Probably not the best board to post this, but I couldn't find any better ones.I thought my house had a typical gas fireplace, but when I finally go to use it I now see it's a "log lighter" and everyone online is like "oh noes, can't use that to heat a house!!!11!"Is there any legitimate risk to using a log lighter to heat a home assuming I pay attention and don't let it go out and just dump unburnt gas into the house? I only intend to use it if the power goes out and I have no other options and I don't want the pipes to burst or die of freezing. I could also boil a pot of water on the stove as well I guess, but that's probably even more dangerous overall.
>>2888657If its legit survival time do whatever you can and hope for the best. If it was me I would buy a vent less wall mount propane heater or a big buddy heater. A long lighter like that would be a inefficient way to try and heat a house.
>>2888657Why not just keep some firewood on hand and use the log lighter as intended, to help light an actual wood fire, if you need it? Shouldn't be too hard to keep enough to make it through a short outage, and if you're in an area that gets serious multi-day outages in bad weather you probably ought to be looking into a generator.
>>2888657if i recall right, a typical fireplace in a modern home will make the home *colder* because of the updraft up the chimney sucking air out, and sucking more cold air into the house through the negative pressure volume it creates. again, assuming i understand things correctly, you get in-home heating from something like a wood-burning cast-iron stove via radiating heat off of the whole black stove that heats up, or via something like a rocket stove with a ton of thermal mass that stores lots and lots of heat and stays warm for hours. I don't know that the flame from a little log lighter is going to do jack shit for your house if you have the flue open to vent out the burnt gas.
>>2888657I don't believe that's going to have the BTU output, to really make a difference. The emergency/camping models, that go on top of a grill tank, definitely WILL heat up a garage and basement and keep the pipes safe. I just went though this. In your case, maybe see if you can connect an adapter to the lines, coming into the house, so that you can plug in one of those heaters (about $30) and line extensions (maybe $20) into the hard lines, in the event of an emergency.
>>2888657>Are log lighters actually that dangerous to heat a room if you pay attention?no, but why not just use them to light... you know... logs?
OP hereI DO NOT want to burn logs in my fire place. I don’t keep firewood around and the location of the fireplace would mean getting ash and shit everywhere and maybe catching the living room rug on fire and creating bigger problems. I don’t have the fireplace tools either and don’t want them. I’m looking for best case emergency heat methods either using this log lighter or my gas stove (I’ve heard of people boiling a pot of water as a ghetto way to heat a house, again, watching to make sure it doesn’t go out). Also, if the flame went out but the gas was still on, I’d smell the natural gas long before it got dangerous, right? Like what kind of retard just lets a house fill with gas until an explosion happens? If the only concern is just making sure the flame doesn’t go out with the gas on, that’s not s big deal.
>>2888755thats how it is with mine. It WILL heat the house but not in any useful way. I had the "luxury" of needing to test it out. a couple winters ago we had that storm in Texas, lost power for 2 week and the first week of it was below zero (coldest was -17 with the wind) during that freak cold snap my fire place kept the house at 55* (radiant heat from the fire kept the 20 feet or so near the fire place closer to 75*) but then the following week it was 30-40* and running the fire place kept the house at 55* and ~75 near the fire place. it seems that the updraft from the fire places design sets a hard limit on precisely what it will do. The absolute ass part of it is if its 30* outside and I dont have any heat running and no fire place the house will never dip below 55*. So, unless its below zero out that fire place is pure novelty.
>>2889333>op here I have this thing but I dont want to use it for its intended purposes, because I, op, am a fag, Im looking for the best way to do everything the wrong way in an emergency
>>2889335Sure, let me just burn my house down and ruin my living room with ash for the 10 days a decade I need to use non-electric heat. Stop being Reddit and answer within the confines of the prompt.
>>2889388>answer within the confines of the prompt.you are an idiot. go ahead and do it. find out.
>>2889429Another Reddit response. Just admit to yourself you don’t know and STFU and let people that DO know something useful talk.
