6 Ways To Stay Warm While Waiting For Heating Repair

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One of the most dreaded things that can happen during the winter is for your furnace to suddenly stop working on an especially cold day. As the temperature inside starts to drop almost as low as the temperature outside, you begin to panic. You call your trusty furnace maintenance company to come repair your heater, but what can you do to keep your family warm until they arrive? Here are six great ideas:

Get to Work in the Kitchen

Now's the time to get started on all those cookies you were planning to bake. Using your oven will help make your kitchen toasty warm, and some of that heat will spread to adjoining rooms. Basically, the same reason that a lot of people avoid baking in the summer (it makes things too warm inside the house) will work to your advantage during the winter when you want to warm things up.

Bring out the Space Heaters

If you have a space heater or other portable heat source, go ahead and get it from wherever it's being stored and plug it in. If you have more than one, that's even better. If you don't have a space heater and it's going to be several hours (or overnight) before the heating repair company gets to your house, it may be worthwhile to run to a home improvement store and pick up a couple of portable space heaters.

Once your heater is repaired, you can keep them for future home emergencies or just for the convenience of being able to make some rooms toasty warm without raising the heat in the whole house. Just be careful to never operate a space heater that is in disrepair or to leave one running unattended, as doing so can be a major fire risk.

Head Upstairs

Since heat rises, it makes sense to head upstairs if you have more than one floor in your home. If you don't normally spend a lot of time upstairs, you and your family should grab all of your necessities (toiletries, snacks, bottled water, laptops, phones and chargers, etc.) and bring everything with you when you head upstairs. This will prevent you from needing to keep going back downstairs where it's colder.

Close Interior Doors

While waiting for your furnace to be repaired, you and your family should gather together in one or two rooms if at all possible. Then, close the doors to all the other rooms in the house. This will help keep things warmer in the rooms you are occupying, because any heat you manage to generate (with the oven, space heaters, etc.) won't have as much space to dissipate and will be able to flow more efficiently through the rooms that are left open.

Light a Fire

Of course, if you happen to have a fireplace, this is the time to take advantage of it. A fireplace doesn't do the best job of heating a larger home, but it will make the room it's located in (and possibly an adjoining room or two) comfortably warm, even without a working heater. If you haven't used your fireplace all season, be sure to observe basic fireplace safety: clean any debris or ash from inside the fireplace before you light it, don't forget to open the flue first, and don't leave the fireplace unattended.

Bundle Up

It may seem like common sense, but don't underestimate how powerfully effective bundling up in warm clothes can be. Dress in warm layers, make use of thermal long underwear if you have any, and top everything off with your warmest coat and gloves.

A broken heater is no fun, but with these tips you should be able to stay reasonably comfortable until it can be repaired. Don't forget to have your heater inspected and maintained annually in order to help prevent these situations in the future.

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11 January 2016