Mothballed Coal

[Countrypaul]

I was thinking short term for wood burning OGB and only as a back up to all electric otherwise what does happen when the grid goes down ? At the moment most homes have two sources of heating for cooking and DHW for many that natural gas - government is wanting to move us all to electric BUT that feels like all our eggs in one basket the grid is pretty reliable but we all know it can fail short and long term and is subject to a badly functioning market model.

What will the future fall back be when the lines go down - like Shetland at the minute - I doubt any of those homes don’t have an alternate fuel heat source - my question is what should this be in the future ?

Moxi

We are all electric so do have all our eggs in that one basket. I thought most gas boilers only operate if there is electric power, certainly pumps require electric to circulate central heating. How many places have a gas fire that is simply lit with a match nowadays? All the oil boilers I have seen also require electricity to function.

That's the problem with the electric going off for whatever reason it also means that your central heating is off as well. The only oil burner that work would be one with a vapourising burner (e.g. oil fired AGA). After our 4 days without electricity last year my priority was to get my Lister generator connected up.

I thought that even most vapourising burners whether for boilers or Aga type still required electricity. Certainly the vapourising oil boiler I had did, both for control including ignition, and fan, aswell as the pump.

[Fintray]

I was thinking short term for wood burning OGB and only as a back up to all electric otherwise what does happen when the grid goes down ? At the moment most homes have two sources of heating for cooking and DHW for many that natural gas - government is wanting to move us all to electric BUT that feels like all our eggs in one basket the grid is pretty reliable but we all know it can fail short and long term and is subject to a badly functioning market model.

What will the future fall back be when the lines go down - like Shetland at the minute - I doubt any of those homes don’t have an alternate fuel heat source - my question is what should this be in the future ?

Moxi

I think it's peat in the shetlands as the fallback?

My uncle lived in Shetland and you are right there was a lot of peat dug and used for fuel, not many trees up there for any wood stoves

[Fintray]

We are all electric so do have all our eggs in that one basket. I thought most gas boilers only operate if there is electric power, certainly pumps require electric to circulate central heating. How many places have a gas fire that is simply lit with a match nowadays? All the oil boilers I have seen also require electricity to function.

That's the problem with the electric going off for whatever reason it also means that your central heating is off as well. The only oil burner that work would be one with a vapourising burner (e.g. oil fired AGA). After our 4 days without electricity last year my priority was to get my Lister generator connected up.

I thought that even most vapourising burners whether for boilers or Aga type still required electricity. Certainly the vapourising oil boiler I had did, both for control including ignition, and fan, aswell as the pump.

My neighbours have an oil Aga and that runs without electricity so the controls on it must be purely mechanical.

[Joeboy]

Old style paraffin fuel wick heater is an option when the power goes off? We have WBS×2, paraffin heater in my workshop and multiple gas cookers that run off gas cartridges.

[Bugtownboy]

Old style paraffin fuel wick heater is an option when the power goes off?

Takes me back to bath night as a kid - get the paraffin heater on half an hour before. The responsibility kids had

Can’t see paraffin heaters being very acceptable nowadays, Joe, though as an occasional emergency heat source, it works.

Do you ever forget that smell, either ?

[Joeboy]

Old style paraffin fuel wick heater is an option when the power goes off?

Takes me back to bath night as a kid - get the paraffin heater on half an hour before. The responsibility kids had

Can’t see paraffin heaters being very acceptable nowadays, Joe, though as an occasional emergency heat source, it works.

Do you ever forget that smell, either ?

I agree, as you say when the lights go out though and the cold creeps in.... Shetland has been an outstanding example of when a situation outwith our control develops. I personally look to have three to four fallback positions ready before I have to become inventive.

Love that smell!

[Bugtownboy]

Thing is, probably like you, I’ve always taken it as a responsibility to have a contingency. There is so much moaning in the press about the ‘nanny state’ but isn’t it down to individuals to make their own options.

And no, I’m not into night lights in a plant pot.

Whichever way you look at it though, I just don’t know how those in Ukraine are managing.

[AE-NMidlands]

One thing that worries me about a fall-back reliance on either paraffin, lpg or butane is the amount of moisture released. All will be in un-flued applications - and there will be a potential CO problem too after we have done all that we can to reduce draughts - aka ventilation. Hopefully any such use would be of short duration nowadays

I can attest to this as when I was a student in a very cold flat we ran a paraffin heater in the bedroom and were lucky to wake up at all. Spent all morning in the Health Centre hugging a radiator trying to get warm after we had got our breath back...
A

[Bugtownboy]

And that’s the trouble, AE, without a structured approach to contingency, people will take chances. CO poisoning will be a real issue.

Short term high humidity would be acceptable in extremis.

I certainly would not want to be without an option, in the middle of a cold winter, to not have an alternative heat source and opportunity to make a hot meal and drink. In our situation, it wouldn’t bother me to go without a hot wash/shower, though I’m sure with little ones, the priorities would change significantly.

[Oldgreybeard]

I have a small generator, getting on a bit now, but it could easily run our heat pump if we lost power for a few days. The heat pump usually draws around 800W or so, can get as high as around 1,500W when it's flat out, so not hard to run from a small generator, as long as we can get fuel for it.