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Heating System
9 years ago
General
Freakin central heating broke during winter. How timely. Gladly we fixed before night. It would be uncomfortable to sleep with coat on. Hope nothing like this will happend again in the next 3 month. We already had water problem in summer.
Two pairs of shirts, a jacket, gloves and a blanket over me was my frigid hell and being in Canada was just a bonus for my torture. D:
I am in ND and I worry about loss of heat ALL the time. There is a near white out blizzard blowing here in my little town- and the power was out this morning.
I keep a small supply of wood on hand for such emergencies. About the time I got the fire started, the power came back on. Still, I got a snow day out of it.
I know you like gadgets as I think I saw that you on occasion you post them. Have you ever heard of a rocket stove? They are called mass heater stoves too as well as hobo stoves.
You take a couple of soup cans and a coffee can, make a little burn pit with some wire and you have one very powerful little stove! You can fill it with pebbles or sand around the burn pit and chimney and you can even cook on it if you take a burner off a gas stove and put it on the top!
From there you use small twigs and small bits of wood- wow does it work well! The draft effect means the wood burns fast and it makes almost zero smoke. It makes a great emergency heater too. If you don't have gobs of wood to put in your fireplace, this little stove can save your butt when it's cold.
And when it's time to go to bed, the sand and or pebbles in the stove holds heat for many, many hours.
Super easy to make, you are much less likely to get carbon monoxide poisoning from one because they put out a lot less exhaust due to their efficient use of fuel. And you can sleep with the stove next to you as a heat source. (Put it out first of course.) The mass of sand or gravel stays warm for a really long time.
Again, they are very easy to make and you can cobble one together in no time. Something to look into!
If you Google "hobo stove" you can see dozens of videos on how to make one.
I went to the expense of buying stove pipe for mine, but thrown away soup cans will work for the burn pit and the chimney.