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- Sep 9, 2021
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Cheap/Alternative/Offgrid Heating - Keeping warm for cheap during the apocalypse
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- Aug 2, 2021
I've lived without heat in a cold snap in Massachusetts before (for like five days til we got the blower fixed, then again in an extended power outage) and it SUCKS.
To counter thus, we have a wood stove insert (like an after-market cast iron appliance you can shove into a fireplace to turn it into a wood stove conveniently flush to the wall.) It's in the master bedroom; so if we ran out of heating oil or electricity, we can cordon off the master bed into a single apartment w/ bathroom that we can keep warm until the issue is cured. Mostly we use it as an auxiliary heater for those nights when you'd like your bedroom a bit warmer but don't want to heat the whole zone. It has a blower that helps circulate air around the stove, provided you can connect the blower to power. (Doesn't require much, a battery pack is fine to power the fan.) The stove has a little shutter for the airflow, so if you want it hot and fast you can open the shutter all the way and if you want it low and slow for the rest of the night you throttle it back to limit oxygen flow.
Then we buy a cord of firewood each fall from a wholesaler and (ideally) stack it somewhere nice and dry... but we sometimes fail at that and are forced to burn wet wood. Happens to the best of us tbh. So I want to share my special recipe for firestarters with you all. These things are great for getting stubborn logs to start burning, to start BBQ grills, bonfires, torch your neighbor's trailer, whatever.
Stan's Famous Firestarters
It's not really that hardcore. Not incendiary exactly but that I think a couple 18-eggers of this recipe could set a lot of things on fire if you wanted.
I like to take a lot of paperboard like cracker boxes and cereal boxes and shred it in a paper shredder.
Then I collect a lot of lint and candle stubs and waste wax (I can get this from work at a church somewhat easily.)
Collect several paperboard egg cartons (12-egg or 18-egg size) and lint, shredded paper, and stuff them with the shredded cardboard mix as dense as you can.
Melt the wax over low heat.
Line your surface with parchment paper or tinfoil along the bottom to catch wax spill
Pour hot wax over the egg cartons, filling each cell as best ye can
Allow cooling time and then you can cut along the creases of the egg carton w kitchen shears to portion out firestarters. Use 1 or 2 to start a fire in adverse conditions.
p.s. If decorated with hole punch confetti (the waste from a 3-hole paper puncher) and glitter these make good Christmas presents. I did a run with colored wax though and that wasn't worth the wax dye... no color was markedly apparent against brown and printed paperboard.
To counter thus, we have a wood stove insert (like an after-market cast iron appliance you can shove into a fireplace to turn it into a wood stove conveniently flush to the wall.) It's in the master bedroom; so if we ran out of heating oil or electricity, we can cordon off the master bed into a single apartment w/ bathroom that we can keep warm until the issue is cured. Mostly we use it as an auxiliary heater for those nights when you'd like your bedroom a bit warmer but don't want to heat the whole zone. It has a blower that helps circulate air around the stove, provided you can connect the blower to power. (Doesn't require much, a battery pack is fine to power the fan.) The stove has a little shutter for the airflow, so if you want it hot and fast you can open the shutter all the way and if you want it low and slow for the rest of the night you throttle it back to limit oxygen flow.
Then we buy a cord of firewood each fall from a wholesaler and (ideally) stack it somewhere nice and dry... but we sometimes fail at that and are forced to burn wet wood. Happens to the best of us tbh. So I want to share my special recipe for firestarters with you all. These things are great for getting stubborn logs to start burning, to start BBQ grills, bonfires, torch your neighbor's trailer, whatever.
Stan's Famous Firestarters
It's not really that hardcore. Not incendiary exactly but that I think a couple 18-eggers of this recipe could set a lot of things on fire if you wanted.
I like to take a lot of paperboard like cracker boxes and cereal boxes and shred it in a paper shredder.
Then I collect a lot of lint and candle stubs and waste wax (I can get this from work at a church somewhat easily.)
Collect several paperboard egg cartons (12-egg or 18-egg size) and lint, shredded paper, and stuff them with the shredded cardboard mix as dense as you can.
Melt the wax over low heat.
Line your surface with parchment paper or tinfoil along the bottom to catch wax spill
Pour hot wax over the egg cartons, filling each cell as best ye can
Allow cooling time and then you can cut along the creases of the egg carton w kitchen shears to portion out firestarters. Use 1 or 2 to start a fire in adverse conditions.
p.s. If decorated with hole punch confetti (the waste from a 3-hole paper puncher) and glitter these make good Christmas presents. I did a run with colored wax though and that wasn't worth the wax dye... no color was markedly apparent against brown and printed paperboard.
needforsneed
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2023
Anyone know how to build an actually OK-looking waste oil heater? I've seen people put a wick in a coke can and I've seen fridge-sized appliances, but I'd be interested in something that can burn used motor oil to heat the garage in winter that isn't outright dangerous or half the size of the garage.
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2021
I use the exhaust from my computer as a feet warmer. It actually works pretty well.
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2024
There are none. Either you dilute it with fuel oil 50:50 or have to use air blower/compressed air.
You can just get a used wmo burner tho if you have an existing oil furnace. They run on higher pressure
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2021
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- Joined
- Jan 31, 2020
And there's the absolute cheapest heat source: Wood burning. I was quoted at $7000 to put one in my house and I do plan on doing it eventually because with Wisconsin winters I will break even on the cost.
The other option is pellet burning which has the advantage that the device will feed pellets in automatically.
The other option is pellet burning which has the advantage that the device will feed pellets in automatically.