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Heating in Colder Climates

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  • Snowy Owl
    replied
    Re: Heating in Colder Climates

    Hi lamrobertson, I am in Northern Qu?bec, maybe the following will help.

    If you can think about a cheminey and a slow combustion oven. ( A little bit more expensive but it needs about 4 to 6 times less logs than a boxstove for example).

    I have a back up of propane. I was surprise at the low cost of 100 pounds use tanks, most of the time you just have to change the valve.

    With these tanks I have a four rounds oven that I can put on a table.

    As for the winter it is so worthing to isolate very well the windows.

    Like for this winter I first use a seal for outsides and sealed most of the windows from the outside (left few half of windows not isolated for fresh air and circulation)

    Once I had isolated from outside, I took an incense stick and look how much air was still infiltrating (BTW the smoke of incense will tell you if the plugs in the wall need isolation for instance or your door, etc..)

    For the northern and west windows (Coldest one because of the sun and because up-here the wind come from those cardinal points) I have sealed again the windows but from the inside this time. I have a third isolation option that I did not have to use wich is a thin transparent saran wrap like that is totally transparent without wrinkles with a hair dryer.

    All these isolation is very cheap, (I have isolated 16 windows for less than 75$) but it is worth it to take the time to do it properly, it is long but you save so much wood, electricity or gas & oil. It took me about two days of 6 hours for all the windows, it is worth it.

    There are two other problems, the dryer air exit, it cost about 10$ to get a plastic one for outside (metallic is cold conductor), again take your time to make sure that the panel close properly when the hot air doesn't open it.

    Finally the more complicated one for me was the fan over the oven, again as much as possible I suggest plastic.

    The incense stick reveals a lot, for instance at the junction of the floor and external walls there was some air leaks, take the same stuff as for the window (indoor ones).

    For the outside doors you have those plastic stripe that you put at the bottom of the doors and on the side that is opening.

    Hope this help.

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  • JohnW
    replied
    Re: Heating in Colder Climates

    Trying to use an electric generator to heat with is a loosing proposition. You would be far better off to find a high energy efficiency propane heater that would heat one room. (Be sure it doesn't require a vent.) Also, you'll want to be sure that the heater can be ignited manually without requiring electricity. You could probably also find a small propane camp stove to run off the same bottle. You might want to try to purchase a larger propane tank as small bottles may be very hard to come by when needed.

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  • lamrobertson
    started a topic Heating in Colder Climates

    Heating in Colder Climates

    Well this is one of my biggest concerns right now. We are in Canada. Very very cold winters. If the temperature drops to 30 below Celcius and the electricity goes out we need a plan. Our furnace is gas but the fan is electric. With a generator I could get the furnace going if the gas was still on. If the gas was off as well I have two electric space heaters that could run off a generator.

    But if electricity is lost during our summer or fall months we need another option for indoor cooking, little bit of heating, etc. It seems a waste to get a generator going for a few small things. Plus the gas. If that gas has to last a winter then I would want to conserve it as much as possible. I've looked at a few things like the canned heat, mr heater buddy heater. We do have the bbq outside and I can have extra propane. The only other thing I thought of was using a small solor panel to charge 2 or 3 car batteries. But the cost of a generator plus all this stuff is really going to add up.

    Any ideas what we can do?

    Thanks
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