A dramatic drop in normal temperature is forecast for the Northern part of the US. That barely seems like news but it does cause unease for what you can do to stay comfortable or to head off the pipes from freezing when the power goes down. An ice storm can knock down power lines and obstruct roads for days at a time. Even oil and gas heaters need air circulation fans to circulate heat around a house. Most also need the power grid to ignite the fuel. Depending on your own circumstances and what part of the country you live in a Winter power outage can be anything from uncomfortable to disastrous.
Portable Coleman heater are a handy and economical 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 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 may want. 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 (8 x 10 x 8).Next 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 how well you thought the room was insulated 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 grill stove. If gasoline storage is not a problem a portable camping generator would provide AC electricity for lights, TV and radio.