. I still would not mind having a propane rig for hot-standby and change my 50A exterior cable, which we keep rolled up in the house, to a hard line. I would put a power source switch with lockout between the two generators and keep it switched onto the propane rig by default.
 
Terrys said:
I seriously considered buying one of these as a backup for my Honda EU2000i, just to run my gas forced hot air furnace, but I don't think it's quite big enough.
Click to expand...

It could probably run my pellet stove and fridge.

And hey, stop posting cool stuff! I'm broke here!
 
I live in an apartment - it sounds like maybe a kerosene heater would be the ticket for me. I've read good things about the Corona radiant heater. Anyone have any experience with this brand, or opinion on kerosene heaters in general?
 
MaxStravinsky said:
I live in an apartment - it sounds like maybe a kerosene heater would be the ticket for me. I've read good things about the Corona radiant heater. Anyone have any experience with this brand, or opinion on kerosene heaters in general?
Click to expand...

My only experience is with Kero Sun. I had many weeks worth of full time use on two of them. It worked fine, other than the usual things they say about these heaters. The electric start never worked and was unnecessary. It heated the whole house easily.

How big is the apartment? The heater might be too much for a small space.
 
MaxStravinsky said:
I'm guessing it's around 500sf, 4 decent sized rooms (not counting bath). Kerosene was the only way I could thing of for a rental unit.
Click to expand...

It may be your best option. Be prepared to open the windows. The heat in 500sf will probably be quite intense.
 
derek said:
I bought this for a backup to my Honda EU2000, it's main purpose will be keeping the pellet stove going. http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/264048-Product-Review-Earthquake-IG800W

It sips gas.
Click to expand...

What do you think about that thing? I have a non-inverter 5000W Honda that I hook up to the house. Takes care of basics (electric water pump, furnace, fridge, microwave, some light outlets). I'd like to have something small and cheap to power my router, cable modem, and computer...
 
Last edited:
dlarge said:
What do you think about that thing? I have a non-inverter 5000W Honda that I hook up to the house. Takes care of basics (electric water pump, furnace, fridge, microwave, some light outlets). I'd like to have something small and cheap to power my router, cable modem, and computer...
Click to expand...

If you're talking about the Earthquake 800w, I've only run it once for about 5 hours and powered my pellet stove with it. It ran great, is almost as quiet as the Honda EU2000, and doesn't use much gas.

Use something like this to figure out how much wattage your electronics are using.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-Internatio...6342508&sr=8-8&keywords=plug+in+voltage+meter
 
dlarge said:
What do you think about that thing? I have a non-inverter 5000W Honda that I hook up to the house. Takes care of basics (electric water pump, furnace, fridge, microwave, some light outlets). I'd like to have something small and cheap to power my router, cable modem, and computer...
Click to expand...

If you want something that can run just electronics, you may want a battery bank. You can charge it from the house power when the grid is up. When grid is down, it could probably last quite a while before being depleted. When it needs recharging, you could charge it back up pretty quickly using that generator. That's way better than continuous running of a generator just to run electronics. It's also quiet.
 
JayMcB said:
whichever backup heat source you are going to use, I'd strongly suggest a battery-operated CO detector, especially if you are going to burn propane or kerosene in an enclosed space.

CO can sneak up on you in a hurry, esp if you're asleep.
Click to expand...

+1
 
MaverickNH said:
Funny story there - they wanted to look at a place on Beacon Street in their rent zone ($700-800/mo). A few blocks down from the Statehouse, next to the Greek Embassy. I sez, I don't think so... They went up anyway. Yeah - 700-800. Thousand. For a 900 sqft studio condo apartment. I remember when I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and stupid. But I digress...
Click to expand...

In the 80's a lawyer friend was doing the legal work for condo conversion of parking spots on Beacon Hill. He bought two, and called me up to see if I wanted. IIRC they were $15K apiece. I declined... DOH! Just parking spots now cost hundreds of thousands in that neighborhood.
 

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