Let’s be honest, there is nothing quite like a warm cozy evening in your home and spending some time with the people you love. But there is one slight problem, if you only use electricity to keep yourself warm, that might get expensive. Besides, sometimes for an emergency, there might not be any electricity. So, this guide is all about heating with no electricity.
There are a couple of ways you can heat your home without electricity. From using fueled heaters, warm clothes, or even having a designated heat room. Another cool thing you can do is make a penny can stove to cook (and keep things warm) as well.
That is only the surface though. I will take a deep dive and tell you all the 9 cool ways to heat your home with no electricity. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
How to Heat Your Home with No Electricity
As I have already mentioned, there are a couple of things you could do to heat your home even if there is no electricity. I can assure you one thing, after reading this article, you will come out knowing some pretty interesting stuff about heating your home.
Proper Insulation
Starting with the basics first. Having a well-insulated home in the first place will save you a lot of headaches from the get-go. Heating an insulated home is much easier compared to heating a non-insulated home. That is just simple science.
It gives you a good base to work with. After that, you can use the other ways I will mention to further heat your home up. Make sure your windows and doors are sealed properly to prevent heat from escaping.
During the day, you can use thick curtains to stop cold air from coming in. Some curtains will stop the air from coming in but allow sunlight in though. This is even better if you want to keep your house/room warm.
Sealing your doors serves the same purpose. You can use a door sweep for optimal insulation. If you happen to have hardwood floors, carpets, or thick rugs are your best friend. Hard flooring actually makes things cold.
Insulation like carpets underneath your floor will help quite a lot. They are a great way for heating with no electricity. Plus, a good-looking carpet will also add some ambiance to your rooms and can be used as decoration. That is a win-win right there.
Warm Clothes
From insulating your home, let’s move on to insulating yourself. I am talking about wearing warm cozy clothing, of course. Another efficient way of heating without any electricity is just keeping yourself warm.
Instead of keeping the house warmer, you can keep yourself warm. At the end of the day, you want to keep your house warm, mostly because you want to be warm yourself. When you dress the right way with layers in proper warm clothing, that is very easy to do.
The secret trick is to layer your clothes. Multiple layers will trap the heat between your clothes and, in turn, also keep you warm in the process. It is easy to do, and you can also find some pretty fashionable warm clothes as well to up your fashion game.
A lot of heat is lost from your head. A beanie or a hat will easily take care of that problem for you. Use scarves for your neck and start small with your body. Try on something light and airy first and then put on more layers like a long sleeve t-shirt and then maybe a jacket on top.
For your hands and feet, you can use hand warmers and socks. You can also find sleeping socks if you need to stay warm in bed when sleeping and do not want to use electricity.
But it isn’t viable to only use your clothes to keep yourself warm. In this case, you can also use blankets. A blanket will also be great for when you need to keep warm but do not need to move much.
Maybe you want to watch a movie on your phone or sit in a place and play a board game with your family. Wrap yourself up in a blanket and voila! You have a cozy warm little personal haven.
Not all blankets will restrict movement either. There are some pretty cool sleeved or wearable blankets you can find, making it easy to walk and move around the house. They provide pretty good insulation too.
Bathrobes can be also used as sort of a mini blanket.
Fireplaces
Fireplaces are the absolute best. Not everyone has a fireplace though. If you have one, consider yourself pretty lucky since they are just so cool and warm up the place quite quickly. Wood heat is the best, of course, since you do not want to use electricity.
You can gather some wood and light up the fireplace. Sit next to it and do whatever you want. Maybe read a book or contemplate all your life choices – it is all up to you. There is one important thing to keep in mind when using fireplaces, and that is the ventilation.
Make sure the smoke has somewhere to go and exit out. This part is quite important, and you don’t want the smoke to circle back in the house. That can be very dangerous.
Lamps and Space Heaters
Alright, now we move on to lamps and space heaters. These are great for heating a room or house when there is no electricity. They are great to sit by and will give you some ambiance in the process.
No one said you could not use fuel to heat the place, now did they? There are kerosene and propane lamps available which you can buy to heat your place without much effort. The power for these lamps will come from the fuel – propane or kerosene.
This means you do not need to use up electricity. The heat from the lamps does a good job keeping things warm.
If you want to step it up a notch, you can use propane or kerosene space heaters. I am going to be a little biased here, but I think space heaters work the best. They are literally called space heaters in the first place and are purpose-made for heating spaces.
They are efficient and also do a fantastic job of keeping your house warm and cozy. I also love the fact you can use these space heaters during an emergency as well. All in all, space heaters are a great way to keep your house warm without electricity.
You might be wondering how much kerosene you need to keep around. Personally, I recommend anywhere between 5 to 6 gallons of kerosene should be enough for most.
Kerosene works so well because it is traditionally used for heating. They have been used for this purpose for many years. But be sure to take the right precautions and use space heaters that are safe and meant to be used indoors.
These heaters are not just good for your house, but you can also use them for offices. However, the cost can be daunting for some. Naturally, in a place where people already use kerosene for heating, the prices will be a bit lower.
But buying this much kerosene from a store can get quite expensive pretty quickly.
There will be some fumes or smell to deal with. Placing the space heater near a window will help tackle this issue easily.
Make a Heating Room
How about a whole designated heating room? Yes, we know most people don’t live in a large 5-bedroom house. They do not have the luxury to keep one single room only for heating purposes – this might be considered as an unnecessary luxury to some. But hear me out here.
I am not talking about keeping one room completely for heating purposes throughout the year. You can just pick any room and turn it into a heating room for a short period of time.
You do this by gathering everyone in the room and trying your best to stop heat from escaping. Remember me talking about insulating your house? That will come in handy here as well.
Use blankets to block off areas you think the heat might escape from. I am talking about cracks and small spaces like from under the doors. Besides, having everyone in the same room will naturally raise the temperature of the place through body heat.
If you make sure to keep the heat trapped, you have yourself a winning formula right there.
It does not have to be boring. You can play some games while you are at it and get some exercise done in the heating room. Moving about will help heat yourself even further.
Get some exercise done and keep yourself warm – hit two birds with one stone, basically. And if you choose to play a board game or have an activity like family storytime, everyone can get in on the action and be entertained.
To spruce things up even further, making a tent fort in your heating room can be a cool and fun thing to do as well.
In fact, being active will actually help you generate more heat and help keep yourself warm anyway.
Solar Energy
Time to get a bit high-tech now. You can use the power of the sun to heat your place without needing to use electricity. Using solar convection will help you harness the sun’s heating capabilities and give yourself a warm and toasty home. So how do you do it? Glad you asked.
The process is pretty simple. If you know what you are doing and are a bit crafty, you can easily get it done. Here is how to do it.
Start with taking some soda cans. Glue all the cans together to make a tube. The height of this tube made from cans should be the same height as your windows. Make sure to leave an opening at the top and the bottom though.
Paint the whole thing black because the color black traps in heat. Now the openings you left at the top and the bottom will do their magic. Since cool air naturally drops, the cooler air will drop down and enter the bottom of the convection heater you just made.
As it rises, the air will warm up and, in turn, warm up your house as well. Pretty cool stuff.
There is another way you can help save some electricity costs. This isn’t a way to warm your house with no electricity though. But since I am talking about solar energy, I figured I would mention this one too.
What I am talking about is passive solar heating. Remember how I said the color black traps heat? Passive solar heating makes the most use of this phenomenon. During the day, check to see which part of your house gets the most sun exposure.
It will probably be the south-facing side. Place something dark there, like a black blanket on the floor. A black floor covering will also work. It will absorb the heat of the sun and keep your house warm somewhat.
Some of you might have already noticed one flaw in using the sun to keep your house warm. All these methods will only work during the day when the sun is out. It is not all that useful when it is night time though.
But even if that is the case, both of these are pretty cool ways to keep your home warm. And if you are building a home, make sure to include some way to use passive solar heating in the house’s design. You will end up saving some money too. And who does not want to save some money?
Wind energy
Another high-tech solution is using a wind system. If you live in a windy area, you are missing out if you are not using wind energy to heat your home. As I already mentioned, solar power can only be used during the day.
However, wind can be used all the time (given there is enough wind). That being said, wind systems are pretty cool and can be used to heat your home when you do not want to use electricity or do not have the means to use electricity.
Not to mention they are also very good for the environment since they use renewable energy. We humans have not been the most considerate to Mother Nature. I think it is safe to say we can do a lot better and be more considerate when it comes to our energy consumption.
A wind system for generating electricity and heat is great for the earth and powerful enough for getting basic tasks done. How much energy you can get will depend on the wind speeds and also the efficiency of your system as well.
Use animal dung
This might turn some people off, but trust me, this is a great solution. Of course, it will not work for everyone. If you live near a farm and have livestock, you can let the dung dry and burn them to heat your home.
There is no need to worry about the smell though. Burning dried animal dung has little to no odor at all. And animal dung has actually been used for heating and cooking for a long time throughout history.
If you are comfortable with it, this can be a pretty good way to warm up the place. It makes use of a resource that most people will think is useless. I mean, it is literal dung we are talking about here.
Candles and candle heaters
Candle heaters might be more to your liking. They are great for creating an ambiance and work well for heating at the same time. I have to give you a warning though. Candles can be a fire hazard, and the amount of heat you generate from candle heaters is not that much.
But it is still a good way to get some extra heat going. Take a terracotta pot and place them over a couple of candles. The idea is the heat from the candles will warm up the room. It is a modest solution but is easy to do.
Soapstone
Placing soapstone near a heat source can help you get the most out of it. They are fantastic heat absorbers. If you already have a heat source, say a candle heater or a stove, you can place the soapstone near it to absorb the heat. Speaking of a stove, keep on reading. I will teach you how to build a penny stove a bit later on in the article.
The heat from the soapstone is then released into the air to heat the place. It is just an additional way of making the most from a heat source you already have. Soapstones do not give off any heat by itself though, as you might have guessed. So, for this to work, you will need an already working heat source.
How to Build A Penny Can Stove?
You can actually make a cool little penny can stove to have some heat source and also maybe do some cooking. They are easy to make and can be used to heat your home.
What will you need?
Before I tell you how to make one, let me list out the things you will need to make it.
- 2 Cans
- Pennies
- Fuel
- Needle nose pliers
- Block of wood
- Pushpin
- Fiberglass insulation
- Scissors
Steps to Make a Penny Can Stove
Step 1 – Get your cans ready
I recommend getting cans that are a bit larger and thicker than normal cans. Arizona tea cans are perfect for this project as they are a little bigger and heavier. Any can the same size will also use work. Take the pushpin and place it on top of the block of wood with the pin sticking out of the edge.
The woodblock is basically there to support your hand and use it for hitting your tack to make holes. You would now want to make marks with the pin all around the cans. Place your hands firmly on the block of wood and hold the pushpin tight and make sure it does not move around much.
Now bring the can close to the pins and rotate it, marking the cans’ diameter with the pins on the bottom of the can. The line should be a bit above the bottom of the can. This line will help as a guide when cutting the cans. Check to see if the line is scored all around the cans and that it is straight.
Step 2 – Punch in holes at the bottom of the can
The next step is to punch a couple of holes at the bottom of one of the cans. Use the pushpin to create 5 holes in the middle at the bottom of the can. The best is to arrange the 5 holes as the pattern on a dice.
Take a small pointer and make the centermost hole a bit bigger. Make sure not to hit them too hard. You do not want to make the center holes too big. For good measure, you can also reinsert the pushpin on the other 4 holes to ensure they did not get closed off.
Now you need to make small ones on the bottom outer ring of the can. These will be the outlets for the flame to come through. Start with making 4 holes on each side.
After you have done that, make 4 more holes between the previous 4 holes which will leave you with 8 total holes. Trust me, we are almost done making holes in the can.
One last time, make holes between each of the 8 holes. Make sure to keep equal spacing when making the holes. In the end, you will have 16 total holes.
Step 3 – Cut the cans
It is time to take out and separate the bottom of the two cans. Take your scissors and just roughly cut above the line you made with the pushpins. This is to make the cans easier to work with when making the precise cuts along the marked line.
Once you can reach the lines you made on the two cans, you need to be very precise with the cuts. Cut along the lines that the pushpin left on the cans. You should have a very clean cut for both of your cans. You will have two can bottoms at this point. One will have the holes and one without the holes.
Step 4 – Tweak one of the cans using your needle nose pliers
Take the one without the holes and use the plier to tweak the edges of the can. Grab the can with the pliers and just make a rotating motion using the same amount of force every time. You also need to make sure you bite the can with the pliers at the same depth. Leave about an inch of space between the tweaks.
In the end, you will have a flower shape. Now when you put the two can pieces together, both will fit in very smoothly.
Step 5 – Pack fiberglass insulation at the bottom of the flower-pattern can
Now you will need to take some of the fiberglass insulation and place it at the bottom of the can you tweaked with the pliers. This will act as a wick to absorb the fuel, and it will also keep the fuel in one place.
Step 6 – Put the two can bottom together
Place the part with the holes on top of the flower pattern, tweaked can bottom, and make sure it fits all snug. Be careful not to cut your fingers. You can also use the wood plank to use it as a gentle hammer and slightly bump the pieces to get a snug fit.
If you have some extra metal sticking out, you can use your thumb to bend it in and seal the two pieces even further.
Step 7 – Put in the fuel and prime the stove
You are almost done with making the stove. All you need to do now is to put in some fuel or liquid. Pour little amounts of fuel on the middle hole until the stove doesn’t take any more fuel. Now light it up with a lighter, and it will help to prime the can. Once it is primed, you will have a beautiful flame.
Place a penny on top of the stove once it starts to burn. The penny will help to close the hole in the middle and create pressure. You can put out the stove by using the bottom part of another can and placing it on top.
Conclusion
There you have it. Now you know all there is to know about heating with no electricity. There are a lot of clever ways you can keep yourself warm without the use of electricity. Whether you are in an emergency situation and the electricity is out, or you just want to save bills, there is a way to keep yourself warm no matter what. Thank you for having the patience to go through the entire article. I hope this whole article helps you fulfill your expectations. I wish you all the best in your ventures ahead, and thanks for reading!
