Snow storm on its way

Got thermometers?

Find the warmest place in da house.


In the basement if you have heat left in the ground. But if its been close to freezing for a good while already...ground is cold. Stay off concrete. Heat does rise, but you need heat in the first place. A house without power (central heat) will just slowly get colder and colder.

Your body will generate heat, so you need to conserve it as best as possible. Couple of layers - shirt, sweater, thin jacket over that. Long johns over the legs + pants and socks. Keep a beanie on - you lose most of your heat from your head. (Yes, inside the house) Remember, carbs are energy for your body and where the heat comes from. Keep eating hi-carb snacks to keep your metabolism cookin' - warm snacks are obviously better.

A tent would work eventually if you are inside it and it's zipped up. You could drape a blanket over the tent to further insulate and keep the internal heat inside. If you have two people in the tent - even better. :taped:


Take care of your core - your chest. Your heart cycles the blood, so make sure your are cycling warm blood. Coffee, tea, coco, etc will do wonders to add heat into your chest area.

As long as you can shut the basement off from the upper floors (to prevent cold air drainage), I'd think that would be your best bet.

You have the earth surrounding the home as a huge heat sink, and you'll get benefit from the floor being probably no colder than 55 degrees or so, whereas the upper floors will eventually drop to the ambient outside temperature (solar thermal heating aside).

If it gets pretty cold, using the tent is a good idea.

Something you can do to bring in heat from the outside is use a rocket stove or a grill w/ charcoal or a propane grill or burner to boil water or heat bricks (or other thermal mass).

Cover the water or transfer to another vessel; put the thermal mass in a cooler insulated with blankets, and then pull out inside the tent to allow the mass to shed its heat.

If you're really worried about this, you could build a carrier out of wood insulated with fiberglass or foam insulation. Keeping the warm mass inside the carrier allows you to remove it some at a time to keep things warm.

Water is an excellent thermal mass, but you want to avoid having it give off steam; it'll condense everywhere causing issues.

You could heat up canning jars, fill with boiling water, and cap them and put in a cooler. Voila! Fabulous thermal mass, no steam. Be careful not to pour boiling water into cold glass.

This is, in fact, my "last ditch" strategy for heating my house. Or should I say, the small area to which we retreat.