Preparing for winter

[News]

This is not a pre Armageddon check list, just a few sensible precautions. Every winter we seem to read about a few thousand houses somewhere, being without electricity for days/weeks.

So, three bottle gas heaters, an LPG hob, plenty of candles and matches, torches and batteries, an open fire and a tonne of coal, plenty of kindling and logs. Even an analogue phone.

For lighting, I do have a brass oil lamp complete with wick, glass shade and chimney, which I assume is designed to run on paraffin? Would it be OK to use central heating oil, there being a tank full in the garden?

[Jonno]

News scribbled

Don't forget to ensure the roof is nailed on too.

[harry]

So long as it's 25 second heating oil and not 35 second. (vapourising burner, not pressure jet.) You might find it a bit pongy. Have a trial run.

Paraffin intended for lamps/indoor heaters is further refined. At least is was at one time.

You might think about a portable generator to run a few hours every day if you have freezers.

[Dave Liquorice]

28 second.

28 second is "parafin" and is used in pressure jet and vapourising burners. 35 second is "diesel" and generally not used in boilers/heaters/ranges these days. The 10%(?) duty on red diesel may have something to do with that. B-)

Agreed, smelly and possibly sooty when burnt on a lamp wick not a proper vaprourising or pressure jet burner.

[Dave Liquorice]

No need to heat the whole house! Just the room everyone is in playing card or board games as there is no telly/computer/'net etc. One heater, three bottles of gas...

Check.

Candles have a habit of setting things alight, give out naff all, poor quality light and don't last long (BFO church candles excepted on run time).

Torches OK for the transition period immediatly after the power has gone but battery life and quantity of light tend to be mutally exclusive.

Gas lanterns, loads (not far short of a 100 W incandescent, when flat out) of good quality light, good run time, even flat out you're still into hours and you don't need flat out. Available with piezo ignition. Easy to "recharge". Can be noisey when turned right up but pretty quiet at lower levels.

Woodburner with 7 kW boiler and about 3 tonnes of logs and small genset to power fridges, freezers and the HW/CH system. POTS is required for the ADSL. B-)

[Clive George]

I go on holiday in a friend's hut in Norway, with no electricity. Lots of candles and an oil lamp provide light. We get through a couple of boxes of 1" candles in a week.

[News]

In message , Dave Liquorice writes

Most of our preparations comprise stuff that we already have. I have looked at some form of generator if only to power the CH and freezer, but the cheap ones all seem to get poor reviews and a decent one seems an extravagance for something that may never be used. Yeah, I know, it will not seem an extravagance when required!

[News]

In message , Jonno writes

I know that is a joke, but not funny in this house. Five or six years ago, when we had two bad winters in a row, we did lose a lot of roof. Well, slates anyway. And lots of gutters.

[News]

OK, thanks. I have half a gallon of paraffin in the shed (flame gun) so will use that, if necessary.

[The Natural Philosopher]

lamp oil is available you know

[News]

True. The lamp, though, is at least 60 years old and therefore presumably designed to burn paraffin? Would modern lamp oil be better? Probably less smelly?

[Jonno]

News scribbled

It gets windy here, when I put on a new roof, I put clips on all the slates. They haven't lifted in 30 years. I can't say the same for other roofs in the area. When the weather is bad, it's not always the power that goes off, as a bloke down the road discovered over the weekend, when a tree fell in his garden, narrowly missing the house. It's a massive thing about 2 foot in diameter and must weigh several tons. This is the time to check that drains are not blocked with leaves and trees are not wobbling in the wind.

[tabbypurr]

Lamp oil is praraffin but refined to remove pongs & coloured for the sake of it. You can just as well use paraffin aka 28 second CH oil.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes. It pongs less but is very much 'paraffin'

works well in all trad wick lamps

[News]

Excellent, thanks. Even better, there is a bottle of lamp oil in that disaster under the sink. All set now :-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

I prepared my heating system a couple of years ago so I can run it from an inverter. It will run off a cheap 150W stepped wave inverter, although the pump doesn't like the waveform. Bought a 300W true sine wave inverter last year, and it runs fine from that.

'Preparing' the heating system was mainly modifying it to run from a plug and socket rather than an FCU, so it's easily plugged into an alternative supply. Also making sure I can easily connect the inverter to both the car battery, and a large jumpstarter, using good high current connections, and not croc clips.

I have some hard-wired 12V emergency lighting around the house - installed them with the home automation 15+ years ago. They used to use 5W and 10W halogen capsules, but I replaced them with 2W LED retrofit capsules earlier this year.

[News]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

That I like, particularly as there is always a car battery in the house during the winter. How long would one expect a modest, fully charged battery to run an oil fired CH system without requiring recharging? The battery is not large - spends the summer in a Morris Minor.

Something I would do, if rewiring.

[News]

In message , Jonno writes

It is not the wind that is the problem here, it is ice. Snow falls, freezes, more snow, freezes, etc. Eventually, it starts to melt and then a huge sheet of ice slides off the roof taking slates and gutters with it. We have not had that much snow/ice for the last five or six years, although the world is white outside this morning! First snow this winter.

[Dave Liquorice]

Lamp oil would have been far easier to get 60 years ago and with less of a premium than today.

Yes and yes.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ours is an open frame single cylinder electric start diesel. Diesel so I can run it on red (local Spar/filling station has red on a pump, albeit at a price 96p/l last time I looked with road diesel only about 120). And electric start 'cause it's a diesel and pull starting is "interesting" and beyound any other member of the household.

Biggest drawback with it is the noise, it is RATHER NOISEY! It would be nice to have a Honda EU20i 2kVA invertor set they are lovely and quiet but are about seven times the £200 the diesel set cost. The EU20i also runs on petrol, you can get the duty back (approx 60p/l) if you jump through the right hoops.