Q&A Heating a House with many small rooms

Question:

We live in a house with numerous small rooms with only gas/electric central forced-air heating. If we have a major power outage, we have no back-up at present. Generators are costly if we think about getting one with enough wattage to run an electric heater.

Since the rooms are all so small, a wood-burning stove would create an intensely hot corner of the house and then there is the question of how the warmth would circulate to the rest of the house.

What can you suggest if we needed to create our own heat during a cold season without electricity?



Answer:

A couple choices:

1. A small stove with a convection jacket, such as the models by travis industries, morso and others. These tend to fit into small areas and spread the heat further.

2. A room to room fan can be installed between rooms to help move heat to other areas.

3. A central heater can be installed to heat the entire house from the basement or garage.
Since electric is probably not going to fail for more than a couple days at a time, it might be fine to have a few warmer rooms. A lot better than vacating the house