Propane Ends the Pain of Winter Outtages

Very cold weather is forecast for the Northern half of the US. That hardly seems like news but it does cause anxiety for what you can do to stay warm or to keep the pipes from freezing when the power goes out. An ice storm can fell power lines and block roads for days at a time. Even oil and gas heaters need air circulation fans to move heat around a house. Most also need the power grid to ignite the fuel. Depending on your own circumstances and where you live a Winter power outage can be anything from discomfort to disaster.

Portable propane heaters are a cheap and convenient way to keep a Winter power outage from turning into a disaster scenario. Portable gas heaters come in several different sizes of heat output capacity, so how do you pin down how many heaters you may need, and what sizes to get?

Here’s a back of the envelope method for answering the question about what size portable heater you may need. Portable heaters are rated in BTU. To determine how many BTU you need to heat an enclosed space to a livable temperature you must first calculate the volume of the room in cubic feet. The formula for volume is L x W x H. That’s the Length of the room x the Width x the Height to the ceiling. For example, an 8×10 room with an 8 foot ceiling has a volume of 640 cubic feet (8×10x8).After you get volume multiply the volume calculation of the room by what we’ll call an arbitrary ‘insulation factor.’ A well insulated room has an insulation factor of 2. A badly insulated room has an insulation factor of 4. So for our 8×10 room you would need a gas heater that was rated between 1,280 BTU and 2,560 BTU depending on your guess at the room insulation and how warm you wanted to heat it. To only prevent freezing pipes then you could probably go with a factor of 1.

You can get propane in 1 lb. cylinders which are available almost everywhere and are easy to store. You can use the same propane cylinder to fuel a Coleman propane stove. If gasoline storage is not a problem a portable camping generator would provide AC electricity for lights, TV and radio.