# How to Heat a House Without Power · Larder & Well > Source: https://larderandwell.cc/power/how-to-heat-a-house-without-power Power ## Heating a House Without Power How to keep a household warm when a winter storm takes the grid down: which heat sources are safe indoors, how to hold heat in one room, and when it is time to leave. By Ruth Calloway, November 11, 2026 To heat a house without power, shrink the space you heat to one small room, seal it against drafts, and warm it only with a source made for indoor use: a vented wood stove or fireplace, or an indoor-rated propane or kerosene heater run with fresh air and switched off at bedtime. Put a battery-backed carbon monoxide alarm in that room before anything burns, because poisoning from improvised heat kills more people in winter outages than the cold does. Everything below follows from those two ideas: make the heat you have go further, and never trade cold for fumes. The sections run in the order a household meets them on the first dark evening. **Your next step tonight:** walk the house and pick the room you would retreat to. It should be small, on the warm side of the house, with one window and a door that closes. Knowing it in advance turns the first hour of an outage into a plan instead of a scramble. ### Why the heat quits with the power Most American homes lose their heat the moment they lose current, even when the fuel is still flowing. A gas or oil furnace needs electricity for its blower, its igniter, its control board and, in most homes, the thermostat. A heat pump is entirely electric. Many pellet stoves feed pellets with an electric auger and push air with a fan, so they stop too. Boilers circulate water with an electric pump. A few systems keep working. Woodburners and masonry fireplaces need nothing but fuel and a sound chimney. Some natural gas fireplaces with a standing pilot or a battery igniter will still light and give radiant heat, though their blower fan sits idle. Check yours now by reading its manual, while the lights are on and the answer costs nothing. The [EPA's guidance on power outages](https://www.epa.gov/emergencies-iaq/power-outages-and-indoor-air-quality-iaq) points out the second problem: without power, the ventilation that keeps indoor air clean stops too. A house buttoned up against the cold, with something burning inside it, can fill with combustion gases faster than its owners expect. ### Pick one room and seal it Heating one room without electricity is far easier than heating a house, and it is how families got through cold nights long before central heat. Pick an interior room if you can, on the side of the house that gets winter sun, with as few outside walls and windows as possible. A small den, a bedroom or a large bathroom works. A big open-plan living area with a vaulted ceiling does not hold heat. One interior room kept warm while the rest of the house goes cold: a towel along the door gap and everyone's mattresses pulled in together. Then close it off from the rest of the house: * **Doorways:** shut the door and roll a towel along the gap at the bottom. A room with an open archway gets a heavy quilt or a moving blanket tacked across it. * **Windows:** a plastic shower curtain or clear plastic sheeting taped over the frame, with a quilt over that, cuts the draft. Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper describes exactly this setup, and taking the quilt down on sunny days. * **Floors:** rugs, folded blankets or foam camping pads over tile or hardwood. Cold floors drain heat from anyone sitting or sleeping on them. * **Walls:** push bookcases and wardrobes against the outside walls, or hang blankets on them. * **Sleeping:** bring the mattresses in and put everyone in the same room. A small tent pitched inside the room, with people in it, holds their body heat in a still smaller space. Use the sun. The EPA advises opening drapes and shades during the day to let sunlight warm the room, and closing them at night to keep that heat in. On a clear winter day a south-facing window can lift a small room several degrees without burning a thing. Close every door to the rooms you are not using, but leave the cabinet doors under sinks open in the kitchen and bathrooms so a little warmer air reaches the pipes. More on pipes below. ### Hold on to body heat Keeping warm during a power outage is as much about clothing as about any heater. A household with good layers and sleeping bags can ride out a cold night at temperatures that would be miserable in jeans and a sweatshirt. * Dress in layers indoors: a wicking base layer, a warm middle layer of wool or fleece, and a hat. Cover wrists, ankles and neck, where clothing gaps let heat out. * Wear house shoes with a solid sole, or wool socks with boots, so your feet are off the cold floor. * Sleep in sleeping bags rated for the cold, inside the closed room, on top of the mattress. A bag holds heat around the body better than loose blankets. * Fill hot water bottles from a kettle heated on the stove top or on a camp burner used outdoors, wrap them in a towel, and tuck them into bedding. * Eat regular meals and drink warm drinks. Your body makes its own heat from food, and a cold, hungry person shivers sooner. * Keep moving during the day. Hauling firewood, sweeping or carrying water warms you faster than sitting still under a blanket. Older adults, babies, anyone sick and anyone on medication that affects circulation lose heat faster and notice it later. [Ready.gov's winter weather page](https://www.ready.gov/winter-weather) names them as the people a winter storm puts at greater risk, so check on them first and more often. ### Wood stoves and fireplaces A stove burning cordwood is the most dependable heat a household can own for a long outage. It vents its smoke up a chimney, burns a fuel you can stack in the yard for years, and gives you a cooking surface as well. If you have one, the jobs are keeping it fed and keeping it safe. Our guide to [cooking on a wood stove](/old-ways/cooking-on-a-wood-stove) covers using its top for meals and hot water during the same outage. An open fireplace heats far less. Much of its warmth goes straight up the flue, and it pulls warm room air with it. It still makes a usable heat source for the room it sits in, especially with a fireplace insert or glass doors. The EPA sets out the safety rules for burning one in an outage: * Have the chimney and flue inspected and cleaned before the heating season, for creosote and blockages. * Open the damper before you light the fire, and leave it open until the ashes are cool. Never close it or go to bed while the ashes are still warm. * Never use gasoline or lighter fluid to start or revive a fire, and never burn charcoal indoors. * Burn dry, seasoned wood in a hot fire, behind a screen or glass doors. Wet or green wood smolders, heats poorly and coats the chimney with creosote, which is how chimney fires start in a long cold snap. Keep a dry stack under cover close to the door so you are not carrying soaked logs in from the woodpile. ### Indoor propane heaters Small portable propane heaters sold as indoor-safe are the backup most households without a stove reach for. The ones built for indoor use carry an oxygen depletion sensor that shuts the burner off if the air in the room runs low, and a tip-over switch. Those safeguards matter, but they do not make the heater exhaust-free. It burns fuel in your room and vents what it makes into the same air you breathe. The EPA's rule for any gas-burning heater is short: never run one in a poorly vented or closed room, or where people are sleeping. In practice that means a window cracked open as the manufacturer's manual directs, a battery CO alarm in the room, three feet of clear space around the heater, and the heater off before anyone goes to sleep. Store the cylinders outside the living space, and change them outdoors. An outdoor patio heater or a construction "torpedo" heater is a different machine and is never brought inside, whatever the label on the cylinder says. ### Kerosene heaters Kerosene heaters throw a lot of heat and run for many hours on a tank, which is why preppers in rural areas keep them. They are also unvented, so the same fresh-air rules apply as for propane. The Consumer Product Safety Commission's [kerosene heater guidance](https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/5052.pdf) calls for 1-K grade kerosene only, because other grades put more pollutants into the room, and warns that even a little gasoline mixed in sharply raises the fire danger. Check your local rules before you buy one. Indoor kerosene heaters are banned in some places: the Massachusetts fire service has [reminded residents that indoor use is illegal](https://mcvfa.org/2023/01/28/using-kerosene-heaters-indoors-in-massachusetts-is-illegal/) there, and New York City's fire code forbids them for space heating. Refuel outdoors with the heater cold, and keep the fuel in a blue kerosene can so nobody grabs the red gasoline can in the dark. The same fuel and fresh-air habits apply to the [kerosene lamps](/power/kerosene-lamp-indoor-safety) many households light in an outage. ### What never to burn indoors Every winter storm brings the same deaths, and most of them come from the same short list of things people use for heat when they have nothing else. Ready.gov and the EPA both rule them out: * **A gas oven or stovetop.** Ready.gov says never heat your home with one. It is built to vent into a kitchen for the length of a meal, not to run for hours, and it adds a fire and burn risk. * **Charcoal grills, hibachis and camp stoves.** Charcoal gives off heavy carbon monoxide even after the flames die down. The EPA calls for unvented camp stoves to be used outdoors only. * **A clothes dryer,** gas or otherwise, run with its door open. * **A car or truck idling in an attached garage,** even with the garage door up. * **A generator anywhere inside the house, garage, basement or porch.** Our [generator safety guide](/power/generator-carbon-monoxide-safety) covers where it goes and why 20 feet is the minimum. Carbon monoxide has no color and no smell. Headache, dizziness, nausea and sleepiness are its early signs, and in a cold, tired household they are easy to blame on the outage. If anyone feels that way while something is burning, get everyone outside and call 911 from there. ### Running the furnace on backup If your gas or oil furnace stopped only because the power did, a small source of electricity can bring your whole heating system back. A furnace blower and controls draw far less than an electric heater, so a modest generator or a large battery power station can run it for a long time. A commenter on Daisy Luther's piece from northern Alberta makes the same point: the gas often keeps flowing in an outage, and the furnace only needs current. The catch is the connection. A furnace is usually hard-wired, so it has to be fed through a transfer switch or panel interlock, or wired to a plug-and-switch arrangement an electrician fits to code. Plugging a generator into a wall outlet to reach it is backfeeding, which can electrocute a lineworker and wreck your panel. Have the work done before winter, and run any fueled generator outdoors at its safe distance. This is the heating upgrade I would put money into first for a house that already has gas heat, because it keeps the whole house above freezing instead of one room. ### Electric heaters on a generator Running an electric space heater off a generator through a heavy cord is safe for air quality, since the heater burns nothing. It is a fire question instead. The [National Fire Protection Association](https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/heating) finds that space heaters and heating stoves cause about 30 percent of home heating fires but 73 percent of the deaths from them, and nearly half of all heating fires happen from December through February. * Keep the heater three feet from bedding, curtains, furniture and people, as the NFPA advises. * Plug it straight into the generator cord. No power strips, no thin indoor extension cords. * Turn it off when you leave the room or go to bed. * Check it against recalls. In late October 2026 the CPSC announced a [recall of DREO DR-HSH015 space heaters](https://cpsc.gov/Recalls/2027/DREO-Recalls-DR-HSH015-Space-Heaters-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards), which can overheat and catch fire. Owners are told to stop using them and contact DREO for a free replacement. A space heater draws a large share of a portable generator's output, and it will empty a battery power station quickly. Save that stored power for an electric blanket, which uses a fraction as much, or for the furnace blower. ### Keep the pipes from freezing A house left cold for days can split its pipes, and the damage shows up when the water comes back on. The [American Red Cross](https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/types-of-emergencies/winter-storm/frozen-pipes.html) lists the pipes most at risk: those in crawl spaces, basements, attics, garages and kitchen cabinets, and any running along a poorly insulated outside wall. * Let a cold tap served by exposed pipes drip. Moving water freezes more slowly. * Open cabinet doors under sinks so room air reaches the plumbing, and move cleaners out of children's reach. * Keep the garage door shut if water lines run through it. * If the outage will run long and the house is going to freeze, shut off the main valve and drain the lines by opening the lowest taps. To thaw a frozen pipe, the Red Cross says to open the faucet and warm the pipe with a heating pad, a hair dryer or towels soaked in hot water. Never use a torch, a kerosene or propane heater, or any open flame on it. If you have a well, a dead pump means no running water anyway, which is why stored water matters. Our guide to [how much water to store per person](/water/how-much-water-to-store-per-person) covers that side. ### Hypothermia and when to leave Hypothermia creeps up on people indoors. Ready.gov lists its signs as shivering, exhaustion, confusion, fumbling hands, memory loss, slurred speech and drowsiness, and treats a body temperature below 95°F as an emergency. Warm the center of the body first, chest, neck, head and groin, and keep the person dry and wrapped, head included. A thermometer in the warm room tells you when the plan is failing. Luther's rule of thumb is that a room with no added heat usually stays tolerable for two or three days, and that once the daytime temperature indoors drops below 40°F the night will be colder still and it is time to go. Leave sooner with babies, older relatives or anyone sick. Counties and towns open warming centers during long outages, announced on local radio and emergency alerts, and a relative's house with heat is a better plan than a fourth night of shivering. The food in the freezer will not wait for you either. Our page on [how long freezer food lasts in an outage](/food-storage/freezer-power-outage-how-long-food-lasts) explains what to keep, cook or throw out. ### My take: what to set up first I'd start with what costs least and protects most: a battery-backed carbon monoxide alarm for the room you will heat, a cold-rated sleeping bag for every person in the house, and a plan for which room you will close off. That alone gets most households through a two- or three-day outage in reasonable comfort. For longer outages the right next step depends on the house. A home with gas or oil heat gets the most from having an electrician wire the furnace to a generator or power station. A home with a chimney and a woodlot gets the most from a stove insert and two winters' worth of seasoned wood under cover. An indoor-rated propane heater is a reasonable stopgap for daytime warmth in one room, run with a window cracked and shut off at night. I would skip a kerosene heater where it is banned, and I would never treat an oven or a grill as a heater, however cold the night gets. The rest of our guides on keeping a house running without the grid are in the [power section](/power). ### Sources * [Ready.gov: Winter Weather](https://www.ready.gov/winter-weather) * [U.S. EPA: Power Outages and Indoor Air Quality](https://www.epa.gov/emergencies-iaq/power-outages-and-indoor-air-quality-iaq) * [National Fire Protection Association: Home Heating Safety](https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/home-fire-safety/heating) * [American Red Cross: Frozen Pipes](https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/types-of-emergencies/winter-storm/frozen-pipes.html) * [U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: kerosene heater guidance](https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/5052.pdf) * [CPSC: DREO DR-HSH015 space heater recall](https://cpsc.gov/Recalls/2027/DREO-Recalls-DR-HSH015-Space-Heaters-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards) * [Massachusetts Call/Volunteer Firefighters Association: indoor kerosene heaters](https://mcvfa.org/2023/01/28/using-kerosene-heaters-indoors-in-massachusetts-is-illegal/) * [The Organic Prepper: How to Stay Warm During a Winter Power Outage](https://www.theorganicprepper.com/warm-winter-power-outage/) How we write: we work from government, fire-service and emergency guidance and say what we have not tested. See our [editorial policy](/editorial-policy). ### Heating without power: questions Does a gas furnace work when the electricity is out? Almost never. The gas is still there, but the blower, the igniter, the control board and usually the thermostat all need household current, so the burner stays off. Is it safe to sleep with a propane heater running? The EPA says no gas-burning heater should run where people sleep. Shut it off at bedtime and rely on sleeping bags, extra blankets and a closed-off room through the night. How long can a family stay in a house with no heat? It depends on the cold outside and how tight the house is. A sealed small room with everyone in it often stays livable for a couple of days. Once the inside temperature falls into the 40s, or anyone shows signs of hypothermia, go to a warming center or a warmer home. Do candles really warm a room? A few candles in a small closed room add a little warmth, mostly to morale. They are a fire risk and they burn air, so treat them as light first and keep them in sturdy holders away from bedding. Can a portable power station run a space heater? Only briefly. An electric heater draws so much current that most home power stations empty within an hour or two. That stored power does more good running a furnace blower, an electric blanket or phone chargers. Written by Ruth Calloway Pantry, water and homestead skills Ruth Calloway writes Larder & Well's guides to food storage, water, off-grid power and the old household skills. She works from extension-service bulletins, USDA and Ready.gov guidance, manufacturer manuals and years of homesteader discussion threads, and she says plainly where the sources disagree. She does not claim to have tested what she describes; when a method is untested or risky, her articles say so. [rcalloway@larderandwell.cc](mailto:rcalloway@larderandwell.cc) Last checked 2026-11-11 Every guide on generators, fuel and keeping warm without the grid is in the [power section](/power). --- [Larder & Well](/) Keep the household fed, watered and warm when the stores close. Food storage, water, off-grid power, homestead skills and the old ways, written for American households that want to stay fed, watered and warm when the grid, the economy or the supply chain fails. [Send a correction or a question](/contact) © 2026 Larder & Well. Independent, written from sources you can open. A page that ever carries a paid link says so above it. Nobody pays for a place in our guides.