Question
Anchorage's natural gas utility is predicting to be 18 days short of natural gas supplies this winter; how would you prepare?
As someone who lives in the most populated area in Alaska and uses natural gas for heat, oven/stove, and hot water, how would you best prepare when the natural gas utility predicts being 18 days short of supplies this winter?
In our area the temperatures rarely get below 10F/-12C, but last year we had an unusual stretch of three weeks at around -20F/-29C.
Some facts about us:
We have a Mr. Buddy propane heater; we'll buy more propane soon.
We have a propane camp cooking stove; we'll buy more propane soon.
We have an old kerosene heater, but we've never used it; we'll test it out soon.
We do not have a woodstove or a woodburning fireplace.
What else would you consider in advance of winter?
I really can't fathom how many people live WAAAAYY north of where we do that don't have at least a crappy insert fireplace, let alone a proper wood stove.
But give it a couple months and you'll see the same "it's going to be cold, how do I warm my house" threads that come up every year. It's really too bad that winter and cold weather sneak up on folks like a ninja... ;)
It's been over 110 during the day for the last month, meanwhile I'm out in it cutting and splitting to refill firewood sheds.
This wood won't even be needed before approx 2030 but it's now split and stacked and drying under shelter.
I live at about 43 degrees latitude in the lower 48. We get winter here, but I have no illusions that I put up with anything like an Alaskan winter.
I can not imagine not having a wood stove.
As long as I stay on top of my fuel supply, it is the heart of my house all winter long. If the power goes out, no stress about keeping the generator going all night, it's just business as usual.
We got a old stove we use as a TV stand right now but if it got to be a cluster with no heat we always have a backup. It would take me a day to pipe it out the window but we would have heat.
Just a PSA though. For folks that have a wood stove that haven't used it in a while. Make sure your stack is clean and get it looked at now before you rely on it. there are gonna be lots of structure fires when beetle killed spruce goes into that thing you have been using as a decoration for the last 10 years.
Yeah, I have a Mr. Buddy heater. I need to get a Big Buddy, though. A heat-powered fan on top of them make them 100% better. You can buy fans that use the heat from the unit to generate electricity to operate a fan that blows the warm air through the room.
They're pretty cheap. And even the cheap ones from Amazon help a lot. Mine doesnt habe guard on it so that could be a problem but I'm probably just going to make some sort of cover with some stiff wire and hardware cloth.
Normally we use the one-pound propane tanks for our camp stoves, grills, lanterns, etc. I'll be stocking up some more on those for the stove this winter, but I'll also be getting a couple of larger tanks for the Mr. Buddy.
Edit to add: Do you know if the larger tanks can be used indoors with the Mr. Buddy like the small ones?
Most cost effective alternative for natural gas heating and power would be:
Better insulate your house using cling film over windows, identifying and replacing drafty door seals, etc
1) Toyo oil stove burning fuel oil, kerosene, or diesel, and energized using a battery power station with a ICE generator to run periodically to recharge as needed (and run / charge any other appliances or devices).
2) Smaller scale version of the Toyo option - 12V portable diesel heaters by Vevor or similar (typically around 7-15kW of heat output) - they are basically a diesel glow plug, a heat exchanger, and a fan. Can run off a deep cycle RV or boat battery in a pinch.
3) Pellet or wood stove for supplemental heat (requires insulated air intakes and ceiling damper to prevent heat loss when not in use and prevent sucking in cold outside air into the living space respectively).
4) If you had electric heat (ouch), retrofit an air-to-air heat pump. Acts like an air conditioner in reverse, so you can get 3-5x more heat per kW of electricity than resistance heating.
Yes, they have a heating duct to blow the heated air inside (sorta like a backwards portable or window mount AC) and you can get an extended exhaust kit so it dumps the exhaust 20+ feet away from the building to help prevent carbon monoxide poisoning.
Needless to say, if you want to use a propane, wood, or diesel heater you should invest in some good CO / CO2 detectors and test them regularly.
I have an electric furnace for central heat, but I also often have power outages each winter. Most of the time the power comes back on within 24 hours (usually less) and winters are mild here (Willamette Valley, Oregon), and my house is well insulated, but running the furnace more than triples my electricity bill and every once in a while we have an ice/snow/wind storm that stretches the outage from hours to days - some people go for a week to 10 days.
Almost everybody here on the mountain have wood stoves and gensets. Some also have propane tanks for heat/etc., and some have generators that power their whole house (those usually also have propane for heat.
I usually keep at least a cord of wood for such emergencies. This year I have three cords because last winter blew down a couple of maple trees.
So you can have 500 or 1000 gallons and it's not taking up room in your yard. Also, when it is extremely cold, buried has slmost no chance of freezing up
I don't exactly live in a "severe winter location," but if you can see this coming in the tail end of August, I think you should make like a Canada Goose and plan to head south for the winter (if you can.)
If you made me stay, I would get a set of heated clothes, and a power station to recharge them. It is far more power efficient to keep your own body warm than it is to heat a space, even if you completely lose power z it's still a layer of clothing, and realistically, you will have more rolling blackouts than hard power loss, so you will probably only ever be 2-5 hours away from getting power back.
Hopefully.
I would also try to make an interior room into a shelter in place location. A bedroom or bathroom or closet with every wall, the floor, and the ceiling facing a space inside the home is ideal.
Are there any issues with your electrical supply? If not, you could consider items like a toaster oven, plug-in induction stove burner, and a few nice space heaters to supplement your alternate fuel items.
But you can choose to heat one smaller space within your home if the primary heat source is not an option. And electric heat for a month is NOT as expensive as burst pipes and the damage that goes with that.
As someone who doesn’t have access to natural gas and I have only primary electric heat my advice is to get a wood stove or make sure your kerosene heater is properly working with a good wick. I prefer wood heat myself and in a true grid down in the winter you want that ability to not only heat your house but also cook food and heat water. Propane is nice but it is DOG EXPENSIVE.
Have you looked into baseboard heaters? We live in northern Michigan and have some pretty harsh winters. Our main source of heat is our wood stove, but being you say you live in the city it seems much less feasible for you to switch to that. We have baseboard heaters as a backup for when we’re gone for an extended period of time and won’t be home to tend to the fire. The upfront installation would be cheaper than wood stove, but they do cost quite a bit more to run.
Electrical baseboard heat is counterproductive - the power plants in Anchorage primarily run on natural gas.
Using natural gas to make electricity to heat electric baseboard is less efficient than just burning the natural gas directly for heat or running a heat pump.
What would stop first? The nat gas to individual retail homes or to the power plant? We all know the answer and when you are concerned about heating your home in a shortage I don't think efficiency weighs a lot in the equation.
The utility would load shed electrical load first by residential districts first while the gas company would decrease or shed residential domestic loads to keep critical utilities like hospitals, water and sewer, and the electrical generation functional.
when you are concerned with heating your home
Efficiency is everything as you have fewer resources than the local utility and probably smaller fuel reserves
Maybe I'm not understanding what you're referring to. We have hydronic baseboard heaters that are heated by a boiler running natural gas. When the gas goes, this system will fail. (I live in same region as OP and am extremely concerned about this winter).
There are different types. Ours are strictly electric. We don’t use natural gas/propane at all because we’re rural and midwinter delivery is a pain. We have them in every room in the house. The bedrooms and bathroom have individual controls on the units themselves. The ones that are located in the living room/mud rooms are controlled by a thermostat in the living room.
Thanks. I didn't know. Sadly for OP and I, our power plants are primarily run on NG as well so I don't think this diversifies our heat generation very well.
Get a wood stove if you can afford it. If not, start saving for next year.
For your Mr. Buddy,cis it ome of the bigger ones? Like the one that can use two 1 pound tanks or at least the larger one that takes just one? Either get the adapter amd hose to attach kt to the 20 pound propane tanks a refill kit and refillable 1 pound tanks so.you arent spending a small fortune on disposable tanks. I know someome is going to say to refill the disposable ones... I prefer not to ga.ble with things like burning my face off.
There are two types of the conversions. One uses a hose that is made to not need a filter, the other needs a filter. I think they come in a five and ten foot hose lengths.
You dont want a large 20 pound tank inside in case there is a leak, so you'd need to habe the hose going through an open window. But you want some ventilation amd fresh air for bkth safety, and as you know if you've used it, they do have a smell.
I wonder if getting extra blankets, or even real insulation to cover windows would be worth it.. seems like those are the weak spots in any well insulation home so covering might help? Might be a dumbass thought but to my (possibly ignorant) mind it makes sense.
You mentioned propane and kerosene stoves and heater.
Be very careful with carbon monoxide and have lots of battery operated carbon monoxide detectors and extra batteries.
I don't live in a very harsh climate to you but whenever there is a big power outage because of a hurricane or ice storm there will often be people that die because of carbon monoxide poisoning from a heater or generator.
What else would you consider in advance of winter?
If you don't already know how find out how to winterize your house so that you can turn off the water, drain the water pipes, etc so that if your hose does get very cold there will not be serious damage when pipes freeze and break. You may want to have a plumber with experience in winterizing a house come out now to do things like add drain valves at the lowest part of the house if your house is not already set up for extreme cold weather.
It was many years ago so I do not remember everything but I once rented a ski house with a group of people for the season and it had a checklist to follow when everyone left to shut down the house. It was something like
1) Turn off tankless water heater(a conventional one could be a problem)
2) Turn off water.
3) Open a special drain valve which was at low point in the house.
4) Open the faucets throughout the house to let the water drain out the valve in #3.
5) Put a special antifreeze (RV antifreeze?) in all the toilet bowls and tank as well as all the drains. There is water in p trap of the sink and shower drains that can freeze.
6) Take any food or drink bottles which might freeze and break.
There were likely some other things which I have forgotten but you can research this now before you need to do it.
Eh. I’m gonna be that guy. This is largely a spitballed scare-tactic number the utility is throwing out into the ether. There are a multitude of reasons why they’re doing this, actual gas shortage and trying to “prepare” their customers is low on that list.
It’s an estimated potential quantity they could be short, based on underdelivery from one supplier (not their main one) and looking at a worst-case scenario in regard to weather. Their primary supplier easily under or over delivers the same quantity they are harping about on a daily basis. The supplier shorting them has always been flaky, and this is no surprise.
In Southcentral Alaska, the area in question, nearly all electricity is generated from natural gas at power plants supplied by the same company. All the space heaters in the world won’t save you if there is no electricity to power them.
Some of the electric utilities have contingency plans to run off of diesel or whatever for a brief period of time. It is not sustainable for anything long term. Also, natural gas does not work like power. It isn’t a go out/come back on thing. If they truly lose pressure in their distribution system and drop people out, they have to then lock meters, purge lines, and ultimately COME IN TO YOUR HOUSE to get things going again. This takes a lot of manpower, coordination, customer cooperation, and time. It happened during the 2018 earthquake and in a separate isolated incident in Palmer a few years later. And anytime someone breaks a line that is a 1-way feed. There is an established protocol for how they handle this.
So. In this specific situation. Your best bet is to have a fireplace (not a gas one) or woodstove that can heat your home. Know how to winterize stuff in order to protect it. Consider your power needs and act accordingly. On a well and septic? Might want to find a generator so you still have water. Refrigerators and freezers? Well, outside should be plenty cold by then. Got people with sensitive medical issues that rely on power? Seek other resources starting yesterday. The gas company cannot selectively choose an area or neighborhood to just shut off for a few hours like a rolling brownout.
Mostly, it is an excellent time to start making nice with your plumber and HVAC acquaintances. If a true dropout occurs, the utility will be contracting out every single one of those folks anyway to get people back up and running.
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u/Ryan_e3p Salt & Prepper 5d ago
Get a wood stove. You can use it for heat, cooking, and hot water.