Propane Ends the Pain of Winter Outtages

A dramatic drop in normal temperature is forecast for the Northern part of the US. That scarcely seems like news but it does cause concern for what you can do to stay tepid or to keep the pipes from freezing when the power goes off. An ice storm can knock down power lines and obstruct roads for days at a time. Unfortunately 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 what region you live in a Winter power outage can be anything from uncomfortable to disastrous.

Portable gas heaters are a cheap and convenient way to keep a Winter power outage from turning into a nasty experience. 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 handy method for answering the question about what size portable heater you will want to have. Portable heaters are rated in BTU. To know how many BTU you need to heat an enclosed space to a reasonably warm 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 instance, an 8×10 room with an 8 foot ceiling has a volume of 640 cubic feet (8×10x8).The next step is to 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 propane 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 one lb. cylinders which are available 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 inverter gnerator would provide AC electricity for lights, TV and radio.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.