I live in a city of 300K adjacent to the Mojave Desert.

On the coldest nights in normally hits the lower 40s. We'll get three or four of those "bitter" cold nights. About once every five to ten years we'll get a hard freeze warning and I have to cover the tropical and sub-tropical plants.

I have a propane Big Little Buddy, a Coleman white gas heater, about half a cord of wood for the fireplace, and hell I'll just fire up the RV if I had to keep warm.

I was born in Minnesota but grew up near Hammond Indiana (30 miles from downtown Chicago). Every summer there are people who die in their homes due to the heat. The cities open up cooling shelters. In the winter it's the opposite tragedy with people freezing to death. Most of the time it's old poor people. It's been years but IIRC a heat wave about 25-years ago killed six to eight hundred folks.

Get both. If I had access to NG out here, I would get it.

Not saying I would get rid of my propane tank, but I would convert the main furnace to NG

No offense, but Kentucky winter is a far cry from MN winter.

And while you CAN arrange your wood stove in a small MN house, with proper floor plan, to keep your house warm, that one fireplace in that back living room at the far end of the house on the upstairs won't keep your house warm on its own.

I've heated with wood as well in our old house.

House was setup for it though. Totally different animal than a modern house where the fireplace/woodstove is designed to be primarily decorative. Even in our new house, if I had a fireplace in the main floor living room, it would not do jack shit on its own to keep the pipes from freezing in the utility room on the opposite end of the house, in the basement. And I only have a 1400 sq ft rambler with full basement. Now if I could run the furnace fan to distribute the air around the house, then sure, assuming I could.

Again, if the house is designed and setup for wood heat, then absolutely. And folks that are setup that way know it. I'm talking about the decorative fireplace/wood stoves that you see in modern houses. They would keep that immediate area warm, but that is about it.


Actually, a buddy of mine had just this issue. He has about the same house we do, except his is a modular. He has a wood burning fireplace upstairs. We had a power outage in the winter a few years ago that lasted for a couple days during a cold spell (cold spell caused the outage indirectly). While they kept warm upstairs (about 60), he had to get a buddy heater going downstairs to keep the pipes from freezing. Luckily his basement is unfinished, all piping exposed, so keeping it about 40 degrees was enough. Heat rises, and had no interest in going downstairs on its own from the fireplace. ETA: His fireplace had an electric blower for when you actually wanted to get heat in the room, otherwise most of the heat went up the chimney. Of course, he had no generator, so that blower didn't work, and thus he got little more than the radiant heat from all the wood he burned. Normally, he can heat his whole house on that fireplace (about 45-50 in the basement) by using the fireplace blower and the HVAC fan to circulate the air.

Honestly: Kero heaters for your situation. A 55 gallon barrel of kero goes a long time, puts out a LOT of heat, and stores indefinitely in little storage area. It also doesn't attract mice like a wood pile does.

Not to say don't use your existing fireplace, I love a good wood fire, but I would not personally spend the money on the insert.

I've picked up all my kero heaters used, and just cleaned them up and put in a new wick. You get get into kero cheap that way. I picked up most of my heaters for under $20, and as little as $3 on auction. The only exception is a pre-war Perfection heater, but I bought that as more of an antique than a serious heater (though it does work), and I paid around $50 for it IIRC. Anyway, look for the "Kero Sun" brand heaters. The Radiant 10 is a good heater, and I use my Director quite a bit too, mainly because it holds more kero. I get my kero from the pump at our local Co-Op, pumped into 55 gallon barrels. Much cheaper than buying it in 5 gallon drums at Home Depot or Menards.

They smoke and stink until they warm up, but then they burn clean. I tend to get them going outside the move them indoors once they are going. Do this carefully if you move them lit, otherwise snuff them out, move them quickly, then fire them back up ASAP while the catalytic converter is still as hot as possible to minimize startup smoke. As with all indoor combustion devices, these will require ventilation, usually in the form of an old leaky ass house or cracking a window in a new sealed house.

Kero heaters do take some maintenance, they aren't "run it until it stops working" like propane/NG. Every so many hours, with the fiberglass wick model of heaters like the Kero Sun heaters, you need to let them burn out of fuel completely, clean off the wick with a soft brass or nylon brush, clean out the catalytic converter (this is a good thing, not a worthless emissions thing), and then fire it back up. Not a big deal, but it needs to be done.

What is nice is kero technology is stupid simple and reliable. You can keep one stored for decades w/o worry (my Perfection is almost 100 years old), and the kero, kept in an air-tight metal container, will out-live you. Perfect SHTF heat source, IMHO, with the exception that your fuel will run out. So not a Mad Max TEOTWAWKI solution, but for reality, it is a GREAT solution.