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Comment by Anon_Forever | Hacker News Reader

At this rate governments should ban fossil fuel based heating for new construction and renovations. I see new houses all over the US and Canada still being constructed with natural gas or propane for heating.

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That would be dangerous for many rural areas. For some remote regions, blizzards taking out the electrical grid is a real concern. You need a local mechanism to generate heat and an on-site propane/oil tank is the only realistic option.

>That would be dangerous for many rural areas.

Not at all, I live in a rural area.

>For some remote regions, blizzards taking out the electrical grid is a real concern.

Effectively every fossil fuel powered heater being installed requires electricity for the fans to work.

>You need a local mechanism to generate heat and an on-site propane/oil tank is the only realistic option.

A backup generator that runs on propane. You'd need a backup generator to begin with even for propane heating, so just go full electric with a heat pump.

Eh, most rural folks I know have wood heaters or fireplace inserts, even in the south. If the power is out, they can still manage to keep a room toasty warm and the pipes from freezing. Same with having a gas stove. It's really nice to be able to have a hot meal when the power is out from a hurricane or whatever.

I'm all for electrifying things, but I wouldn't bet my life on them.

Even non-rural areas. See the December 2022 North American winter storm's[1] effects on Buffalo, NY. 11 people froze to death in their homes because power was out for days. Of course a lot of that blame goes to the city government for not having a plan to close the roads well in advance of the blizzard, having no plan to clear the side streets of snow, and thus making it impossible for the power company to service many of the downed lines in residential neighborhoods.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2022_North_American_w...

We're in the process of designing a house in a rural/mountain region and friends and family keep telling us to put in fireplaces/logburners in case the power goes out. But we don't like the idea of all of those particles in the house (plus the external pollution). However we're predicting that we'll have at least one 60kWh+ portable battery parked in the garage, plus solar panels (which aren't great in winter but still help) and possibly a battery like the Powerwall (another 14kWh+). So it feels like the days of worrying about losing electricity are coming to an end.

You really should follow their advice. Even if you never use it, it'll still help with the resale value of the property. I'd never want to be dependent on the grid that much in the mountains.

You can get wood burning stoves that are completely closed as far as the interior of the home goes. All they do is radiate heat where you need it. The hatch where you put in the fuel and the exhaust are all outside (hopefully somewhere accessible if you're in a blizzard :) ).

Daily incident shortwave energy per square meter is significantly lower in the winter (about half of what it is in the summer). You're also not going to get much of a current when the solar panels are buried in snow.

Wood burning stoves are cheap enough and the odds of you losing power to warrant needing one are large enough that it's a safer bet getting one.

Listen to your neighbors.

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