Winter Outage Survival: Heat, Pipes, and the Ice Storm Playbook
Winter power outage guide: staying warm safely, preventing pipe bursts, generator cold-weather kits, and ice storm realities.
Ice storms cause the longest outages in our footprint: lines and limbs fall for days, and restoration crawls. A winter outage is a race between restoration and your home's temperature, here's how to win it.
Heat: safe and unsafe
Safe: consolidating into one room, layered clothing and sleeping bags, a fireplace with a known-good flue. Deadly every winter: charcoal or gas grills indoors, ovens as heaters, and portable generators in garages, carbon monoxide is odorless and the deaths repeat annually. Battery-powered CO alarms on every level, non-negotiable.
Pipes: the $15,000 freeze
At interior temps near 40°F, open cabinet doors under sinks, drip faucets on exterior walls, and know your main shutoff now, not while it sprays. Multi-day outages in hard freezes justify draining supply lines. The generator alternative: the furnace fan is a trivial 800W load; keeping it running makes the entire pipe problem vanish.
Generators in the cold
Standby units are built for it: cold-weather kits (battery warmer, oil heater) are the box to check at purchase in ice states, and natural gas supply doesn't care about blocked roads the way propane delivery or gasoline runs do. Clear snow from intake and exhaust after storms; that's the whole winter maintenance list.
Quick Answers
How cold can a house get before pipes burst?
Pipes on exterior walls can freeze once interior temps sit below ~40°F for hours; multi-day outages in hard freezes make it likely. Heat, dripping, and drain-downs are the defenses, and a generator removes the scenario.
Do generators need a cold-weather kit?
In ice-storm states, yes: battery and oil warmers ensure the worst-morning start. It's an inexpensive line item we include by default in northern quotes.
What heats a room without electricity safely?
A wood fireplace with a sound flue, or vented propane heaters rated for indoor use, with a CO alarm running. Nothing designed for outdoors comes inside, ever.