Kerosene Heaters

About a year ago, we had our furnace stop working one cold winter night. By the time I woke up, the interior temperature had already dropped into the 40s. I was up in the middle of the night to kindle a fire in our fireplace, and set up a box fan to help circulate the heat around the house. However, the fireplace requires monitoring, which meant that I was up repeatedly through the night to add more wood to the fire. So the next morning I set up a large kerosene heater to heat the house until we could get a repairman to come out.

A modern kerosene heater requires ventilation, but is otherwise quite efficient and satisfactory for emergency heating purposes--even over a long period of time. Although there are fumes when starting and turning off the heater, there is otherwise little smell from the kerosene; and the heaters come with protective cages around them, and emergency shutoffs if knocked over. Moreover, the protective cage is designed to hold a tea kettle to heat water for drinks or provide some extra humidity.

When I lived in Japan, I used kerosene heaters for heating in the cooler months--as did nearly everyone else in Japan. In the winter, firemen and volunteers would walk around neighborhoods in the late evening banging sticks together to wake up people that might have fallen asleep with their heaters running. Most apartments and houses had ventilation holes built into the walls for when running a kerosene heater. In the apartments I stayed in, we used the smaller box type heaters that could be pushed near a wall or into a corner, and used a reflector to direct the heat into the room. Larger homes and commercial businesses would use the upright heaters that were intended to sit in the center of the room, like the one below.

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After I got married, while still living in cheap apartments, my wife and I purchased one of the larger heaters not only for emergency purposes, but also to supplement the meager (and expensive) heating from our baseboard electric heating units. Since moving into homes with central heating using a natural gas furnace, the heater has mostly been relegated to the garage or storage. However, we keep the fuel on hand just in case...and I was darn glad we had it when our furnace conked out.

The Advanced Survival Guide has a detailed article on the different types of kerosene, and storing and using kerosene. For those interested in this great backup heat source, check out the article.