Very cold weather is forecast for the Northern section of the US. That barely seems like news but it does cause concern for what you can do to stay comfortable or to prevent the pipes from freezing when the power goes down. An ice storm can hack down power lines and barricade roads for days at a time. Unluckily oil and gas heaters need air circulation fans to pump the 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 uncomfortable to disastrous.

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 capability, so how do you determine how many heaters you may need, and what sizes to get?

Here’s a speedy method for answering the question about what size portable heater you need. Portable heaters are rated in BTU. To determine how many BTU you need to warm 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. As an example, an 8×10 room with an 8 foot ceiling has a volume of 640 cubic feet (10×8x8).The next step is to multiply the volume calculation of the room by what we’ll call an arbitrary ‘insulation factor.’ The normal interior room has an insulation factor of 2. An underinsulated room has an insulation factor of 4. So for our 8×10 room you would need a portable gas heater that was rated between 1,280 BTU and 2,560 BTU depending on your estimate of the insulation factor 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 one pound cylinders which are available almost everywhere and are easy to store. You can use the same propane cylinder to fuel a Coleman grill stove. If gasoline storage is not a problem a small portable generator would provide AC electricity for lights, TV and radio.

Natural Health

Filed under: John's Message

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.