A winter outage is a countdown, not an inconvenience. Indoor temperature in a poorly insulated home can fall into the 40s overnight, and pipes start freezing within hours of hard cold. But the response to that — improvised indoor heat — is also the single deadliest thing people do during an outage. Carbon monoxide poisoning spikes sharply during winter emergencies, and it's almost always from equipment that was never meant to run indoors.
So the goal is narrow and achievable: keep one room livable, safely, and protect the plumbing.
First, the Things That Kill People
- Never use a charcoal grill, camp stove, or portable gas burner indoors — including in a garage, basement, or enclosed porch. Charcoal produces carbon monoxide in lethal quantities with no smell.
- Never run a generator inside a garage, even with the door open. Exhaust eddies back into the house. Twenty feet from doors, windows, and vents, outside, is the rule.
- Never use an oven or gas range as a heater. It's a fire and CO risk, and it doesn't heat effectively anyway.
- Never bring a propane patio heater inside. They're outdoor appliances and produce CO.
- Install carbon monoxide alarms on every level and test them before winter. This is the one upgrade that changes the outcome of an accident. Battery-powered models keep working when the power doesn't.
If anyone in the home develops headache, dizziness, nausea, or confusion while any fuel-burning device is running, get everyone outside immediately and call 911 from outside.
The Safe Indoor Toolkit
These are the options that don't produce carbon monoxide:
- Layer up, and treat clothing as your first heating system. Wool base layers, hats, and slippers do more than most people expect; body heat loss through the head and feet is significant.
- A battery-powered or rechargeable fan to move air from a sun-warmed room into the cold one, if the outage is daytime.
- Sleeping bags rated for the temperature, not just blankets. A 20°F bag is genuinely warmer than three blankets stacked.
- Hand warmers and a hot water bottle — fill it from the water heater's stored hot water before it cools.
- A propane or kerosene heater rated for indoor use — these exist and are legal to use indoors with ventilation and a CO alarm. Follow the manual exactly, crack a window, and never refuel one indoors while it's hot. A catalytic propane heater in a closed room is still a CO source; the alarm is not optional.
- A wood stove or fireplace that's already inspected and working. If it's been sitting unused for years, get it swept before winter rather than lighting it for the first time during an emergency.
The One-Room Strategy
Trying to keep an entire house warm without a furnace is a losing fight. Instead:
- Choose the smallest interior room with few windows — often a bathroom, a central bedroom, or an interior hallway.
- Close it off. Hang blankets over doorways, roll towels along the bottom of doors, and close off unused rooms entirely.
- Cover the windows with blankets or plastic at night. Single-pane glass is a radiator pointed the wrong direction.
- Move everyone into that room, including pets. Body heat is real heat.
- Ventilate if you're burning anything — a cracked window is not wasted heat, it's the difference between a heater and a hazard.
Protect the Pipes While You're at It
Pipe damage is the expensive half of a winter outage, and it's preventable:
- When temperatures are forecast below 20°F, start before the freeze: open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls and let faucets drip.
- If you're home, a dripping faucet is far cheaper than a burst pipe.
- Know where your main water shutoff is before you need it.
- If you evacuate, shut off the main and drain the system rather than hoping.
Our winter storm power outage guide covers the full timeline from forecast to recovery, including what to do in the first 48 hours of a storm watch.
If You Want Heat That Doesn't Need a Flame
The safe, no-CO option is electric heat on backup power — but heat is expensive in watts. A 1,500W space heater will drain most mid-size power stations in a few hours, so the practical setup is usually a generator for the furnace blower plus a small electric heater for one room, or a battery sized specifically for that load. How many watts you actually need and the power outage checklist both cover sizing heat loads specifically.
Use our free Generator & Home Battery Calculator →
Related reading: Winter Storm Power Outage Prep, Generator Break-In and Maintenance, and Power Outage Checklist