6 Lifesaving Tips to Keep Warm During a Winter Power Outage

do you know how to stay warm during a winter power outage hi i'm jonathan and i'm ben and we are the provident preppers the grid has become increasingly unreliable and the threat of power outage in the dead of winter is real we turned off our power in the middle of winter just to see if we could survive this experience taught us six secrets that just might save your life someday in this video we will share these tips with you and show that they can be used no matter where you are stay with us we have had a lot of concern expressed by people about the fragile nature of our power grid and the possibility of having a winter power outage we have created this video to provide you with six life-saving winter power outage tips the first secret is to secure your home to prevent heat loss our goal is to keep the heat in and the cold out and we need to do this by blocking cold air entry points you want to look at your home and see where you might have cold drafts coming in and we want to block those we also want to insulate the windows because your windows are a place where you lose a lot of heat so take some time and put some plastic up in front of your windows you can put cardboard in them you can even spray water on that window and stick some bubble wrap up on them but one way or another we want to prevent heat from being lost through that window as far as tape goes it's best to use painters tape you can use duct tape or packing tape but the problem is when the power comes back on and you've got to pull that tape off the wall if you've used duct tape you're going to pull the paint off your wall too the next step in this process is to select a designated living area obviously you don't want to try and heat your entire home so you're going to isolate yourselves into a little smaller area you can shut doors you can block off areas using sheets or blankets but you want to confine the activity and the heat to a small area in doing that you may want to choose an area that has your kitchen facilities in it or if you've got some place with a built-in heat source that's a great choice basements are often very good because they have ground insulation that helps keep them a little bit more moderated if possible you may want to choose an interior area that's not against an exterior wall and you may want to choose a place where you can get some strong sun in through the windows secret number two is to create a microclimate a microclimate is a smaller area where you can build up some heat from your body or other sources and maintain it for instance in this tent you will be amazed inside this tent we've set up the bed there's chairs it's comfortable they can play games they can do activities inside there and it is significantly warmer than the surrounding area inside the home this is my pitch for a tent every prepper needs a good tent whether it's so that you have shelter if you need to evacuate or so that you can survive a winter powder outage a tent is an amazing tool that can provide you with that micro environment or even some privacy if you are bugging out in somebody else's home we had mentioned that we had turned our power off in january and that was when these guys were little this is actually a picture from that experiment so as you can see we had little kids now i wasn't willing to give up my bed so we had set up these two little tents there was a little tent for the boys and a little tent for the girls and i put them in their sleeping bags and zip them in and tucked them good night and i went to bed in my bed with jonathan with five blankets piled on top of me and in the middle of the night i sat up terrified that i had killed my children because of this stupid experiment that i had wanted to do and i went running out into the family room and i unzipped one of the tents and i was hit in the face with this whoosh of hot air and the kids were inside of there laying on top of their sleeping bags sweating the little tents a 15 tent did a fantastic job of creating a micro environment that could keep them warm in spite of how cold it had gotten inside of our home tip number three is incredibly obvious but very important you need to dress warmly and dressing in layers is ideal you have a base layer that's against your skin that wicks the moisture away from your body then you have a mid layer that is intended to provide insulation this could be a wool sweater a flannel shirt or even a hoodie my favorite is a hoodie because i can put my hands in and keep my hands warm that way and then an outer shell usually your outer shell is used to protect you from the wind or the snow or the rain but in this circumstance where you're indoors the outer shell is just to provide additional warmth when the temperature drops and when you warm up you just peel off those layers or add more in that experiment one of the things that i learned was the importance of wearing a hat so for the first couple days i was all worried about having hat hair right because i'm still operating in normal society but then finally when i put on hat i was so much warmer so make sure that you think about hat gloves socks and shoes the picture of ben on the right if you look at his hands his little hands are just bright red because he's a two-year-old and he just won't leave gloves on so he was really cold while a minor blanket may have some benefit in reflecting some of that heat back in we're actually losing heat five different ways and it is so important that we use real blankets these have their place but nothing replaces real blankets tip number four is to drink warm liquids and eat hot foods these things help to warm you up from the inside out in order to do that you need to have some kind of safe indoor cooking equipment if you click the card in the corner it will direct you to a post that talks about safe fuels and safe heating appliances that you can use indoors make sure that you stock a good supply of shelf stable easy to prepare foods that you can warm up very easily during a power outage tip number five is to get up and move being active will help you stay warm we want to do moderate exercise but we don't want to sweat because the sweat will pull the heat out of our bodies 20 minutes of exercise will keep you warm for an hour it doesn't have to be exercise per se just playing games with each other and interacting can be enough activity to warm you up but once again you look at these little kids and look at benjamin's little hands they are so red he is so cold and sam is so cold that he's tucking his arms up under his side and yet they're smiling and they're playing and they're having a good time so moving around can also help you forget about the cold tip number six is find good potential heat sources in this picture you can see a couple of really good heat sources a hot water bottle and a canning jar full of hot water both act as good heaters and will last quite a long time and let's not underestimate the value of pet warmers a nice pet on your lap can go a long way to keeping you warm and people warmers snuggling up together and sharing the warmth can provide a lot of comfort and security as well as heat and commercial hand warmers are a great way to stay warm they make these for bodies feet and hands you can put these on the shelf they'll last several years these are really cool but they're actually really hot all you do is open the package and they're activated in a chemical reaction with the air i really like the body warmers because they have an adhesive back that you can just pull off and you can stick it to your undershirt put your other clothing on top of it and for eight to ten hours you have a really nice heat source one concern that jonathan and i have talked about a lot is how our people who don't have the money or the space to store really cool alternative heat sources going to stay warm and we're going to show you two of our favorite ways the first is with these simple tea lights this is a tea light can heater i think this can was just a can that we had nuts that came in and it was just the perfect size and if you look at the bottom there are seven or eight tea lights you light them they can burn in there safely but it provides a lot of nice warmth it's not going to warm the whole room but it's a nice little space heater to warm your hands the tea lights and the matches and everything can just tuck away really nicely into this can and just be stuck away somewhere until you need it it takes up very little space you can also use tea lights to cook your food in this example we have this rack that's on top bricks it will work better if you put the pan closer to the tea lights and it doesn't bring it to a full rolling boil it takes a little while it's a slow heat but you can definitely warm your food using these tea lights we often underestimate candles as a fuel source in this number 10 can we have 121 tea lights that will burn between three and six hours each depending on the kind of tea lights that you buy they produce about a hundred btus an hour and 13 lumens of light and up to 2552 degrees fahrenheit and yet they are perfectly safe to store indoors a second option is to create your own little heater this is safety safe heat is a variety of canned heat that is safe to burn indoors not all canned heat is safe for indoor use so make sure that you get the right one these cans of safe heat will burn for six hours each so that's a lot of fuel in that little can we buy the portable folding camp stoves to use as a base and put the safe heat in them you can use it to cook your food or you can make it into a terra cotta pot heater and the way that you do that is just to take a small terra cotta pot put a little piece of foil above the hole so that that hole is blocked and then you put a larger pot on the top and this creates a nice little heater that can warm your hands it's too hot to touch it will burn your hands but kind of a nice little space heater it's important to note that just because you put those pots on top it doesn't create any more heat what it does is it just makes the heat a little bit more usable one case of safe heat has 12 cans in it which equals 72 hours of burn time that can get you through a pretty substantial emergency the cheapest place that we've found to purchase this is at sam's club in the catering section you can also purchase it on amazon and we'll leave a link to it in the description of this video if you click the card in the corner it will take you to a post that will teach you exactly how to create your own terra cotta pot heater another great idea is to visit a friend or share the warmth if you've got the ability to stay warm at home invite others in we have a wood burning stove that if our neighbors were cold we'd definitely invite them in and we would just make it a fun time you've got your six important tips to help keep you warm but there are a few items that you really should make sure that you plan ahead and stock up on them you should have warm clothing coats hats gloves socks and boots for every member of your household one of the big takeaways from the experiment that we did when we turned off our power is that you can never have enough blankets and because of that experience i don't ever throw blankets out anymore anytime a blanket is no longer acceptable for household use it gets folded up and put in one of these boxes in the garage because i know how many blankets it takes to stay warm and how valuable they really can be during a power outage let's not forget about tents and good quality sleeping bags every family should have these whether you're going to be going outdoors or whether you're using them inside good quality plastic sheeting is a basic prepper tool that you don't ever want to be without but it's especially valuable during a winter power outage so make sure that you have some plastic sheeting and painters tape now duct tape and packing tape can also be used and can be very handy but the painters tape is really nice not to damage your walls when that power outage finally ends stock up on warm foods for me it's hot cocoa herbal teas and apple cider and for me it's chili and soups and make sure that you have a good indoor safe cooking device and the fuel to go with it here we're using an alcohol burner and we are cooking using denatured alcohol you could also use everclear but those are some really good things to use when you cook indoors and my favorite mr buddy heater this is the little propane heater that i fell in love with during our winter power outage it comes in several sizes choose the one that works best for you power outage not a problem you've got this covered but make sure that you teach your children so that they can stay warm if you're not there okay you don't have to be as crazy as we are and do it for an extended period but how about just turn off your power for one night see how your family does see what you can learn where you need to improve and really teach your family the skills that they need to know in order to stay warm we encourage you to go to the prominent prepper and check out six life-saving tips to keep warm during a winter power outage this post has more details to help you on your path and on our youtube channel best heat sources this is a great video to show you some of our favorite options that will help keep you warm if the power goes out and surviving a winter power outage this video is long but it walks you through our experience where we turned off our power in the middle of january just to see if we could survive it and yes we survived but it definitely changed my life and we do things differently now because of that experience check them out advanced preparation can make a big difference in your level of comfort when surviving a power outage today's tips can help you survive in the dead of winter even if you don't have all the comforts that you wish you had and now for the question of the day what experience do you have living through a winter power outage and what advice can you give to our viewers to help them be more prepared comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 441,269

Rating: 4.9330411 out of 5

Keywords: SHTF, Grid Down, Power Outage, Winter Power Outage, TEOTWAWKI, emergency heating, emergency cooking, no power heating, emergency preparedness, alternative heating devices, Prepper, The Provident Prepper, Be Ready, Survival Heating

Id: erq-QuCN0G0

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020