Heating One Room When the Heating Dies

Modern flats hold heat surprisingly well for the first day, then temperature falls steadily. You do not heat a flat without power — you shrink it to one room, stop the leaks and insulate the people inside. Done properly, a small room with two people in it stays perfectly liveable through a multi-day winter outage.

Why cold is the real hazard of a winter outage

Hypothermia indoors is slow, quiet and mostly affects older people and small children. Rooms drift to 10 degrees, then 8, and people sit in them because it never feels like an emergency. The plan below is what keeps that from happening.

What you need

• Sleeping bags rated colder than you think you need, or duvets doubled up
• Insulated sleeping pads or foam — the floor steals more heat than the air
• Blankets or heavy curtains to seal doors and windows
• A thermometer, so decisions are based on numbers rather than feel

Make one warm room

1. 01

   Pick the smallest room with the fewest exterior walls, ideally with sun exposure and away from the front door.

2. 02

   Close every other door and stuff towels along the bottoms. You are heating a box, not a flat.

3. 03

   Hang blankets over windows at night, open curtains on sunny sides during the day. South-facing glass is free heat for a few hours.

4. 04

   Get everyone off the floor. Foam pads, cushions or cardboard under people and mattresses. Conductive loss downward is the biggest single drain.

5. 05

   Layer people, not the room. Base layer, insulation layer, hat. A hat indoors is not silly; the head is the easiest place to lose heat.

6. 06

   Sleep together, eat hot, drink hot. Bodies in one room raise the temperature measurably. A hot drink every few hours does more for morale than anything else on this list.

The mistakes that get people cold

• Trying to heat the whole flat
• Unvented paraffin or gas heaters running overnight
• Sleeping directly on the floor
• Cotton base layers, which hold sweat against the skin

Common questions

Will my pipes freeze? In a sustained hard freeze with no heat, yes. Open cupboard doors under sinks, let a tap drip if water is still on, and know where the stopcock is.

Is a portable gas heater safe indoors? Only a flueless model designed for indoor use, with ventilation and a CO alarm, and never while sleeping.

Where kit is worth the money

A proper sleeping bag and an insulated pad per person are the two items that make a cold flat a non-event, and they earn their keep on every camping trip in between. Buying warmth once beats improvising it in the dark.