House Power Outage: Priority Actions
- Pick one room. Smallest interior room (no exterior walls). Move everyone there.
- Block drafts. Rolled towels at door bottoms. Tape plastic sheeting over windows.
- Layer up. Everyone wears all available clothing layers.
- Get into blankets together. Combined body heat matters.
- Hang blankets over windows. Significant thermal improvement.
- Eat something. Digestion generates body heat.
- Move. Physical activity in 5-10 minute bursts generates substantial warmth.
Room Selection
The right room can make 15-20°F difference within a few hours.
What makes a room your heat zone:
- Small interior volume — easier to warm with body heat
- Few or no exterior walls — interior rooms lose heat more slowly
- No large windows — windows are your biggest thermal leak
- Near center of house — surrounded by other rooms that buffer temperature
A small bathroom in the center of a house is often ideal: small volume, interior walls on most sides, and it can be sealed easily.
Avoid: Large rooms, rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, rooms on the north or northwest-facing exterior.
What in Your House Insulates
Blankets and Quilts
Draped over windows from the inside, blankets reduce heat loss dramatically. Windows lose 10-15 times more heat per square foot than insulated walls. Cover every window in your heat room with blankets, quilts, or sleeping bags. Secure the edges with tape, thumbtacks, or furniture pressed against the wall.
Curtains and Drapery
Thick curtains are already doing thermal work. Close every curtain in every room, not just the heat zone. This slows heat loss throughout the house and maintains a slightly warmer interior temperature in all rooms.
Rugs and Carpets
Bare floors are cold. Cover hard flooring with rugs, blankets, or any flat fabric material. The R-value is low but the psychological comfort is high, and any separation from a cold floor reduces heat loss through conduction.
Sleeping Bags
The most thermally efficient insulation you probably own. One person in a quality sleeping bag stays warm to the bag's rated temperature regardless of the surrounding air temperature (as long as cold air doesn't circulate through the bag interior). In a power outage, sleeping bags used inside the selected warm room provide serious thermal protection for multiple nights.
If you have more sleeping bags than people, create nested layers: one bag on the mattress as a pad, one sleeping bag inside it. The layered air space provides more insulation than one bag alone.
Newspapers and Paper
A thick layer of newspaper between a sleeping bag and a cold floor provides real insulation. Stack 30-50 pages under a mattress. Paper between wall-facing furniture and the wall reduces radiant cooling.
Cardboard
One of the most effective emergency insulators by weight and cost. Cardboard has an R-value of approximately R-3 per inch. Several layers of corrugated cardboard on a cold floor under a sleeping bag makes a meaningful pad. Break down boxes and layer them on the floor of your heat room.
Bubble Wrap
Better than nothing for window insulation. Cut to window size, dampen the window glass, press the bubble wrap flat against it — it sticks via surface tension. The air bubbles provide modest R-value. A roll of bubble wrap costs very little and is worth storing for emergency window insulation.
Mylar Emergency Blankets (Space Blankets)
Reflect 80-90% of radiated body heat back toward you. The silver or gold foil blankets sold for $2-3 each are highly effective when used correctly: reflective side faces your body, body wrapped inside. They're noisy, they condense moisture, and they're not sleeping bags. But for keeping body heat in over a short period, they work.
Draped over windows, they also reflect outdoor radiant cold back out and inside warmth back in. Tape them over windows for double-layer effect with blankets.
Improvised Indoor Tent
The most effective heat management strategy in a cold house: build an indoor tent.
Move all blankets, quilts, and sleeping bags into the smallest interior room. Create a tent structure using chairs, rope, or a table draped with blankets. The goal is an air space roughly the size of your family's sleeping area — small enough for body heat to accumulate.
A family of four inside an improvised indoor tent on a cold night will find the interior temperature meaningfully warmer than the room around them. The contained air space fills with exhaled warm air and radiated body heat.
Add a few candles (ensure ventilation — leave a 2-inch gap) and the indoor tent becomes a surprisingly functional survival space during a multi-day outage.
Water Management
Pipes freeze before you get dangerously cold. If temperatures drop significantly inside:
- Open cabinet doors under sinks to allow interior air to warm pipes
- Run a very slow drip from the farthest faucet — moving water resists freezing
- If pipes may freeze, shut off main water supply and open all faucets to drain
Fill bathtubs and every large container with water before conditions worsen. Once pipes freeze, water access may be gone for days.
Sources
- FEMA - Winter Storm Survival
- Red Cross - Power Outage Safety
- U.S. Department of Energy - Emergency Heating
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the most effective thing to do when the heat goes out in winter?
Move everyone into the smallest interior room in the house and seal it as your heat zone. Body heat from multiple people in a small space raises room temperature significantly. Add any insulative materials to windows and exterior walls. A small room with four people and a few candles will stay dramatically warmer than a large room with the same people spread throughout.
Are candles worth it as a heat source?
A single taper candle produces roughly 80 BTUs per hour — trivial for heating a room but meaningful for a very small, well-insulated space. Three to four candles in a tent or a small closet-sized space produce perceptible warmth. Their main value is psychological plus marginal thermal, not primary heat source. Use only with ventilation present — multiple candles in a sealed space still produce CO.
Should I open the oven to heat the house?
Gas oven: no. Using a gas oven as a space heater is a CO poisoning risk. Electric oven: not efficient or safe for sustained use — fire risk from unattended heating element. Both: the minor heat gain doesn't justify the risk. Use other methods listed here.