No electric power gas furnace

Was talking to my relatives back east today. They are part of the 2,000,000 people with no electricity in MO and IL. 40 years ago when I lived there I had a gas furnace with a 2 stage thermostat that was thermocouple powered. It had instructions on how to operate the furnace with no electric power in an emergency. As I remember, you would remove the cover to the blower section, and leave the door to the basement open. The furnace would function as an old style gravity hot air gas unit. It only turned on part of the burner, but the high temp limit and thermostat still worked. Was wondering if any furnaces like that are available now? Tried googling every description I can think of and can't find anything.

Al

Reply to
Big Al
Loading thread data ...

look at grainger and johnstone supply for direct vented gas wall heaters and look for the millivolt thermostat ones with no cfm listed, with no electric blower on them. as we learned again in a 9 day electrical power failure in buffalo ny october 2006: if you can't open the kitchen window for ventilation and roast a turkey with your modern gas stove during an electrical power outage, your stove has too many electrical and electronic control gadgets on it. get a basic model natural gas stove. the stove always gets turned off at sleep time and is never operated with the oven door standing open. then, at least one room in the house should have a big warm natural gas wall heater which is direct vented, with a millivolt thermostat, and with a standing pilot light. if your home has a 100,000 btu forced air furnace then a 30,000 btu gas heater or larger will be a real comfort as a secondary heat source when the electricity is missing. and, a conventional natural gas water heater with a standing pilot which does not require any electricity will serve you very well in a blackout. if your basement requires a sump pump and you have city water not a well, be sure you have a secondary WATER POWERED sump pump not just an electrical one. wet parts of this city went crazy with flooded basements and buying generators to power the electrical sump pumps. we learned that c and d flashlight batteries sell out first, so have a variety of aaa and aa flashlights around the house also. we learned how to love local talk radio wben am 930 when they changed to 24 hours of local news and live local telephone call-in for the whole time [and suspended their national talk network format for the emergency].

Big Al wrote:

Reply to
buffalobill

So far, I've found millivolt thermostats, gas valves, all kinds of controls, and the thermopiles but no complete furnace. Guess a guy could just convert any furnace if it can gravity feed.

My "new" old house (circa 1949) has a double wall gas heater. It uses a mechanical thermostat built right in the gas valve. No electricity needed. The old timers were smarter than we are:)

Interesting what you said about gas ranges. Don't think the oven will work in my new one without electric. Need to try it. Never thought of that.

Al

Reply to
Big Al

In it's simplest form, modern day systems use electronic controls. No electricity, nothing to run the sequencer, open the draft regulator etcetera. Sorry.

Bill

Reply to
Berkshire Bill

your better off buying a inverter, connect to car battery and get 120 volts electric to run all sorts of stuff. or a few thousand watt generator.

in a emergency a microwave can be wonderful, or charge your cell phone, or just a couple lights and a mini tv, or a small room AC in the summer so you get a good nites sleep

heard from a friend her mom lost power yesterday nite and had no heat.

i could of taken my generator and helped her out if I had known.

DONT backfeed the power grid, install a special lockout breaker or know what your doing!

but in advance you can make preparations.

we lost power once for 3 days, it was the pits, fortunately it was summer

Reply to
hallerb

You'll need a match.

Reply to
HeyBub

formatting link

Reply to
mgkelson

Reply to
kevin

Reply to
buffalobill

I tried a 700 watt inverter for my last furnace. Didn't have enough power to start the blower. My gas generator works fine, if a bit noisy.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

You can get wall mounted heaters from places like Harbor Freight.

I wouldn't want to run a furnace without electric if I could help it.

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.