How To Stay Warm This Winter

15 min readOct 18, 2022

We’re facing a potential shortage and rising costs of energy this winter and next that is needed to keep people warm, and it’s important to take a look at what all of our options are. Policymakers often go to the default of business as usual but there are many other approaches to the challenge. There are a great many reasons and opportunities to think outside the box right now.

We could discuss the overall situation we’ve gotten ourselves into through dependency on fossil fuel markets in context of complicated geopolitical and global economic factors. The ever increasing complexities in our society are not necessarily things most of us should even have to understand, perhaps. But, yes, we do perhaps need to understand them if we want and expect to set our thermostat to whatever temperature we want, when it’s fed by fossil fuels dug up from somewhere, processed somewhere else and then delivered to us through yet more magery. The consequences for failure of any aspect of this elaborate way to stay warm could be a life or death matter for some people.

That is not the point of this article, however. Because we do not, in fact, need to be so dependent upon geopolitical or economic capriciousness, arbitraries and irrationalities in order to heat our homes. There are a few other options.

Most people have little or no information about most or all of these, so we’re going to share some of the best ones we’re aware of. We understand these ideas are out of the box. Not everybody will want to or be able to use them. But they could perhaps save some people’s lives or home or health. And they could also help the planet avoid a bit of pollution, or a lot, depending on how many people start using alternatives to fossil fuels. The most important thing to remember — it is never just about solar panels and wind! Please share this info with people who may suffer from lack of heat this winter! And please note that these are solutions geared toward people who may not have access to electricity or gas.

Permaculturists like to explore almost unknown but effective, low cost, low tech solutions for the various necessities of life, like eating, keeping the body warm or cool, and accessing water. We believe “the problem is the solution” and believe it desirable to “produce no waste.” We appreciate the Aboriginal viewpoint that “nothing is waste until it is wasted.” Thus we look for ways we can turn “waste” into value.

The truth is, there is heat energy all around us that we waste. How can we capture some of it?

Let’s take a look at some different forms of heat energy that naturally occur all around us.

Heat your body first

It is much easier to keep your body warm than to heat your entire house. You can do that with clothing, blankets, and by creating a room within a room. Hang tapestries around your bed, for instance, an old trick in many cultures, to help retain body heat. Wool is a fantastic insulator. Wool blankets have worked better for me in winter tenting than 0 degree sleeping bags or down blankets. The trick is to layer. Two wool blankets together are more than the sum of their parts. Down, alpaca wool, and other natural materials are fantastic insulators.

In Texas when the heat went off during brutal cold, some people set up tents in their living room. This does retain more body heat. I just cover my whole body with wool blankets with a hole for my mouth, personally. Been toasty warm in 5F, though it wasn’t fun to get up out of that coziness.

During the day, position your desk in a sunlit window and get warmed by the sun. And layer, which is more effective and often more comfortable than a heavy coat.

You can also create focused radiant heat. A heat source that radiates heat near your body uses far less energy than heating up your entire house through air ducts. It also feels good and can relax your muscles and provide other health benefits. Forced air can create “sick building syndrome” because of dust in duct systems and the recirculated, dry air. High efficiency wood burners are an example of radiant heat. There is an even more direct and inexpensive way to use radiant heat — an ancient technology — to keep ourselves warm.

Going back to the concept of thermal mass, many cultures have used warmed rock or stone to create heat near their body. A well known way of doing this is a Native American sweat lodge, where stones are heated in a fire then placed in the lodge. This very effectively heats the entire space. Stones were used in medieval castles and in many other settings to heat beds.

Modern bedwarmer soapstone from Vermont Soapstone

Soapstone has a particular heat retention quality and is one of the main traditional types of stones used to heat one’s bed. Before cars and buildings heated with forced air, people used small heated soapstones for their feet when riding in a carriage, or even sitting in church. Soapstone is also used around fireplaces. When combined with a rocket stove, which burns hot and fast, the heat created is efficiently produced, stored, and released over many hours, creating almost no pollution and using minimal fuel.

If you have electricity, heating your body is easier; use a space heater nearby, electric blankets, etc, but these solutions are for those who may not have access to any modern way to heat themselves.

Think about heating your body as the priority, rather than the room, as you’re reading about the other options below.

Heat from bacteria

When organic matter, such as food, manure, coffee grounds, leaves, etc, ends up in a pile, this creates an ideal environment for a type of bacteria that produces heat, called thermophilic bacteria. Those of you who compost know this process well. This bacteria can heat a compost pile to 120–140 F (49–60 C) or even higher, depending on the material used. This bacteria helps this organic “waste” break down into beautiful soil that plants thrive in.

Thermophilic bacteria create color in Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone

But usually, the heat in this process is ignored. It happens in the compost pile, the bacteria do their work, and they die off or go dormant.

One man, however, thought about how he could capture this heat and use it. His name was Jean Pain. He reguarly cleared the underbrush from his wooded area every year and composted it. He got the idea to place a flexible pipe inside the compost as he built it up that could capture the heat from the composting process and send it into his house.

He also captured the methane gas given off by the decomposition process, another waste product that is quite a useful fuel when it isn’t wasted and quite a problem in our atmosphere when it is, and used that for cooking heat, electricity, and to run vehicles.

While his compost pile was as big as a small building with heat that lasted for months, this process can be done on a smaller scale to provide heat for an outdoor shower or a single room. I’ve seen it done for hot showers using a compost pile about 5 ft tall, the heat lasting for many weeks.

Preparing a compost heater for the shower

One can use fresh manure, food waste, coffee grounds, fresh grass or leaves, etc, to create the compost pile, all of which create heat in the decomposing process.

Preparing to capture heat from a compost pile

If you search Jean Pain compost method, you will find a number of Youtube videos and articles from others who have tried this method with success, and instructions on how to do it. We include useful references in our resources section below. If you have access to sufficient organic biomass (and there is literally tons of it thrown away every day in any city and most other areas), the cost to capture this heat is minimal compared to other options. It does take initial construction and good design but is dependable, and helps create energy self-sufficiency.

Passive heating

Sun energy provides all the heat we would need, if we know how to capture it. It needs nothing from us other than designing a way to capture it, which is why it’s called “passive” heating. It’s a significant energy to take into consideration in home design, and there are a number of ways to retrofit your existing home to take advantage of this energy. Installing solar panels is an obvious way to use it, but let’s look at some of the ways you can use it passively.

Sun energy is blocked in summer by roof overhangs and roof insulation to prevent heat gain. In winter, if allowed into the home the heat can be captured in material like stone floors or adobe walls, which release the heat slowly back into the home at night. If you understand the theory of how to maximize the capture of this “free” heat, you can design a way to do this in your home. There’s one concept that is important to understand:

Thermal mass is the capacity of some substances such as water, the earth or rocks, to slowly absorb heat, hold and release it. This can be used in numerous ways to help passively heat your home. The following are different ways of capturing thermal mass using sun energy.

Trombe wall. This is a dark wall facing the sun behind glass. It collects heat and sends it where it is wanted. Because heating air can cause it to move, it can set up a passive air flow throughout your home.

The above wall is used to heat air and send it back into the house.

In this version, the hot air is released through a vent in summertime. Sun energy is used to create a “draw” through the home that sucks in cool air from another location and releases the hot air outside the home. There are many ways one can control how much sun hits the wall and thus the temperature. When you understand the principle, you can think with how to do some of this in your own home, using existing windows along with thermal mass.

This could be done with any material, such as brick, stone or adobe, that has enough mass to release heat slowly.

I used this principle to heat a home I had by placing black barrels of water in front of a large wall of south facing windows. They would heat up during the day and release heat at night. This didn’t fully heat my home, but kept the main great room warmer than it would have been. On hotter days, I threw some white tablecloths over the barrels, preventing the sun from hitting them and keeping them cool. In the summer heat, an overhang ensured the barrels stayed shaded and they would cool off at night, releasing cool temperatures in the morning and delaying heat gain in the house. I laid a nice piece of wood on top to create a table that I used for various purposes. I could have used bricks or other stone material.

Similar idea to mine but more elaborate, providing more heat

Version using 55 gallon metal drums (what I used)

Other ways to capture heat from the sun are stone floors or adobe walls. Adobe structures in drylands capture heat from sun and slowly release it into the home at night. The cool air at night then radiates through the thick walls and releases coolness during the day. Any kind of thermal mass that captures sun energy during the day can release the heat over many hours. Use your imagination to create stone, earth, brick or water features in the path of sunlight through windows, that can heat your home. Some well designed homes are heated only through this method, but especially if you’re dealing with an existing structure not designed to do that, you will likely need some other forms of heat as well.

DIY trombe wall using river rock and wire

Thermal mass on the back wall of the room, thus not blocking sunlight or view.

High efficiency wood stoves

The efficiency of wood stoves has greatly increased over the years. There are stoves that release almost no particulates or pollution, like the Drolet Escape 1500. Manufacturers are continuing to explore increased efficiency and function, for instance, heating up the hot water tank while heating the home.

Rocket Mass Heaters

Rocket mass heaters are made up of a fuel burning area, a chimney, and masonry around it. Sounds like a fireplace, right? Similar principle, but these provide much more efficient heat creation and capture because of the specific design of the fuel chamber and chimney.

These heaters are often more efficient than high efficiency Franklin-type stoves, and the simplest versions can be designed and built by just about anybody.

They can save lives, heat homes or water, and cook with very little fuel. The more mass you have (like masonry, stone, bricks, etc), the more the heat is retained and released slowed. I’ve seen one of these stoves heat 1/2 of a home overnight with a single log. These tend to use less fuel than even high efficiency wood burning stoves, and can burn twigs, straw, paper, and other organic matter efficiently.

The mix of air, fuel and a chimney to draw the air is key to success. This causes fuel to burn hot, fast, and completely, leaving little ash or particulates and producing a lot of heat with less fuel.

The stove can be built with many types of materials and with many designs as long as it has several elements:

Chimney — this creates a draw of air which feeds the fire and creates a clean, efficient burn

Air flow chamber — this should be beneath the fuel so air is drawn through it

Fuel feed chamber — in this model, it is slanted so that fuel will self-feed as it burns

Cookware support — Something to set cookware on (if used to as a stove and not a general heater)

Thermal mass or masonry — this stores the hot, fast heat produced by the rocket, and releases it slowly and evenly wherever you direct it to do so.

Rocket mass heater designs can include oven chambers, heating water through pipes wrapped around the chimney, and directing heat through benches or clay beds, or through walls or floors or masonry via pipes to heat a home with as little as one log per night. There is a copious amount of information on the internet about the various ways to build and use these.

A more complex version. Heat can be directed and utilized in multiple ways.

Cob, which is a mix of sand, clay and straw, is a common substance placed around rocket stoves to capture heat that can be used for cooking, or released slowly over many hours to heat a room, water tank, or as a bed or bench warmer. Imagine a cob bench with a pipe from the stove running through it that is cozy and warm — waiting to warm you at breakfast on a frosty morning. You can also build a bed frame with cob and a rocket stove pipe running through it to embrace you in a cozy, comfortable warmth all night.

A cob bench, cooktop and oven built around a rocket stove at Pine Ridge reservation, OLCERI.org. The cost was almost nothing. The labor part was fun.

Ways to build these are limited only by imagination:

A simple outdoor brick rocket stove. There are dozens of ways to build these.

A portable rocket stove can be moved where needed. Not what we would do, but if used responsibly… Something like this set up could be placed in front of a fireplace to get a more efficient burn and send the heat anywhere in the house. We’ve also seen the simple brick version above and other version in a fireplace. When combined with masonry especially, it is much more efficient than a regular fire.

We have seen systems like this warming loft beds, kitchen table benches, water pipes for a water heater, etc.

There are many forms of efficient masonry stoves that are great solutions. The rocket is one of the most efficient we’re aware of, relatively easy to build, highly flexible, and can be very inexpensive.

An important component to this is what wood do you use? If we all used wood stoves we’d cut down all the trees and create massive particulate pollution. This is why high efficiency is vital. It’s also vital to think through your wood source. Hazelnut is a bush that lives longer and produces more when it is coppiced (chopped down near the ground) than if it is not. It is a valued firewood, slow burning. Willow is also responsive to coppice and produces many BTUs; a desirable firewood. There are many other trees and bushes that respond well to coppicing. Keep in mind with a rocket stove you can use twigs and smaller branches — just a simple tree trim can keep you warm. There is no reason to ever cut down mature, old growth trees for firewood.

These small hazelnut “pet chews” would work in a rocket stove

We recommend using rocket stoves or other high efficiency wood stoves to concentrate heat where you need it, and in conjunction with passive heating and great insulation to minimize burning of organic material. We like this approach because one is able to focus heat where you really need it. Which leads us to:

Cold proof your home

As important as creating a heat source is keeping the heat inside your home and the cold out. Most people are familiar with the basics of insulating the home. Yes, it can cost money but payback is usually within 3 years, and with oil and gas prices set to rise substantially this winter in many parts of the world, the payback is likely to be even faster. Note that the IRA bill recently passed by the Federal government in the US offers rebates and other payoffs for a wide range of energy saving upgrades to your home, starting in 2023.

Insulate walls, but also ensure gaps in window and door frames and other entry into the house are blocked. If you don’t have double pane windows, consider adding insulated curtains, or using an inexpensive plastic window kit to block cold air. People have used cling wrap to insulate their single pane windows as well. It must be well sealed to work and it has limited effectiveness but it’s something.

Adding cling wrap to windows. Any air barrier will inhibit heat transfer through windows

There are many articles about how to lower your utility bill with simple actions. The more you understand about how heat works and is retained, the more efficiently you can capture it and utilize it.

How could you combine these various heat sources to heat your home with no need for fossil fuels? “Integrate, don’t segregate” is a permaculture principle that can increase yield in almost any situation. Combining rocket heat with a solar heated tank of water that also incorporates bricks or other masonry heat gain gives you hot water and a room warmed by three sources. Have fun creating!

Resources

Note: there are dozens of resources providing detailed information about each of these approaches. We’ve only touched the surface of this topic and are sharing only a few examples for further study here. Capturing heat efficiently is a rich area of knowledge which far too few people know about or use. We hope you find this as interesting as we do, and explore!

Heat your body

Cozy heating
https://cordoberlin.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/a-heated-dinner-table/

Compost heating

Jean Pain’s amazing compost heating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHRvwNJRNag&t=29s

Jean Pain’s diagrams and instructions for compost heaters, methane electricity, and more, from organic “waste” matter.
https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Permaculture/Another_Kind_of_Garden-The_Methods_of_Jean_Pain.pdf

Article about creating a compost shower heater
https://waldenlabs.com/compost-water-heaters-from-jean-pain/

Passive heating

Avery Lovins, the Einstein of passive heating/cooling
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/26/amory-lovins-energy-efficiency-interview-cheapest-safest-cleanest-crisis

Thermal mass
https://www.yourhome.gov.au/passive-design/passive-heating
https://climatebiz.com/passive-solar-heating/

Solar batteries using water
https://misterhouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/passive-solar-water-wall-battery.html
https://www.thenaturalhome.com/heatstorage/

Rocket mass heaters