Energy & Heat

New here? Ready, Set, Ready is a 10-minute starting point: an honest assessment, one gap closed for real, then a map for using the rest of this site.

Why This Category Comes Fourth

In Northern Utah specifically, winter isn’t a special case: it’s most of the year. Hypothermia can kill in hours, not days, and it doesn’t require a blizzard; a cold, damp, powerless house overnight is enough. This chapter and the previous one are closely linked: cold-weather injuries are a medical emergency, and the wrong heating choice (an unvented fuel source in a sealed room) is a carbon monoxide emergency. Energy for lighting and communication matters too, but heat is the piece with a survival clock attached to it.

As with the prior chapters, each tier adds capability rather than replacing what came before: Tier 1’s flashlights and glow sticks stay in the kit even after Tier 3 brings a wired-up solar array online.

Tier 1: Short-to-Medium Term (Hours – 14 Days)

Goal: Phase 1, using what’s already stored. Conserve body heat and battery power while waiting for grid restoration. Prevent hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Tier 1 assumes the grid is down but help or restoration is realistically days away, not months. The two failure modes that actually kill people in this window are hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning; both are entirely preventable with correct habits, and both are the focus of this tier over anything else.

Skills to Build

• Layering: Base layer (moisture-wicking, not cotton; wet cotton actively pulls heat from skin), insulating layer (wool or synthetic fleece), and a wind/weather shell. Layering traps warm air between layers far more effectively than one thick garment. See the Staying Warm Without Power skill guide for the full technique.

• Fuel Safety: Understand that any fuel-burning device (camp stove, grill, generator) produces carbon monoxide, an odorless gas that kills without warning. The rule has no exceptions: never run one indoors, in a garage (even with the door open), or in a tent. See the Fire-Starting & Generator Safety skill guide for the full safety rundown.

• Battery Conservation: Put phones in low-power mode or airplane mode except for brief check-ins, and reserve power banks for communication devices and medical equipment, not entertainment or convenience.

• One-Room Heating: Pick the smallest interior room without exterior walls, close it off, hang blankets over the doorway, and concentrate heating and bodies there instead of trying to heat the whole house. See the Staying Warm Without Power skill guide for the full setup.

Go deeper: the Energy & Heat Addendum builds these into real, tested competency. For the hands-on how-to, see Fire-Starting & Generator Safety, Staying Warm Without Power, Building a Jean Pain Compost Heat Mound, Building a Rocket Mass Heater, DIY Solar Water Heater, Sizing a Solar Array & Battery System, Sizing a Fuel-Powered Generator, Pedal Power: Bicycle Generators, and Stirling Engines: Turning Stored Heat Back Into Power.

Tech & Equipment

• LED Flashlights/Headlamps: One per family member: high lumens, low battery draw. Headlamps free both hands, which matters more than it sounds like it will.

• Power Banks: 20,000+ mAh capacity, enough for multiple phone/radio charges without grid power.

• Propane Camp Stove: Outdoor cooking only: never indoors, never in a garage, never in a tent. This is the single most important rule in this chapter.

• Carbon Monoxide Detector: Battery-operated, placed near sleeping areas (not directly beside the stove or heater itself, to avoid nuisance alarms), required any time a fuel-burning device is used nearby. Check the alarm’s expiration date; most CO sensors are only rated for 5–7 years and stop reliably sensing after that even if the unit still powers on.

Materials & Supplies

Quick Checklist

Tier 2: Extended (2 Weeks – 3 Months)

Goal: Phase 1-to-2 transition, still finite but beginning to generate power directly. Generate alternative power for critical devices (radios, medical) and provide safe heating/cooking for weeks without grid power.

Tier 2 moves from surviving on stored batteries to actually generating and managing power and heat on an ongoing basis. This is where equipment choice and correct setup matter most: the wrong heater or an improperly grounded solar system is a fire or CO risk, not just an inconvenience.

Skills to Build

• Alternative Cooking: Get comfortable running a propane or wood stove for actual daily meal prep, not just boiling water. Fuel-efficient technique matters over a multi-month window (see the Water & Food chapter’s Tier 2 bulk-cooking guidance).

• Solar Setup: Learn to safely connect portable panels to batteries or a power station: correct polarity, appropriate gauge wiring, and not exceeding the charge controller’s rated input.

• Fuel Storage & Rotation: Propane itself doesn’t expire, but tanks and valves corrode over years and need periodic inspection. Kerosene degrades within roughly 1–2 years unless treated with a stabilizer. Firewood needs to season (dry) for 6–12 months before it burns efficiently and cleanly; green wood burns dirty and contributes to chimney creosote buildup.

• Draft-Proofing: Seal gaps around windows and doors in the safe room with weatherstripping or towels; heat retention matters as much as heat generation.

Go deeper: the Energy & Heat Addendum builds these into real, tested competency. For the hands-on how-to, see Fire-Starting & Generator Safety, Staying Warm Without Power, Building a Jean Pain Compost Heat Mound, Building a Rocket Mass Heater, DIY Solar Water Heater, Sizing a Solar Array & Battery System, Sizing a Fuel-Powered Generator, Pedal Power: Bicycle Generators, and Stirling Engines: Turning Stored Heat Back Into Power.

Tech & Equipment

• Solar Generator: A portable power station (1000Wh+) with solar input, for radios and medical devices. Size it against actual device wattage draw, not just the marketed capacity; a CPAP or oxygen concentrator alone can meaningfully change the sizing math. See the Access & Functional Needs chapter if that applies to your household, and the Sizing a Solar Array & Battery System skill guide for the real formula behind that sizing math.

• Unvented Propane Heater with Oxygen-Depletion Sensor: Products like the Mr. Heater Buddy are sometimes labeled “indoor-safe,” but they are unvented (there is no exhaust to the outside); the low-oxygen shut-off sensor is what makes indoor use survivable, not ventilation the unit provides itself. Always crack a window for fresh air exchange per the manufacturer’s instructions, keep a working CO detector in the same room, and never run one in a room where people are sleeping unless the specific model is rated for that use.

• Wood Stove: If already installed, have the chimney professionally swept and the damper function checked before the season it’s needed; creosote buildup from summer disuse is a real chimney-fire risk. See the Building a Rocket Mass Heater skill guide for a far more fuel-efficient alternative, plus the real legal path to building one. See the Stirling Engines skill guide if you want to pull a real, honest bonus of electricity out of a fire you’re already running for heat.

• Battery Bank: Deep-cycle AGM or lithium batteries for solar storage. Lithium batteries lose usable capacity in cold temperatures; plan for an insulated or heated storage location if they’ll sit through a Utah winter.

Materials & Supplies

Quick Checklist

Tier 3: Permanent (Indefinite)

Goal: Phase 2, generating rather than consuming. Total energy independence using renewable sources and biomass. Transition to hand tools and passive heating.

Tier 3 assumes there’s no grid to return to and no more fuel deliveries. Energy shifts from something stored and consumed to something continuously generated and managed (solar, wood, and human power) with the skills to repair the systems that make that possible.

Skills to Build

• Woodworking: Building and maintaining wood stoves, chimneys, and the hand tools this tier depends on.

• Electrical Repair: Wiring DC systems, repairing inverters, and maintaining battery banks: the off-grid solar array in this tier is only as reliable as the household’s ability to fix it.

• Passive Solar Design: Using thermal mass and south-facing glass to capture winter heat passively. Design in summer shading (an overhang or deciduous trees) too; the same south-facing glass that’s an asset in a Utah January becomes a liability in July without it. See the DIY Solar Water Heater skill guide for applying this same principle to heating water instead of a room.

• Biomass Processing: Making charcoal or processing wood for maximum BTU efficiency per unit stored: a meaningful multiplier on a finite woodlot. See the Building a Jean Pain Compost Heat Mound skill guide for a different approach: extracting sustained heat from wood chips through decomposition instead of combustion.

Go deeper: the Energy & Heat Addendum builds these into real, tested competency. For the hands-on how-to, see Fire-Starting & Generator Safety, Staying Warm Without Power, Building a Jean Pain Compost Heat Mound, Building a Rocket Mass Heater, DIY Solar Water Heater, Sizing a Solar Array & Battery System, Sizing a Fuel-Powered Generator, Pedal Power: Bicycle Generators, and Stirling Engines: Turning Stored Heat Back Into Power.

Tech & Equipment

• High-Efficiency Wood Stove: With a cooktop, so one fuel source covers both heating and cooking simultaneously.

• Off-Grid Solar Array: Larger-scale panels, charge controllers, and inverter system sized for ongoing household power, not just critical devices. See the Sizing a Solar Array & Battery System skill guide for the actual formulas, load tiers, and the Utah-specific winter sun-hours gotcha that undersizes most first attempts.

• Hand Tools: Saws, axes, drills, and grinders, non-electric or DC-powered, since grid tools become useless the moment the array or battery bank has a bad day.

• Bicycle Generator: For charging small batteries through human power when solar input is low (heavy overcast, deep winter). See the Pedal Power skill guide for real output numbers, a real commercial option, and the DIY design that actually works.

Materials & Supplies

Quick Checklist

Tier 4: Thriving (Sustainable Community)

Goal: Phase 2 at community scale. Build a neighborhood-scale energy and heat system so no single household’s equipment failure or fuel shortfall becomes a life-threatening emergency.

A single household’s Tier 3 solar array or wood stove is still a single point of failure: a failed inverter or an empty woodlot with no way to restock leaves that household with no heat or power until it’s fixed. Tier 4 links households together so capacity, fuel, and repair skill are shared rather than isolated.

Skills to Build

• Microgrid Coordination: Planning and agreeing on how multiple households’ solar/battery systems can be connected or at least coordinated, including simple rules for whose need takes priority when total supply is limited (medical equipment first, for example).

• Distributed Repair Skills: Teach electrical and mechanical repair broadly rather than concentrating it in one household: a neighborhood with five people who can fix an inverter is far more resilient than one with a single expert.

• Woodlot Management: Coordinate a sustainable, rotating harvest across a shared or community woodlot so no single winter strips it faster than it can regrow.

• Load Prioritization Planning: Agree in advance on who gets shared power access first during a shortfall (medical devices, then heat, then everything else) rather than deciding it under pressure.

Go deeper: the Energy & Heat Addendum builds these into real, tested competency. For the hands-on how-to, see Fire-Starting & Generator Safety, Staying Warm Without Power, Building a Jean Pain Compost Heat Mound, Building a Rocket Mass Heater, DIY Solar Water Heater, Sizing a Solar Array & Battery System, Sizing a Fuel-Powered Generator, Pedal Power: Bicycle Generators, and Stirling Engines: Turning Stored Heat Back Into Power.

Tech & Equipment

• Shared Microgrid or Battery Bank: A solar and battery system sized to serve multiple households, with clear physical connections and access rules.

• Community Woodlot: A managed, shared wood-harvesting area with an agreed sustainable-yield schedule.

• Shared Repair Workshop: A stocked space with hand tools, spare electrical parts, and a place for community members to learn and practice repair skills together.

• Redundant Small Systems: Several smaller solar/battery setups distributed across households instead of one large centralized system: a design choice that means one failure doesn’t take down power for everyone.

Materials & Supplies

Quick Checklist

At a Glance: Energy & Heat Across All Tiers

A single-page reference for planning purposes. This does not replace the detailed guidance above; use it to see how the plan scales, not as a standalone checklist.