20 Heating Sources That Don't Need Electricity (Your House May Already Have One)

20 Heating Sources That Don't Need Electricity (Your House May Already Have One) If a winter storm takes your power out for three days, the cold won't be the only thing that hurts people. It'll be what they try to fight it with. The oven door left open. The grill dragged into the kitchen. So today, I'll walk you through twenty heating sources that don't need a drop of electricity, and every one of them is safe to use indoors, as long as you follow its rules. Number fourteen is probably already in your basement or utility closet. Number three scares a lot of people, and used right, it shouldn't. And number one doesn't need a pilot light, a battery or a single wire. Your great-grandparents knew it well. Let's start with number twenty. Number twenty. The sun through your south windows. It's the first clear morning after the storm. The house is down in the fifties, and your instinct is to keep every curtain shut. On one side of the house, do the opposite. In winter, the sun rides low across the southern sky, so south windows catch more of it than any others. That's free heat landing on your floor. Open the curtains on the south side as soon as the sun hits the glass. Move your chairs into that light. Set dark things in the sunny patch, a dark blanket or a few jugs of water, so they soak up heat and give it back slowly after the sun moves on. Then, the minute the sun leaves the glass, close everything up. The Department of Energy says ordinary draperies, closed on a cold night, can cut a warm room's heat loss by up to about ten percent. Hang a quilt over the curtain rod and you'll do better than that. Just never cover the window you'd climb out of in a fire. But the sun clocks out early in January. After dark, the best heat source in the house is sitting in the chair next to you. Number nineteen. Body heat. Everybody in one room.