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denise ra wrote:I thought ventless gas heaters in a house are unsafe? I was planning on spending $1,600 for a tiny wood stove and all the proper piping to get it through the roof.
Here in Western Oklahoma I heard that the gas lines did not have enough pressure to run the generators that people had for their houses, so I don't know about relying on gas for your backup. Also, where I was during that storm there was no driving for nine days because of the ice, so don't run out of propane.
Pearl said, " Is there a reason why you chose the infrared over the convection? I have a call into our gas company to see how much of our local gas supply is dependent on electricity. To be sure, we never ran out of it last February. Grateful for your knowledge. This is the land of oil and gas, after all.
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Several issues: 1. statistically, people with wood stoves have greater odds of burning their houses down. 2. lots of modern people are clueless about things like regular chimney cleaning 3. lots of modern people don't realize that the type of wood they burn (green or arbutus for example) increase the risk of creosote build-up.John C Daley wrote:Back to insurance companies.
If you use the term 'wood stove' it covers a range of heaters many of which will be unsuitable inside a house.
Perhaps the Insurance company will allow a particular style, type etc heater.
Looking from Australia its hard to believe that a blanket ban by some companies exists in North America.
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Jer Steph wrote:I don't have anything to add here. You've gotten great responses. I'm south of Houston and we lost power for about 18 hours and had our main water pipe into the house freeze and burst. We had just bought our house 2 weeks before, the freeze. So we overlooked the main water line into the house when preparing for the freeze because we didnt know the house well enough yet. We were quite fortunate though compared to our neighbors. The line burst outside of the house and we had some random PVC pipe lying around from the previous owners. We had a 3500 Predator generator and electric heaters to keep us warm and propane camping stoves to boil water and cook once we fixed the main water line. The previous owners had also left a ton of firewood. We had a firepit that we didnt need to use. So gave the firewood to any neighbors who had fireplaces. We have a gas furnace, but it was useless without electricity. How dumb!
In the future, I'd prefer to be 3 fault tolerant or more next time. Definitely going to incorporate some of the suggestions mentioned here. Thanks all!
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I personally think it's overkill. You want a unit that will run 240 loads but still be small enough to not use too much fuel when it idles at low load. Do you have a water pump? Or town water? No well pump then a smaller generator. 5000 watts is a good size.Pearl Allen wrote:Thank you so much, all of you who have chimed in to the ongoing discussion. Obviously this is something lots of us have wrestled with.
Because the insurance situation isn't something I can change at the moment (the house belongs to an estate and isn't mine yet), I'm going to have to go the non-woodstove route for the time being. The decision then is to go big(ish), or go small(ish). What I am currently thinking:
Going big(ish): Getting a large, yet portable generator that can keep much of the house in power (i.e. gas furnace, fridge, freezer and some lights). Thinking of something like this: https://www.lowes.com/pd/DuroMax-DuroMax-12-000-Watt-18HP-Dual-Fuel-Portable-Generator/1003052264. It's about a 2,000 sf home. However, I can honestly live without the electric stove, washing machine, dryer, and even lights if necessary. We have other backups for those.
That said, David, do you think that size generator is overkill? I know the gas furnace with electronic ignition and blower would not use that much. But since the furnace is hard-wired and a transfer switch would be necessary (with the expense of installation), would it be wiser to spring for a larger one to cover more items, even if we could live without some of them?
It sounds like it would be best to get at least a 100 gal propane tank to run this. If the SHTF in a big way, an even bigger one would be better. Alas, I have some 20 gal tanks and even a 30, but I know they recommend at least 40 and these things run through propane pretty fast, it sounds like.
I do have a Generac 3300 (inherited) that runs on gasoline only. Not a great solution if the power was down for days, I'd reckon. But it could handle the fridge or freezer until we ran out of gasoline!
Going small(ish): Using the existing gas line to plumb in a ventless gas wall heater or stove of about 30,000 btu (as some have suggested). This would keep us and the pipes from freezing so long as the natural gas supply held out. We could live without the fridge (esp. if the outside was like a fridge), etc. etc. I could plumb into propane for this as well, but it would be more complicated.
Maybe...do both the biggish and smallish together?
Hmm...
S Bengi wrote:
Short Answer: for a few weeks
Fuel: 500gallon propane tank for about 2weeks of heating (20kbtu x 12hrs/day) and electricity.
Heating: Emergency ventless propane construction heater, 2 burner cooking stove
Electric: 240v, 5kw+ propane generator
Water: well/IBC totes
Food: 20lbs-50lbs bags of rice/beans/etc, nuts, eggs, oil, honey, multi-vitamin tablets. stock up at the start of the winter season.
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