Getting Your Home Ready for a Winter Power Outage

Size it to your outage history

The default here is 3 days for everyone in the house, which covers most storm outages in towns and suburbs. Go to 7 days if you're rural, at the end of a long power line, or your area has had multi-day ice storms before, because restoration there often takes 4-5 days. Everything scales per person per day: 1 gallon (3.8 L) of water, 3 no-cook meals and roughly 2,000 calories for an adult. Add about half a gallon (2 L) a day for a medium dog. If an electric pump supplies your water, plan an extra 1-2 gallons (4-8 L) per person per day for flushing, or fill the bathtub when the storm warning comes.

Shop before the first storm forecast. Water, D-cell batteries and propane disappear from shelves 24-48 hours ahead of a big storm, so a quiet weekend is the time to buy.

Heat and light without the carbon monoxide

Many winter outage deaths come from carbon monoxide, not cold. Never heat with a gas oven, grill, camp stove or charcoal indoors. Keep any generator at least 20 ft (6 m) from doors and windows, and never run one in a garage, even with the door open. Your CO alarm needs a battery or battery backup, because plug-in-only models go dark with the power.

Pick one interior room with few windows as the warm room. Close the doors to the rest of the house, hang blankets over the windows, and sleep there together. Then choose your backup power by budget:

• Basic (under about $100): headlamps, a battery or hand-crank radio, power banks, and extra blankets and sleeping bags. This fits most homes in town.
• Portable power station ($200-1,000+): runs phones, lights, a CPAP or a fridge for hours, silently and safely indoors. It won't run a space heater for long.
• Generator: worth it for long rural outages or medical equipment. Connect it only through a transfer switch installed by an electrician, never by plugging it into a wall outlet.

If anyone relies on oxygen, a CPAP or other powered medical equipment, sign up with your utility's medical or priority list so you get outage warnings and priority help. In the UK that is the Priority Services Register, and in Australia the life support register.

Use LED lanterns instead of candles, since house fires go up during outages. A wood stove or fireplace only counts as a heat source if the chimney has been inspected this year. The only fuel heaters to use indoors are propane or kerosene models labeled for indoor use with a low-oxygen shutoff. Run one only while you're awake, crack a window about 1 in (2.5 cm), and keep the CO alarm in the same room. Charging phones in the car is fine only if the car is outside, never in the garage, and the tailpipe is clear of snow.

Protect the fridge and the pipes

A closed fridge keeps food safe for about 4 hours. A full freezer lasts about 48 hours and a half-full one about 24. Fill the gaps in your freezer with jugs of water now, leaving about 1 in (2.5 cm) of headspace so they don't split. They keep food cold longer and become drinking water later. An appliance thermometer takes the guesswork out: throw away perishables that sat above 40°F (4°C) for more than 2 hours.

Burst pipes cost far more than spoiled food. Find the main water shutoff before you need it, and wrap pipes on exterior walls or in crawl spaces with foam sleeves. Once the house drops toward freezing, let the faucets on outside walls drip. If the house will stay below freezing for more than a day, or your water comes from an electric pump so the taps lose pressure and can't drip, drain the lines: shut off the main and open the highest and lowest faucets.

How to tell you're ready

The lights-off test is your proof. For 30 minutes, use only your kit. If anyone reaches for a phone flashlight, hunts for batteries or can't find the radio, fix that gap. You're done when:

• every flashlight works
• spare batteries fit every device
• power banks show full
• each adult can point to the water shutoff