Staying warm during a power outage
Mattress Shack
These days a power outage could happen wherever you live. The fragility of our electric power grids was brought to National attention last year when Texas experienced sudden power outages from a winter storm and freeze with an electrical grid unprepared to handle the increased need. Due to climate catastrophe, more weather ‘events’ are happening with greater frequency and intensity. When the power goes down and it’s cold outside and inside, there are some measures a person or group of people can take to create an indoor shelter where body temperature is your heat source and trapping that heat is the challenge.
I wanted to share these potentially life saving skills and approaches with the Kos community so you have an idea of how to create an indoor shelter that will keep you warm, in a cold weather emergency. Most of the information I have drawn from can be found in Tom Brown Jr.’s Field Guide to City and Suburban Survival.
The concept of trapping your body heat comes from the principle of ‘dead air space’. In the natural world, a squirrel nest exemplifies an efficient model of trapping dead air space with the use of layered sticks and leaves, woven together in a ball like shape. In a survival situation, a primitive shelter based on this principle is the debris hut. Inside a house or apartment the same principles can be used in creating a Mattress Shack. It’s kinda of like how kids will take over a room to make forts or tent-houses with cushions, sheets, blankets and such, but here mattresses/box springs and available furniture are used as major building blocks for the shack or cave dwelling-like structure. Please consider the following description as a model to what is possible to create. In an emergency you use whatever you have to create the walls and insulation needed to make your own Mattress Shack.
The Mattress Shack is a great option for keeping a group of people warm for an extended period of time. Again, like in a debris hut, insulation is the key. The colder it is, the more insulation you want to use. Done properly, in a room that is 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with proper construction and insulation and several people inside, the Mattress Shack can be maintained at around 78 degrees Fahrenheit.
The first step is to determine which room is your safest room for the shelter. The optimal situation is a room with no windows or one with south facing windows. The room should be small or medium size. Besides your Mattress Shelter, the room outside of the shelter must also be insulated. Or pick a room with the fewest windows. The best room for your shelter might not be the most obvious choice. In a fifth floor apartment in the City, that narrow space that is the kitchen area could turn out to be your best option, it’s small, less room to insulate and usually there are no windows. Insulate any doors to the room, hanging blankets on both sides and cover windows with crumpled clothes, pillows or even crumpled news paper, packed into the window space, held in place with sheets tacked or taped around the window. Stuffing clothes in bags makes for easier handling.
Place a queen or king size mattress on the floor in the corner of the room, away from any windows. Then place a single bed box spring on top of the edge of the mattress against the wall and a free standing single bed box spring on the opposite edge of the mattress.
Using the queen or king size box springs for the walls of the shelter, gives your more room, but also more area to heat, in this case smaller is better. Support the free standing box spring opposite the wall side with some solid pieces of furniture. At this point, place slats of wood (use what works) across the top of the shelter. Several layers of blankets or covers with insulating materials over the top creates a platform to hang more blankets, rugs or other materials to insulate the roof. For the “ceiling”, place a lighter mattress with additional insulation materials.You can stretch blankets and/or rugs, with other insulation materials over the top. One option, if you don’t have a mattress, instead of laying sheets and blankets stretched across the top, to roll or scrunch them up and arrange them in a line over the top of a spread out sheet or blanket and place another cover on top.
On the back and sides of the “wall” of your shelter, hang blankets, thick curtains, large cushions or other material that are between you and the wall as insulation.
If you have children, this is where their expertise comes into play. It’s a good idea to involve any children in this building process, make a game of it as well as a teaching moment. Children seem to have it in their DNA to build “houses” or “forts” during their play and they intuitively know how these things can work. They can not only help build, but gather needed items and offer ‘outside the box’ suggestions that work.
Your entrance should have a door made of material hanging over it. It’s good to have a blanket on the inside and one on the outside, even if there are only a few inches of space between them. Place a pillow or cushion in front of the door to fully close off cold air from entering. It’s probably easier to create the door on one side or the other of the shelter, rather than in the middle. That way you can make a forth wall across 3/4 of the entrance side with a piece of furniture or by being creative with other materials. I recommend using the side closest to the wall for the door, so if you bump into the side when going in or out, the structural integrity of the shelter is not compromised. The “door” should be large enough to crawl through, the smaller the better. This way, coming in and going out of the shelter will not “bleed off” heat that builds up inside.
The next step is to insulate all the crevices where the different edges meet. The more insulation you use the better. Make the interior as comfortable as possible with couch cushions, pillows and coverings. Save some wool blankets and sleeping bags to cover whoever is using the shelter. Wrapping an open sleeping bag or blankets around two people increases warmth due to sharing body heat. Dress in layers and wear two pairs of warm socks. Don’t wear shoes in the shelter, as they cut off circulation to the feet.
Maintaining your Shelter
Your mental attitude is a major key to success or failure in any survival situation. Fear communicates like wildfire, so even if you feel uncertain or afraid inside, display a positive, confident manner not only during the building process but while you are spending time in the shelter. Adopting the attitude and belief that you will come through this emergency as a stronger person can turn a crisis a grand adventure. You can either make the experience a learning experience or long, monotonous ordeal, it’s your choice. Limit going in and out of the shelter and room it’s in as much as you can. Each passage through the door bleeds-off accumulated heat in the shelter. Have a routine that everyone agrees to follow when someone to exits and enters the shelter.
Gather clothes, sheets, extra pillows, newspaper crumpled up or other available items to patch anyplace air can escape. Wool is your number one option for warmth, along with down comforters and quilts. That said, plan to use every available piece of clothing, every blanket, cover, you name it, you can use it somehow to better insulate your shelter. Line the interior in a nest-like manner. You can use throw rugs or depending on the severity of the situation, cut out pieces of floor carpeting to give weight to the insulation. The pile side of the carpet should face toward the living space. Carpeting can be replaced, you cannot.
Every now and then, open the door to let fresh air in to replace oxygen, it will get ‘stuffy’. Airing out the room the shelter is also a necessity. Because you have also insulated any windows or doors inside the room as an added protection from the cold, you want to occasionally let out built up carbon dioxide and let in fresh oxygen. Do not light the shelter with a candle or oil lamp, as they use up available oxygen, and there’s the added fire danger. Having any kind of lit flame in your shelter should not happen. If you have a candle going in the room outside of the shelter, remember it too will be using up oxygen and be giving off carbon dioxide, so more ventilation will have to be created.
Tell stories, have quiet conversations or make up games that do not use extra energy. Energy conservation should always be a priority when dealing with survival in a cold environment. Keep an eye on infants and elderly occupants with regards to hypothermia, as they are most susceptible to the effects of the cold. Hold infants close to you, wrapped together in a blanket, quilt or sleeping bag and consider “sandwiching” elderly in a similar manner between two adults. Wear a hat in the shelter. If needed and available, those suffering from the cold could be warmed up in a vehicle from time to time. If your clothes become wet when outside, change into dry ones before reentering the shelter.
Since you cannot know how long the heat will be off, use flashlights sparingly, even if you have a large supply of batteries. If you have a red light option, that uses less energy. Dim flashlights for longer usage. Optimally, everyone should have easy access to a headlamp. Know where the closest flashlight is. Getting into an “earth-time” schedule, where you are awake during daylight hours and sleeping when the sun is down will help conserve energy.
Preparation for an emergency has been well covered in other Daily Kos stories and Daily Kos Preppers. Preparation is a key component when dealing with any emergency. I’d like to emphasize having a two week supply of drinking water stored in your home or apartment. That goes for food as well. The Mattress Shack is only one element of being able to meet your survival needs: shelter - water - fire - food. As I’ve learned during the pandemic, planning ahead, having stored food and snacks really comes in handy. As for my mention of snacks, I’ve found having some ‘comfort food’ to look forward to is good for my morale.
Final thought: When the ‘lights go off’ wanting to find out what happened, how long will power be off, is a common response. It’s best to let those questions go and address your immediate situation first. When any emergency persists for several days, people begin to panic. Going outside at the start of an emergency, especially in a city environment, to find out what happened, what is going on, can be dangerous and the danger rises the longer the crisis persists. It is best to limit travel to outside world to what you feel to be a life threatening situation.
My hope is this information is a help to the people of this community. That should you find yourself in a situation where these skills are needed to get you through a cold weather survival event, you can help yourself and others create a space that will keep your warm while riding out the storm.
