How to Heat a Room Without Electricity (Most Cost-Effective Method)

The best way to heat a room without electricity is wood, which costs only $10.91 per million BTUs of heat energy. The second best way is propane gas which costs around $35.28 per million BTUs of heat energy.

The worst way to heat without electricity is using candles. Whether you use plain candles or flowerpot heaters does not make a difference. Heating with candles costs at least $142.04 per million BTUs if you get cheap candles.
However, in a crisis, candle prices inflate and can be up to $0.33 per candle which would leave you with over $900 per million BTUs heated.

In an energy outage, always stick to wood and propane heating! Everything else is a waste of money.

[LazyPolymath]

I think the other thing to keep in mind is heating efficiency. Burning wood can have lower heating efficiency depending on the kind of wood stove you get, with most of the losses being from hot gases just flowing out of the chimney. Adding even a small mass around the wood stove or implementing a more intricate mass heating system, the efficiency can get quite high as the mass would absorb a lot of that heat before its simply lost out the chimney and re-emit it back out. The mass would also help steady any temperature swings as there's more material nearby to heat or cool than just the air within a given room. Simple heating masses that I can think of would be tanks of water nearby or piles of stones surrounding the stove, though the more intricate the system, the most costly, and that's also not taking into account the cost of the stove in the first place if one isn't already present.

Nonetheless, great video. I'm glad I stumbled across the channel when I did.

[RPRosen-kifk]

Having just binged out on heating videos, I must say it was refreshing to find this one. I think your science was fairly accurate and you talked in an easy to understand way. I'm perplexed by the comments here that fail to understand what you showed. It would have been nice to have added electricity and oil to your charts for comparison pricing purposes. There are some diesel heaters that require no electricity (work off a battery), that could work quite nicely in an emergency. I'm located in New Hampshire, USA and my local pricing has oil slightly cheaper than propane. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm thinking oil is 7.25 gallons per MMBtu and my current pricing is about $4/gal, and electricity is 293 kWh per MMBtu? I checked out your website and liked what I saw. I saved it for future reference. I wish there was less trolls & clickbait here and MORE YouTubers like you. Keep up the GREAT WORK!

[dwar]

what you're talking about? 100 tea candles costs £3.5, each candle lasts 4 hours. I you put 4 candles continuously you will heat more than half month. For this price you can use even 6, 8, 10 candles at once, is still huge saving at the end.

[michaeldunn]

All fair and well if you have a wood stove or a gas heater. If not then the initial outlay can be prohibitive. We just got a quote for £5000 for a standalone wood stove. Gas in UK is expensive no matter how it is provided. So lighting a few candles now becomes the cheapest by far which turns your findings on its head 🤔

[heximancer]

What about heating with vegetable oil? Methane from kitchen compost?

[piersmoore-ede]

this is a good video. However, @heatertips I think you should mention some of the potential risks of using a Mr Buddy inside. Having bought one on your recommendation I am now realising I have to drill a hole in the wall to keep the propane tanks outside. There may also be humidity issues. I am having to buy two Carbon monoxide detectors. And the safety may still be questionable, in terms of air quality, based on the research I've been doing..

[drnrgizr]

What about using a 2000 watt inverter together with a car battery connected to your gas furnace?

[acmebrainsurgery]

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, you haven't actually factored in the cost of buying
and installing a wood stove which completely blows away your cost argument.

Installing a wood stove with a properly ventilated chimney is quite costly and arduous,
if not nearly impossible, task in an emergency and may not be possible in urban
areas, say N.Y.C for instance

If you severly minimize the size of the space being heated, candle heating may work.
We're talking emergencies aren't we? Wood stoves are long term heating solutions.
Also, what about lamp oils and kerosene heaters? Kerosene heaters don't require elaborate ventilation.

That said, I patiently await your cow heater video complete with you laying astride Elsie for warmth.🐮😉 And please don't forget to factor in the cost of feeding your cow heater.

[nietur]

der Rauch muss halt auch wieder weg, wobei Hitze verloren geht

[robreuler]

No shit wood is the best way to heat a room. How long did it take you to figure this out.