Every day that I sit down in the basement, I get more and more motivated to get started with my office. It is usually 57 degrees when I turn on the lights in the morning. The heater that I wired in barely makes sitting for long durations bearable. Usually, by lunch time I am ready to take a hot shower just so I can warm up my feet.

A little over a week ago, we won a Little Buddy propane heater in a raffle. It came with two, one pound cylinders. I thought that it was a good temporary solution to add supplemental heat. The problem is that one pound cylinders only last for five hours according to the literature.

One of the area’s that I am not too prepared is heat and generally comfort. I always imagined that I would put on more clothes and do manual work. I have a kerosene heater that I use in the shop and I figured that was my fall back heater. Running for two hours, the shop is heated to the point that I can turn off the heater.

But, kerosene is not common in this area of the country. When we lived in South Carolina, you could buy kerosene at the gas station running about the cost of diesel. Not here, I am paying $8/gallon. And to top it off, to buy in volumes of 2.5 or 5 gallons, it is only seasonally available at the stores. From a runtime perspective, a 2.5 gallon jug will last about a week of working hours in the shop.

Propane is a much more prevalent option. The thing that I am noticing is that propane is scarce. It has to be the after effects of the ice storm. There are no one pound bottles anywhere. There are also no larger, refillable containers in stores. Stock is out online as well. I was able to buy a hose that attaches to a 20# cylinder for my heater and I do have one cylinder.

It has been on my list for years to get some more cylinders and attachments. I bought propane conversions for my camp stove so I could also use one pound cylinders. So I have always thought this was a direction to focus but it never seemed like a priority. Probably because I only had one item that used propane and maybe once a year do I use that burner. Now, I am looking to augment my heat and it cannot be found.

I guess what I am trying to say is that preparing is about evaluation, discipline and recognizing opportunity. For instance, the best time to buy gasoline to have on standby is in the winter time when the price is usually lowest. But the worst time to buy it is when the power is off and everyone is either trying to fuel their generators or running the car to stay warm. I evaluated my needs but I didn’t execute the discipline part.

The opportunity part is knowing that some fuels (and parts like wicks and adapters) are seasonally available, the time to buy is when you can. I was able to take advantage of a seasonal close-out and save $4 a jug on kerosene this week. It is unlikely that I will need too much heat until next fall but just like propane you don’t know when you will not be able to buy it, if you wanted it.

I am grateful that I have one cylinder, but I would like to have at least two. One to use and one to fill-up. Some people in my area were without power for a week, so it is possible to have a long term outage. An generally speaking, the outages are because of some weather event be it too hot or too cold or flooding or whatever, so not the best time to have no heat. An event like what happened in Texas was so catastrophic that even natural gas was frozen in the pipes. A lot of things don’t like to run real well when that get that cold either like engines, so consider that.

Finally, related to heat and cold. If you are without power in the winter, don’t let your items go bad in the refrigerator. Put them outside! I am amazed at how many people just let the fridge go bad when they could have shoveled ice from outside into a cooler or even just put stuff outside. When all you’ve got is cold you should at least be able to keep stuff cold. The freezer might be a different situation but the same thing applies.