Staying warm in winter (inside)

Any novel or creative solutions on staying warm inside in winter, without major changes to a conventional house. Autonomously without using national grid.

I'm not mad on burning stuff, would be ok if there were not so many people in the world, too much carbon if everyone did it.

The best I've come up with is retaining body heat, dressing up warm. I found my nose got very cold, but nose warmers are available online, they worked. I am in zone 9, not often at freezing but often close. I lasted a few months into winter, but found it depressing and gave up. i may give it another try sometime. Hibernating,  staying in bed all winter not a complete solution.

Adjusting expectation, somehow, a partial solution perhaps, I usually don't notice the cold when outside, but in the lounge expect to be warm and on goes the heater.
 
Green ginger wine makes you feel warm, but being tipsy all the time not desirable to me. I wonder if the warming effects of gingers can be harnessed some other way.

Perhaps heating in a green autonomous way is impossible, community/society cooperation/assistance needed.
 

 

Hi David,
Some good questions there. Don't give up hope, there are many good options for staying warm. Some of these might be overkill for you in zone 9... I am in zone 4b :)

I think the best place to start is always with insulation, the kind that "breaths", not the kind that seals the house like a plastic baggy. But you mentioned not wanting to majorly change the house, so lets look at other options.

The next step would be to reduce the amount of space you need to heat. You are already doing this by putting on more layers. you can also use quilts/blankets to cover doorways and only heat a smaller area.

Then for ways to produce heat. Eat spicy foods :), many hot peppers have the ability to increase your blood circulation, which makes you feel warmer. Also, heat you and not the space. I can't find it right now, but Paul Wheaton has an article about saving electricity that talks about using heat lamps and heated blankets and reduced the amount of power needed to heat the house by heating the person instead of the air.

Lastly, if it gets cold enough, you should look into rocket mass heaters.  We have a whole forum dedicated to these wood burning devices. https://permies.com/f/260/rocket-mass-heaters In essence you have an extremely efficient wood stove design called a rocket stove that burns hot, quickly, and efficiently, producing far less emissions than most other wood burning devices. Then you combine that with a large mass of some kind that traps most of the heat before it leaves the house through the chimney.

A lot depends on your climate and your house.  My experience of people experimenting with zero heating is that the house gets damp and things start to go mouldy and that it's really important to have some kind of dry heat in the house to maintain the structure and your health.

Your climate may be different though!

I'll second Matt's recommendation of a rocket mass heater. They use a small fraction of the wood used by most wood stoves, and the heat is stored and given out over a long time. If you make one with a heated bench the right size to sleep on, you would probably find that you only need to burn it for an hour a day, or maybe even every two days, and you'd keep your house warm enough to be dry and comfortable, and have a heated bed to sleep on.

Depending on the area you live in, you might be able to grow your own firewood, or use salvaged wood, or trimming from your fruit trees.

Sawing and chopping it by hand keeps you warm, too!

Maybe also research passive solar techniques to see if any of those could be applied to help you catch and retain heat.

Given enough solar panels and batteries, you might be able to use a heated blanket to keep warm too. But again, I find that with those I tend to put myself in hibernation mode but since having the rocket mass heater which keeps the whole house comfortable I haven't felt the need to use one.

Paul Wheaton figured this one out with his Micro heaters:

https://richsoil.com/electric-heat.jsp

Another suggestion:

https://permies.com/wiki/236202/Heating-People-Spaces-Kris-De

An interesting solution I read of is, from memory, in the Swiss Alps, farmers would have their home built above indoor stables for their livestock, this keeps them warm all winter. Hard to see how this could be done in a "normal" house, have lots of bunnies or children, would need a lot.

Probably an "ecosystem" , diversity of strategies best.

Good point about damp & mold.

Thinking of piles of black bricks by sunny floor to ceiling windows, to radiate heat at night after sunny days.

Using and storing the heat of winter sun can really make a difference as you suggest, but there's a lot one can do to reduce heat loss without making major changes to your house. Apologies if you've already thought of these:

Reduce draughts: check doors and windows for leaks and add draught strips is necessary.
Have thick, well fitting curtains at windows and doors as well (and close them all at night!)
If you have a suspended wooden floor, these can also be very draughty with gaps, so a thick underlay under carpet can make a surprising difference as well.
Loft insulation keeps the upstairs warm in winter and cool in summer.
Climbing plants on the outside of the building can reduce wind chill and keep the building warmer, but probably could cause problems if the wrong plant is chosen depending on your climate and house construction.

Other thoughts - save money by heating the rooms you are in more than those that are used less - bedrooms are more comfortable for sleeping at a cooler temperature.

Yes, if my nose is getting cold, that is a sign that the room is getting a bit cold! An incandescent light facing your head if you are sitting can give a pleasant sun-like heat where you need it. Any waste heat from the light heats the house (https://permies.com/t/60338/Podcast-LED-Incandescent-Light for some pointers about how we've been fooled there!)

I feel your pain, or rather the cold draft coming under the door

Two ideas from our 105 year old, drafty, poorly built house (we need a tube of caulking the size of Alaska):
1. Wear a hoodie under your outer layer.  My kid has always loved them, I am a recent convert.  It's so easy to slide my hood up or down to regulate body heat, better than a hat which I keep losing. Always learning from my teenager

2. I never slow cook soups or chili con carne unless a cold front is blowing through.  That slow heat combined with the Homestead aromatherapy is a winner in winter.  Take a break from chores to hold a large mug of vegetable soup, sipping slowly to get that nose warm.  An almighty slice of winter heaven, my friend

I had not really heard of rocket mass heaters, it would not be hard to have thick brick walls/ surrounds close to and around my wood burner, would be similar I assume, anyway will read up on rocket mass heaters.

I was looking for a post about dogs keeping people warm and found this one (not about dogs):

https://permies.com/t/62284/ways-save-winter-heating

And this one:

https://permies.com/t/44357/Heat-Dummies-Flow-chart-Function#1571424

Hi David from also-cold Brazil, where we're bracing for our second frosty snap of the year (we're also 9b).
I imagine you want some tips you can implement today, along with some of these other long-term solutions like positioning your home and thermal mass. Have a look at these two threads. I know you said non-grid, these solutions are all mixed together, in some cases they're old conversations sprinkled with great ideas-- if you don't see something you like skip forward and see what else you might find. Particularly the second thread, which starts with "electric" ideas, gets combined with other similar conversations and ends up absorbing all sorts of things. I remember seeing this when I first came to Permies looking for ways to keep warm in my non-heated home.
https://permies.com/t/62284/ways-save-winter-heating (suggested by Anne above too)
https://permies.com/t/131936/cut-electric-heat-bill-microheaters

And for those of you laughing about how we in 9b are moaning about the cold. I've lived in the snow belt in two different countries, I've walked to school in meter-deep snow, I get it. But in those climates you generally have whole-home heating, because addressing the long winter is more important than the hot summer. Here, our houses are made to address heat (not sure about NZ) and we're expected to just "grin and bear it" through the relatively short winter snaps. It can be brutal, because there's no heated place to escape to and warm up and after a few days it's in your bones and you just can't warm up.
Nowadays (compared to 20 years ago when I moved to Brazil) online shopping means everyone who can afford them has winter coats, which is a great improvement, even gloves were a rarity here back then (despite the winter coming every year like clockwork...), but heating is still almost unheard of aside from space heaters that cost $$$$ to run and are therefore mostly avoided.

My suggestion to you, David, is a hot water bottle, which is what saves me in my unheated office (currently 15°C and dropping). I have a few I rotate in and out. Put it on my lap, or under my feet with a blanket on my lap to warm up my legs.
Pocket warmers are another suggestion for your hands, you can make them of grain or sand, heat them however you would heat up leftover food. if that isn't compatible with a bag of grain, consider using appropriately sized stones instead, which can be immersed in hot water.
Definitely dress in layers, my husband works outside and once it goes below 12C he's got on his long johns under his work pants and is wearing gloves and a neck gaiter.
I also find timing my work (just like i would do in the hot summer) to be really helpful. Anything I need to do outside I try to do during the warmer part of the day, and I try to cook things that will also heat up the house (and time it for when we want the kitchen/living room warm).
Not sure what it's like there but here in winter sometimes it's sunny when it's brutally cold, those days you see everyone outside bundled up in the sun, warming themselves like lizards. On those days I'll eat my lunch outside in the sun or sometimes even take my computer and work in the car, where it's warmer than in my house.
Stay warm!

David Nicholls wrote:Thinking of piles of black bricks by sunny floor to ceiling windows, to radiate heat at night after sunny days.

This or even (in a pinch) a large container of water (I've got a 20L thing I sometimes use for this near plants that like the warmth), preferably covered in a black shirt or something, will absorb heat and serve the same purpose.

Thanks very much for comments, one other that popped back into my mind was from the book Arcitecture for the Poor, in Middle Eastern deserts, where freezing at night and boiling in day. In some areas houses have very thick stone or earth walls, of an exact depth ( which I forget 4- 6 ft) so that it takes 12 hours for the temperature to move from outside to inside of wall, so inside is cool in day and warm at night. Hard to see how a " normal" especially non desert, house could be adapted to this, but beautiful. Lots you can do if building from scratch, stuck with a conventional house harder.

Also my grandfather, who worked high in Nepal near Everest  for a few years said his walls were 5 feet thick.

Getting off topic of typical Western house a bit

I just remembered my grandfather telling me monks in Nepal could make themselves hot through meditation, he said they were very hot to touch,

Seems to be confirmed by science

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/04/meditation-changes-temperatures/

Merino wool longsleeve undershirt; merino wool longjohns; buff/neckgaiter on head.
Expensive, but last awhile.  
Much lighter and less obtrusive than sweaters etc.

David Nicholls wrote: one other that popped back into my mind was from the book Arcitecture for the Poor, in Middle Eastern deserts, where freezing at night and boiling in day. In some areas houses have very thick stone or earth walls, of an exact depth ( which I forget 4- 6 ft) so that it takes 12 hours for the temperature to move from outside to inside of wall, so inside is cool in day and warm at night.

Dude, I think you have found your people!

Paul Wheaton, the owner of this site, has been building his own version of this and testing them. Here's a link to a page about them - wofati



There's a whole section of permies.com dedicated to them here - wofati and earth berm forum

And here's an enormous long thread about allerton abbey, the first wofati

You're gonna learn a whole new vocabulary, things like heat battery and thermal inertia.

there is a heater that can be made mostly from old aluminum cans, scrap wood, sheet of glass, and ducting.  Here's a video I just searched up (there may be better ones, but this should give the idea):

Thanks again for all the ideas I would not have arrived at.

If you want to step down heating your house make sure to measure humidity in every room (good idea anyway). And either get a dehumidifier or start heating to keep humidity between about 40 - 65%. To low and your mucous membranes start drying out (painfull) and to high and you'll end up with mold spores (don't want to breathe those in), and things breaking down (incl. metals from rust).
Ventilation is also pretty important in this story, even if that means cold for drier air.
So there is a pretty good reason to actually heat the house, doesn't mean it needs to be 25C (although that is what you easily end up with if the heat is wood), but about 15-16C is a minimum for a healthy, dry environment to live and keep tools & stuff in good condition.
Yes 15 degrees house + heating yourself can work very well (hot water bottles, quilt and so on)
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the-hot-water-bottle/
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2024/12/how-to-build-an-electrically-heated-table/
And house :
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/06/dressing-and-undressing-the-home/

Overall an interesting website for small and low tech solutions
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com

Sunlight is a great micro-heater.  Let it into your house.

Open curtain and binds on the sunny side in the morning and switch in the afternoon.

Consider looking at this https://www.govt.nz/browse/housing-and-property/insulation-and-energy-efficiency/paying-for-home-insulation/ - the govt is offering up to 90% of the cost. A wheat bag heated in the microwave for 1-2 minutes and put on where you're feeling cold is effective and a lot safer than a hot water bottle - I spoke to someone recently who had had one burst on her lap when it was full of freshly boiled water. All the comments about curtains are appropriate - not sure if there was one about ensuring that warm air cannot enter behind the top of your curtains, drop down over the cold windows and pop out from a gap between the bottom of the curtain and the floor ... and spread across the floor to cool your feet

Yes I intend to get thermal curtains in lounge, and was thinking about the gaps a top and bottom.

Thermal curtain are a great idea:

https://permies.com/t/93472/Budget-Thermal-Curtains-stay-warm

https://permies.com/t/169504/good-layered-winter-curtain-system

For the top and bottom my suggestion would be quilted wall coverings and rugs on the floor.

Updating Paul’s micro heater angle, you can now get heated vests, jackets, and hoodies powered by USB batteries or the power tool battery of your choice.  I use one all the time, I can dial the heat up or down as I go in and out during the winter without having to add or shed layers.

Hi Jacque,

Welcome to Permies.

David Nicholls wrote:Yes I intend to get thermal curtains in lounge, and was thinking about the gaps a top and bottom.

To stop the draft at the top when the curtains are closed, a pelmet over the gap can help, or make sure the curtain brushes the ceiling or top of the window aperture. Pearl had a good idea which seemed to work even when the curtains are open at the bottom: https://permies.com/t/237768/Waterfalls-Odd-window-insulation-working . It slows the flow of cold air off the bottom of the window making draughts in the room, and can easily be rigged up with a bit of stiff card..

A couple winters back I was by myself in a poorly insulated mobile home, heated only by space heaters.  What worked for me was keeping room temperature very low (but well above freezing for the sake of the plumbing), which ended up around 45*f.

Extra layers of clothing: wearing similar clothing inside as I would for working outside; I'm a big fan of insulated coveralls and long underwear: people who don't work in the elements will wear coats, but often don't add leg layers. Electric blanket to pre-warm the bed. Run a space heater at a high temperature only when changing and showering.

Most of the time that I was inside and not in bed I was on the couch with micro-heaters: a electric heating pad at my back, electric throw blanket in my lap, heat emitter "bulb" in a swing arm lamp over my hands. Depending on what different things you do/places you are inside you could set up different "workstations" with different micro-heaters, or have a space heater that you only run when you're in the kitchen (for example).

All the above will help regardless of what is done to the building: better insulation, weatherstripping, etc will keep the heat inside better so the heater(s) don't have to work as long/hard to maintain the 45* (or whatever you set). The lower the temperature differential (between conditioned and unconditioned space) the less heating is required: so keeping the room temperature low, and just heating the occupant(s) will use less energy.

"To stop the draft at the top when the curtains are closed, a pelmet over the gap can help, or make sure the curtain brushes the ceiling or top of the window aperture. Pearl had a good idea which seemed to work even when the curtains are open at the bottom: https://permies.com/t/237768/Waterfalls-Odd-window-insulation-working . It slows the flow of cold air off the bottom of the window making draughts in the room, and can easily be rigged up with a bit of stiff card.."

to stop heat escaping, cold entering, at top of thermal curtain think I'll put the rail 8 or more inches above top of window, at bottom think I'll make curtain too long, so it drags on ground......?  

More overlap will certainly help I  think.

This about warm buildings in ice age Siberia interesting  they used layers of animal furs, earth, thatch that breathed on outside. Probably more local and sustainable than anything modern. Buried dwellings below permafrost, a lot warmer, often no wood available so gathered bones for support. An extended family in each dwelling, young and old slept in warmest spit by fire.

https://youtu.be/w51U8L8Hiio?si=hA8Ky94v_sWdbG94