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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

You can actually use a gas furnace, water heater and cook without electricity. You just have to manually light the pilot. For obvious reasons this isn't recommended as you're dealing with combustibles, but if the alternative is freezing to death, well...

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This would work for a passive gas furnace like an old gravity furnace. Modern high efficiency gas furnaces require electricity for the blower.

Yeah, unfortunately. Though I suppose if this were really an issue you could keep a battery around as they don't really use that much electricity.

Yeah PowerWall or generator is really the solution for this. They're surprisingly big electric hogs though - our furnace is 500W and is our biggest power draw during the winter. A PowerWall will only power this for about a day of continuous usage (realistically heater use won't be continuous because of thermostats and insulation, but it can be appreciable in cold climates).

Most (all?) powered-vent systems will refuse to work without electricity to keep the gas valve open.

But the gas cooktop should work without problem if you light it with a match/lighter.

You're right in that they generally don't with electricity, but again if you have the know-how you can manually keep it open and light the pilot.

Again, definitely don't do this, but in a scenario where the alternative is that you freeze to death, it's possible to do so safely.

With modern combi boilers (tankless hot water + boiler) I believe your point stands.

edit: I mention this mainly because in Texas last winter some people froze to death during their electricity crisis.

And carbon monoxide poisoning was common in Texas too. I'm not sure city-wide having novices tinker with gas equipment would save more lives.

oh, agreed. however a cheap 1kwh battery could power a normal houses gas appliances very easily without any trickery needed.

Really people in winter clothes or blankets can tolerate very cold temperatures for a very long time, especially indoors out of the wind. Healthy people with adequate clothing in NYC could easily survive in -10C temperatures for a week or more. The more pressing need at that point would be access to water (assuming it needs electricity for distribution).

How do you do that for furnace? I assume you have to bypass the thermostat somehow.

It depends on the furnace specifically, but yes, exactly. Again, don't do this, but it's possible.

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