So you lost power, your water lines froze and you're hungery!

So start to repair your antiquated systems.

1. Increase insulation in all parts of your living quarters and do so with knowledge.
2. Purchase a laser cooking thermometer start taking readings to find the weak points in your quarters.
3. Use the same laser tool to plug all thermal leaks in you abode.

Now is the time, not next summer.

 

Or thermal outside looking for leaks may work?

 

Heat, it goes both ways.
Look for cold on the inside and hot on the outside during winter.

 

True

 

The biggest loss I found was furnace, hot water heater, wood stove pulling combustion air from basement or living space. Temp of house 65, temp outside -3, pull air from outside as a draft etc into living space, heat it and send it up the chimney. When I changed to outside air going to combustion chamber, tripple wall metal chimney or double wall tubing leading to combustion area, my pipes stopped freezing and heat tapes very seldom ever came on. The kitchen and bedrooms also warmed up as I was no longer pulling air around the old windows and having cold drafts at the floor level.

A few years ago in New Hampshire if you were elderly or low income, they had a free program that came out with hi tech equipment and marked out all of the bad leak areas, windows, doors, attic and basement entrances, light switches, around windows, etc, and if you met certain requirements, they would fix them for free. One benefit was the replacing of old wood stoves with modern ones and they would pay the first $1,000 on the price of stove and installation.

 

To true, but easier to find greatest differential.
Hard to ignore a minus 3 degree reading when that is 50 degrees below average.

 

my house leaks like a sieve.
plenty of fresh air making it to the firebox.
thankfully we heat with wood and not natural gas or propane.
might have to make some adjustments this year as it's sucking in 10 degree air through any gap in the basement.

 

That is the hard part, you have to have the air, tighten the house up, greater suction pulling air thru the cracks left, or no draft and the fire doesn't burn right. The whole aim is to get outside air to the fire. Beat my head against the wall until I learned that. With tripple wall stove pipe, the heat going up the chimney preheats the air going to the firebox and stops the drafts from the air being sucked thru the windows and wall.

 

Dryer vent can be a real cold air blaster that you won't notice because it's masked by the dryer. It just feels cold in the laundry room.

Plan to cap that vent as soon as the power goes out, and even when it's on, make sure the baffle system works well to block cold breezes.

 

I have to have ventilation because I heat (as much as necessary) with white gas and kerosene. I've been here on the beach for more than 40 years and have never had a frozen pipe. If I did I'd thaw them the same way I would a heat pump. (In anticipation of
power coming back on.)


Then I turn on some lights...


start a pot of coffee...

and figure with what to cook.

Just like old times.

 

I'm thinking about blowing a core drilled hole about 4" in diameter through the poured concrete wall and running a pvc pipe from outside of the walkout door and run that right up to the firebox intake area. Might work, might not.

 

By “laser cooking thermometer” do you mean something like this?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073YMQCVG/?tag=survivalmonke-20

If so, I have noted that some folks are fooled by the laser on these and they think the temperature is being measured right on the red spot. Probably no members on this site so you can all ignore what follows as it is for the occasional visitor.

Look at the specs for the IR thermometer above. It says:

Built-in Laser for Precisely Aiming: A built in Laser gives you the precision to hone in on the exact space you want to measure. operates on a twelve-to-one ratio, 0.95 emissivity, accuracy of +/- 2%, response time of 500ms, can more accurately measure the target than most other IR thermometer gun.​

Some key info is twelve-to-one ratio. That means the distance to measured spot size is 12 to 1. If you are 12 inches away from an object, the size of the area being measured is about 1 inch in diameter. 6 feet and its about 6 inches. It will effectively average over the whole area so at 6 feet a hot spot 3 inches from a cold spot and both within the sensed area will be averaged. Also, note the laser is mounted either above or below the lense of the thermal sensor. That means there might be one measuring distance where the laser really is in the middle of the sensed area or more likely it is never right in the middle and you aren’t measuring hardly at the spot at all if close to a surface. You’ll have to play with measuring small warm things to get a feel how far off it is.

Thirdly, note the temperature readings are for 95% emissivity. IR sensors like this do not measure temperature, they measure the energy being emitted or rather radiated by a surface. The amount of energy emitted is determined by a surface’s temperature AND the emissivity of the surface, i.e. how easily it radiates energy. A super flat black surface can can have an emissivity coefficient very close to 1 but very few surfaces are actually close to that. Generally the whiter and shinier a surface the lower the emissivity.
Emissivity Coefficient Materials

The above “thermometer” has been designed to give you an accurate temperature if the surface has an emissivity of 0.95. Surface emissivities are all over the place so get a feel for those differences to generally know what you are actually measuring as it is easy to be fooled.

Lastly they spec the accuracy as +/- 2%. But 2% of what? The current reading or full scale? Many sensors spec accuracy as a percentage of the full scale reading. So if that is the case here, and we don’t know, that could be 1022 x 2% = about 20 degF here, seems pretty high but at room temp 2% would be about 1.5 degF which is probably the more likely case.

Moral of story: understand the capabilities and limitations of these things and beware of the fine print.

AT

 

Might want to check out one of these for leaks and places to insulate. $200 is not that cheap but fixing problems could make up for that pretty fast.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0728C7KNC/?tag=survivalmonke-20

 

I lived in bat and board cabins for a few years the only insulation was news paper or tar paper. I'd start a fire in the wood stove and ran to the shower house through the snow for the bath and toilet. Actually, the gas water heater in the shower house made it tolerable. If the water was shut off due to a broken pipe I had to use the hand pump to get water for our daily needs till I had the opportunity to fix the broken pipe. Squirrels would steal the pipe insulation and thus create the problem.
if the water was off then we had to use that out house, which was about 150' away. If the wind wasn't blowing and snowing it wasn't too bad.
I remember times it snowed and sleeted and rained and the slush was 3 feet deep in some places and it did not drain right away to the lake and plows could not move it, the slush would just wash right around the blade. we were accustomed to being stuck in the house for a few days and mom was usually prepared food wise and we always had candles and kerosene lamps and old oil stove and a fire place and a propane stove. we provided our selves plenty of options. We were not as dependent on electricity as we have become today, so a generator was not an issue. The refrigerator only needed some snow Ice from out side to keep things cold.
At night we played all kinds of games and went for walks in the snow, I truly miss those times.
I remember times it got so cold in the cabin the water froze in the kitchen sink but the tap was still dripping.
I learned a trick with some bubble wrap dad picked up. we used it for pipe insulation and it worked well so we made a sheet with it and put it in our beds. one on top and one on the bottom was too much, so I opted for one one under the bottom sheet and a comforter on top worked just fine for me.
Now days I live in wine country and it gets freezing here too and snows once in a while, but not enough to be inconvenient, except fr broken pipes and broken tree limbs from time to time.

 

Buy what you can prove works for you. Pin point accuracy is not needed for air leaks in buildings.
At a major industrial plant I used a nitrogen (years ago) cooled sensor for electronic components and it came with a photo component. Needless to say when looking at a large (YMMV) SCR or diode or hotspot or contact or breaker or junction you purchase what works for the environment and the range. Only you can decide what is needed.

 

FLIR makes some thermal imaging camera attachments for a smart phone.

 

I used to use FLIR cameras in the mining industry 20 - 25 years ago for everything from finding plugged radiators on heavy equipment to bad connections in electrical sub-stations.They had internal refrigeration (because the IR sensors of the day had to be chilled), was shoulder mounted like a news camera and cost over $100 Large.

IR technology has come a long way in a short time. Was really surprised a couple of years ago when I found out FLIR had a smart phone attachment, and it cost about $200! They may be less now.

 

Did that on my house in NC years ago. Bought 2" pvc up through the floor, across the hearth to the corner of the fireplace. Had to take off the elbow facing into the fireplace because it blew the ashes everywhere. That thing brought in a lot of air and suddenly the back bedrooms weren't so cold anymore. The house was built in 1912 and had zero insulation and very leaky.

 

Built a Insert and a back bed room supply with forced air from the fire place.
Best thing ever and I hope those folks who bought that home are using it in Houston to day!

 

I know where my leaks are. That window, and that window, and those three windows, and the window in the bathroom, etc etc etc. Original single pane windows from the 1960s, half of them barely have enough glazing to keep the glass in place. Every year we say, we gotta replace these. Every year we put it off because of the cost to replace 18 windows. I have real good insulated blackout curtains on all of them that go floor to ceiling so the house stays pretty warm despite, but you put your hand behind them and WHEEEE it's cold. Ice on the inside side of the glass cold.