Heating Without Electricity: Emergency Heating for When the Power Goes Off

Heating without electricity sounds like a problem for people with no gas. It isn’t. When the power goes off in winter, most gas central heating goes off with it, because the boiler needs electricity to light, run its controls and pump hot water round the radiators. A full gas supply and a cold house is a combination that catches people out every winter.

The good news is that the fixes are cheap, well understood and very British: a fire, a paraffin heater, a gas cabinet heater, and a lot of jumpers. This guide covers what still works in a power cut, which emergency heating is safe indoors, what to buy before winter, and the things people try every year that should never come inside.

Does Gas Central Heating Work in a Power Cut?

Almost certainly not. A modern combi or system boiler uses mains electricity for its ignition, its controls and the pump that pushes hot water round the house. Cut the power and the boiler stops, even though the gas is still there. Oil boilers are the same: the burner and pump both need power. Heat pumps, storage heaters and electric heaters obviously go off too.

What does keep going:

• Wood burners, multi-fuel stoves and open fires. No plug, no problem.
• Some gas fires. Older fires with a push-button spark and a gas tap usually work without power. Newer ones with remote controls, electronic ignition or a fan often don’t. Find out which you’ve got on a normal day, not during a power cut.
• Heaters that bring their own fuel. Wick paraffin heaters and indoor gas cabinet heaters, covered below.

Boiler Not Working After a Power Cut?

This one gets searched for a lot, usually with a Worcester, Vaillant or Glow-worm name attached. The answer is nearly always the same: press the reset button on the boiler. Boilers often lock out when the power drops mid-cycle, and the reset clears it. If it still won’t fire up, or the display shows a fault code that won’t clear, call a Gas Safe registered engineer rather than taking the cover off.

Heating Without Electricity: What Actually Works

Once the boiler’s out, you’re looking for heat that brings its own fuel. In a UK home, heating without electricity comes down to three realistic options.

Wood Burners and Open Fires

If you’ve got one, you already have the best heating without electricity there is. Our house runs on a wood burner and nothing else, and out here the power goes off often enough for that to matter. When the grid drops, the house doesn’t notice.

Ours has a back boiler. Cold water comes out of the bottom of the hot water tank, through the stove, and back into the top of the tank. It circulates on its own because hot water rises, so there’s no pump and no power involved. A heat-dump radiator next to the stove gives spare heat somewhere to go, so the water can’t overheat. We also have an electric pump that sends hot water to a radiator further away, and that one does stop in a power cut. The stove and the gravity circuit carry on regardless.

If your stove has a back boiler, find out how yours works before winter. If it circulates by gravity and has a heat-dump radiator, like ours, a power cut changes nothing. If it relies on an electric pump to move the heat, ask your installer what happens when the pump stops, because the water in the boiler still keeps heating.

Two things to sort now: get the chimney swept before the cold sets in, and keep a decent stack of dry logs under cover. Wet wood burns badly, smokes and tars up the flue.

Paraffin Heaters

A wick paraffin heater is the classic answer to heating without electricity in a house with no fire. You fill the tank, light the wick and it burns. No mains, no batteries. A typical 6 litre heater puts out around 2.8kW, enough for a 10 to 20 square metre room, and the flat top will boil a kettle or warm a pan of soup while it’s at it.

Two things to get right. Buy a wick heater, not an electronic one: paraffin heaters with a digital thermostat, timer or fan need mains power, which defeats the point. And burn C1 paraffin, the clean indoor grade, not C2, which is heating oil for boilers. UK sellers call it paraffin; Americans call it kerosene. Same stuff.

The paraffin heater we reviewed has no tip-over cut-off, which is normal for this type. That means a guard or a sensible spot away from children and pets, a CO alarm in the same room, and never leaving it lit when you go to bed.

Indoor Gas Cabinet Heaters

The other proper option for heating without electricity indoors is a gas cabinet heater: a heater on wheels with a butane bottle in the back. Look for one with an oxygen depletion sensor, which shuts it off if the air in the room runs short of oxygen, and flame supervision, which cuts the gas if the flame goes out. Most light with a push-button spark that runs on an AA battery, so they don’t need the mains at all.

Indoor cabinet heaters run on butane. Propane is for outdoors: patio heaters, barbecues and caravans, with the bottle kept outside. A propane heater has no business in your living room, whatever the online listing says.

Cabinet heaters need a decent-sized room. Ours are too small for one, which is worth knowing before you buy. They’re not for bedrooms, and the bottle sticks out at the back, so leave space behind it. The one we reviewed is the model Calor and Flogas sell, chosen because a recognised brand matters when it’s gas in your living room.

Small Cartridge Heaters

You’ll also see little heaters that take the long butane cartridges from a camping stove. Most are labelled for outdoor or well-ventilated use only. We have one, because our rooms are too small for a cabinet heater, and it has been used exactly once: as the last-ditch option after everything else, with a window open and the CO alarm in the room. We wouldn’t tell anyone to go and buy one.

Why Battery Heaters Don’t Really Exist

People search for battery heaters and no-plug heaters every winter, and the maths is unkind. A small electric heater draws about 2,000 watts. A portable power station holding 1,000 watt-hours would run it for roughly half an hour, then sit there flat. Even the big ones won’t heat a room through a cold night. Power stations are brilliant for lights, phones, the router and a laptop. Heating without electricity means heating with fuel.

The same goes for electric blankets. Ours runs off the mains like everyone else’s, so when the power goes it’s a hot water bottle and an extra blanket, which works fine.

Candle Heaters: Why They Don’t Work

The tea light and terracotta flower pot heater turns up on social media every October. A tea light gives off about 30 to 40 watts. A room needs well over a thousand to make a difference. Four tea lights under a flower pot is roughly the heat of one person sitting in the room, plus four naked flames in the dark. Candles are for light, and even then a torch is safer.

Safety Rules for Heaters That Don’t Require Electricity

Heating without electricity almost always means burning something, and anything that burns fuel indoors makes carbon monoxide, and you can’t see, smell or taste it. Heaters that don’t require electricity are safe when they’re used properly. These are the rules:

• A CO alarm in the same room. Not in the hall, not in a drawer. Ours is a battery combined smoke and CO alarm on the living room wall, the same one we reviewed below. If you have a wood burner fitted, Building Regulations already require a CO alarm in that room.
• Some fresh air. Crack a window. Fuel heaters need oxygen and they put out moisture, so sealing the room tight is the wrong move.
• Never overnight, never unattended. Warm the room, then turn the heater off before bed and let the duvet take over.
• Keep it clear. Well away from curtains, bedding and furniture, with a guard if there are children or pets about.
• Refuel cold. Let a paraffin heater cool before you fill it, and fill it outside or over something that’ll catch a spill.
• Never bring outdoor kit inside. No barbecues, patio heaters, generators or camping stoves for heating. Every winter someone tries, and some of them don’t wake up.

Headache, dizziness, nausea, tiredness and feeling better when you go outside are the classic signs of CO poisoning. If they appear, or the alarm goes off, turn the heater off and get everyone outside.

Combustion Heaters and Damp

This is the part most heating guides skip. Burning paraffin or butane makes water as well as heat: roughly a litre of water for every litre of paraffin, and over 20 litres from a 15kg butane bottle. In a closed room it has nowhere to go, so it runs down the windows, soaks into bedding and makes the room feel colder than the thermometer says.

The fix during the power cut is ventilation: a small gap in a window on the far side of the room from the heater lets the moisture out without losing much heat. Wood burners don’t have this problem, because the flue takes the moisture away. Once the power’s back, a dehumidifier dries out what’s left. A desiccant one is the type that still works in a cold room.

How to Heat a Room Without Electricity, and Keep Yourself Warm

Don’t try to heat the whole house. Pick one room, shut the door, put a draught excluder along the bottom and draw the curtains. A small room with people in it warms up fast and stays warm. Everything else in the house can be cold.

Then heat the people as well as the room: layers, a hat, a hot water bottle and a sleeping bag or a heavy blanket over your legs. Our living room is at 15°C as this is being written and nobody has come to harm, because jumpers. If you need the full approach for a long outage, from the warmest room to choose to keeping older relatives warm, it’s all in our guide to keeping warm without heating.

A hot water bottle needs boiling water, so a camping stove earns its place in a winter power cut. Use it for cooking and boiling the kettle only, next to an open window, never as a heater.

What to Have Ready Before Winter

Emergency heating is easy to sort in September and almost impossible to sort in a cold snap, when everyone else wants the same thing at the same time. A short list:

• Fuel for whatever you’ve got. A dry stack of logs, a couple of 5 litre cans of C1 paraffin, or a spare butane bottle, depending on your heater. Store it safely and legally; the fuel storage guide covers how much you can keep and where.
• A working CO alarm in every room with a fuel-burning appliance. Press the test button now.
• The chimney swept, if you have a fire.
• Two hot water bottles per person. One in use, one refilling.
• A sleeping bag or heavy blanket per person, and warm base layers for anyone older or very young.
• Hand warmers. Air-activated ones need nothing charging or fuelling.
• A cheap room thermometer, so you know when the room is actually getting too cold.

Emergency Heating for Flats, Older People and Babies

Flats

Flats keep heat better than houses, because the neighbours are heating your walls for you. Before you buy anything for heating without electricity, though, check your lease or tenancy agreement: many landlords and blocks ban paraffin heaters and bottled gas, and some for good reason in high-rise buildings. If yours does, your plan is layers, one warm room and hot water bottles.

Older and Vulnerable People

Cold is a real health risk for older people. The NHS advises heating your home to at least 18°C if you’re 65 or over, less mobile, or living with a heart or lung condition. Healthy people under 65 can be fine cooler than that, as long as they’re comfortable. If you have an older relative nearby, a power cut in a cold snap is the time to check on them, not the time to assume someone else has.

Babies and Young Children

Babies can’t regulate their temperature well. Keep the room they sleep in at 16°C to 20°C, add layers of clothing rather than loose blankets, and keep any heater well away from the cot and never lit unattended in their room. A room thermometer earns its place in any house with a baby.

Frequently Asked Questions