Tag Archives: heating

New heater

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A couple months ago, the thermocouple for the furnace decided to crap the bed. As you know, the thermocouple, on a gas appliance, is what keeps the device from sending gas to the burners when the pilot light is out. Its a part that regularly fails. Could be a year or two, could be ten years…but you’d be a smart man if you kept some spares on hand and learned how to replace them. I was not a smart man.

Oh, I knew it was the thermocouple. And thermocouples are pretty standardized. But do you know what is not standardized? The means of accessing the thermocouple. That is to say, while I have the part, and know how to swap the part, I had no idea how to successfully disassmeble my furnace to get to the par.

So I did what any smart person would do who didn’t want to spend money they didn’t have to – I went to YouTube and looked for instructional videos.

TL;DR – wound up having to have someone come in to swap it out, but video’d the entire process so I know how to do it next time.

But this post isn’t about that, although there are some good takeaways there. This post is about that the heat went out when it was 0 degrees out and the ‘supply issue / labor issue’ bugaboo said no one was coming to fix my furnace for about three days.

Worried? Nope. Went to the basement and pulled the kerosene heaters out of storage. I have two. Why two? Well, first of all (say it with me) one is none and two is one. Also, I wanted one for the basement to keep the pipes from freezing, and one for the living area to keep the humans from freezing. So, two.

What surprised me was that when I pulled the trashbag dust cover off the heater I was delighted to find an index card clipped to the top of the heater with a clothespin. It said that the heater was last used, cleaned, fully refueled, and had its batteries changed on a particular date a couple years ago. Sweet. Future me is very impressed with past me’s thoughtfulness. (Yes, batteries. All kero heaters can be lit with a match if you need to, but most use a couple C-batts to power an igniter to light the heater. But, you can work it just fine without the batteries if you need to. More of a convenience, really.)

But, heater #2 is a bit dog-eared. It works, but it’s definitely seen better days and perhaps it is time for a replacement. So, of to Lowe’s. First thing I noticed was that kerosene was $35 for 2.5 gallons. This is wildly absurd. Even at your local green-handled Cenex pump its still expensive. Fortunately, I’m prepared. A few years back I bought out someone’s Y2K stash for $2.86/gallon. And prior to that, there was the Great Kerosene Closeout at Home Depot which pretty much set me for the forseeable future.

So, it was off to Lowe’s yesterday for a new kerosene heater. One left in stock. I assembled it, filled it, let it sit for a while so the wick would soak up fuel, ran it for a while to burn off any oils and whatnot, and now it’ll go into storage with a happy little index card taped to it with all the necessary info. But…a few other things are worth noting.

Any piece of gear can, and will, fail. This is why I have two of these things. So, in addition to keeping the instruction manual with the heater for quick reference, I’m also ordering a spare wick or two (which, fortuitously, both heaters use). I also keep a couple siphons on hand as well. Most importantly, in the box with the kerosene heater gear is a CO detector and spare batteries. There’s no room for error with this stuff. Get a carbon monoxide alarm and use it.

And, finally, a couple really good, really large fire extinguishers. I never, ever fuel these things indoors and when I fuel the outdoors I always have someone standing by with a fire extinguisher….just in case.

Also, I bring the heaters out onto my porch to light them or extinguish them. I light them, wait ten minutes, and then bring them inside. When I want to turn them off, I take them outside, turn them off, and let them sit for ten minutes before bringing them back inside. This avoids the annoying smells they make when you start/extinguish them.

So…thats the big prep-related activity this weekend. New kero heater.

 

Seasons Heatings

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Ah, the joys of home ownership….

The furnace decided to not do its thing yesterday. I’m hoping it is something as simple as a bad thermocoupler that needs replacement. But, the issue remains, in the middle of a Montana winter, how do you keep your house warm enough to keep things going and keep the pipes from freezing?

Dude….I’m prepared for this.

I have two kerosene heaters sitting in storage. One is none and all that. Anyway, I pulled the plastic bag that I was using as a dust cover off it an, to my surprise, found an index card clipped to the top of the heater….”Cleaned, run for half hour, filled – 11/2018″.

Apparently, four years ago, Past Me decided to do some forward thinking. Set up the heater, put fresh batteries in the electric ignitier, and -poof- … heat. Since I have electricity, I grabbed a box fan, put it near the heater, pointed it at the ceiling, and let ‘er rip. The thermostat steadily climbed and after an hour or so I had a gain from 57 degrees to a balmy 66. Thats actually warmer than I usually keep the house in the winter.

Still waiting for the furnace guy to show up, but in the meantime there are a bunch of takeaways that I need to act upon:

  • Inspect and operate the heater at least once a season.
  • Make sure heater is filled 100%, has spare parts, spare batteries, matches to light it if batteries are unavailable, etc.
  • Lighting the heater with matches is a convoluted affair. I need to drill a hole in the side of the casing so that a fireplace match can be inserted to light the wick manually
  • Biggest takeaway: my heaters are two different brands and models. I need to get two identical ones for logistics and operating simplicity. Thats gonna be a few bucks, but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run.

In addition to the heater, I always keep fire extinguishers, CO detector, fuel siphon, and other related materials handy in a large ammo can.

In addition to the kerosene heaters, I also have a couple of the Mr Heater ‘Buddy’ heaters. They are, in my opinion, ideal for spot-heating a small room. My computer room is a spare bedroom measuring about 11×10 and this thing does a wonderful job heating it up and keeping it warm for several hours on one 1# propane bottle. Highly recommended product.

In the meantime, I need to see how the furnace guy replaces the thermocouple. The replacing isn’t the hard part, its getting access to the thermocouple thats tricky. But…fortunately a life of quiet survivalism left me with plenty of options to keep things close to normal heat-wise.

 

 

Thoughts on the winters heating issues

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So, it seems like not much has changed lately….inflation? Check. Russia doing Russia things because theyre Russia? Check. Dementia-addled President? Check. Gas still being insane? Check.

This is not the New Normal I was promised.

But…it is what it is, as the kids say. Now that July is here it is time to start thinking about fall and winter. If inflation, ‘supply chain issues’, and fuel prices don’t stop what they are currently doing, I can see this being an uncomfortably cold winter for many folks. Might be a lot of people turning the thermostats down a bit lower than they might do otherwise.

I always keep a cold house in the winter, so it’s no big deal to me. I usually keep the thermostat around 63-65 in the winter. But if you’re one of those people that needs 72 degrees all the time….well… this winter might be the one where youre eyes jump out of your skull likein a Tom-n-Jerry cartoon when you see your heating bill.

Years ago I signed up for ‘budget billing’ with my utility company. Basically, they take the entire previous years worth of utility charges, add them up, divide by twelve, and the result is what they bill you for each month regardless of your usage. At the end of the year you either owe them or you have a credit built up with them. Advantage? Predictable payments every month. In the summer, my heating bill is only a few bucks but in the winter it can be around $150+ per month. (Natural gas, in case youre curious.) But by the time the cold weather rolls around I’ve usually built up enough padding over the summer that the higher winter bills are mitigated by the credits from ‘overpaying’ over the summer. From a monthly budget standpoint, this is the way.

Given the proven adage of there beingno problem that can’t be made worse by having .gov get involved, I can see the Biden people ‘doing something’ to ‘keep Americans warm’ this winter. Tax credits? Price controls? Moratoriums on service disconnections for unpaid bills? Dare I say it….nationalization? Who knows? But what I do know is that now is the time to be making plans for bizarre inflation-adjusted, scarcity-affected heating costs this winter….not five minute after the mercury dips into freezing.

Get the window insulation, weather stripping, electric space  heaters, propane/kero heaters now because a) theyre only going to be more expensive in the fall and b) they won’t be available in the fall. Or, easier and less work, start socking away money now to be ready to pay for the increased heating costs that are virtually guaranteed to be coming this winter.

 

The winter of our discontent

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Paratus is this coming Friday. I’ll be putting cards out Monday since it seems the postal service, ever since the election, has somehow managed to actually become even less efficient. If you want to get on the Paratus card list, all you have to do is either become someone I interact with on a fairly regular basis or be someone who kicks in a few bucks once in a while AND provides a mailing address. Anyone who signs up for Patreon gets a card if you provide an address. (Also, sending yours truly a Paratus gift is an excellent way to get  one back as well.)

Summer is slowly giving way to fall, which means winter is just around the corner. While heating a house in winter is never a cheap affair, I’m wondering if it will  be worse this year. Why would it be, you may ask? Well, first off we have that bugaboo of inflation going on. But, additionally, we have ‘supply chain disruption’ which means when your 30-year-old furnace craps the bed, or your brand new 101% efficiency furnace blows a circuitboard, finding (and getting) that replacement part may be…tricky. And, if you do get that part, finding an outfit that has enough staffing to get around to repairing your furnace in a timely manner may be an issue as well. And, of course, the fuel delivery system (gas, oil, electric) may take a hit in the reliability department as well for similar reasons.

As always, it’s a good idea to have some backup systems in place. For me it’s a couple kerosene heaters and a whole mess of five-gallon-drums of kerosene. Enough to keep the house above freezing for a good while. I’m not necessarily tryying to keep my house at 72 degrees on a winters night…I just want to keep my pipes from freezing. (and, yes, worst case scenario I could drain the pipes as well to reduce the risk and then only have to heat one room as a ‘lifeboat’.)

These current shortages, logistics issues, occasional hacking-related shutdowns, and Wuhan Flu restrictions are going to make winter interesting. Especially since staying indoors with lots of people is sort of the opposite of what you want to do during a pandemic.Will ‘the numbers go up’ as people spend more time indoors around other people over the winter and holidays? Will the regular flu get mixed up with Wuhan Flu and send panicked people to the emergency rooms as their temperatures rise? Will whoever is actually running the country impose even greater restrictions ‘for the greater good’? We’re gonna find out.

This should be an interesting winter.

16 years in storage

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For my backup heating needs around the house, I went with kerosene. It stores well, has the most BTU’s of pretty much any fuel, and is easily portable. But, years ago, I picked up one of those Mr Heater Buddy heaters as a ‘just in case’ along with a case of 1# propane bottles. I tested the thing out when I got it, put it away, and haven’t touched it since.

Until today.

I was going through some stuff and thought I’d check to make sure this thing actually still worked. I had packed it away in the original box and, surprisingly, I left the purchase receipt in there. So…I can see that I purchased it in December of 2004. (For about $75) Its sat in its box for the last sixteen years.

Okay, lets see if it works. Fished out an equally aged propane container, screwed it into place, turned the switch to Pilot, hit the starter and…*whoompf* it lit right up. Rather nice when something you put away a long time ago works just like it was yesterday.

Interestingly, the Buddy heaters have evolved since I got that one. They have a model that incorporates a battery-powered fan to circulate the hot air. I might get one of those and, since it runs on DC, wire it to run off a large battery.

My go-to backup heat is kerosene and thats one of the reasons I pretty much ignored the Buddy heater for the last four administrations. But, it’s nice to know it stored well. I’ll put it away, pick up a few more propane cylinders (because they have multiple uses and, if you want to carry the idea further, they would have excellent barter value.) Probably my biggest use for the Buddy heater is as a ‘spot heating’ unit for a room or are of the basement where keeping things above freezing is critical.

Plan B heating

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Montana is awesome in the summer and lethal in the winter. So, for my needs, it seems a good idea to have an alternative source (or two) of heating in case something happens that causes the normal heating system to be unavailable.

First and foremost, if youre going to burn anything…propane, wood, kerosene, fiat currency, whatever….for indoor heat you absolutely must have a carbon monoxide detector (or three) in place. And if it goes off, don’t ask questions….walk outside immediately.

I have a fairly decent supply of kerosene sitting here. In the last fifteen years I lucked out into two sales on kerosene that were just too good to pass up.

Kerosene heaters are a mixed bag. For one reason or another (mostly .gov nonsense) the really good kerosene heaters (like the Toyosun) are hard to come across new. Fortunately Craigslist provides a ton of used kerosene heaters at very decent prices. I mean really good prices…like $20-50 for a heater that was $150+ when it was new. So, since one is none, I have a couple heaters. But…I almost never use them. (Thats the problem with living in an area that is basically disaster-free.) As a result wicks dry out, things get dusty, batteries go dead, that sort of thing.

I decided to get around to taking care of some preparedness tasks I’ve been letting go and one of them was making sure the kero heaters were up to snuff. Nope. Both are sitting on “E”. And they’re dirty. So…time to institute a preventative maintenance and readiness program for the stupid things.

I sat down and disassembled things as best I could. I wiped down everything to, tightened all screws, cleaned the glass, applied some kerosene to the exposed wick, filled the tank, and lit the wick. And…it ran fine.

Some people don’t like kerosene because “it stinks”. Yeah it does…when you start it and when you shut it down. When it runs, it usually runs without any smell. I set my heater on my porch, light it, wait five minutes, then bring it inside. When I want to extinguish it, I take it outside, turn it off, and leave it for a half hour so not only is there no smell but it’s also cooled down nicely so i can handle it and put it away.

And speaking of putting away, I really need to make up some sort of ‘dust cover’ for these things. I don’t like leaving them sitting in the basement where they get dusty.

And, I really need to put together an accessory package for these things. A tall .50 can with spare wicks, batteries (for the ignition), barbecue lighter, matches, fuel handling materials, etc. By the by, even though kerosene is extremely safe to handle, I always fuel them a) outdoors b) when theyre cool/cold, and c) there is always a fire extinguisher handy.

I need to go into Evernote and create a category for the kerosene heating supplies. I should probably also set up a scheduled set of reminders to inspect and test the heaters as well. So, yeah, a little bit of work but they payoff when the heat is out should be quite worth it.