It is mid February at the time of this writing and much of the country is experiencing freezing temperatures as well as freezing rain that has caused numerous power outages. Northern states may be more accustomed to this but a large part of the country is not.

Most homes depend on electricity for warmth but without it there is a danger of hypothermia. When I build debris shelters in the woods one of the main design elements is to limit the area that needs to be heated and to provide insulation from below. One popular suggestion to apply this technique to a home situation is to put a small tent on top of a bed to capture body and breathing heat.

A self standing one or two man tent is a logical choice to mount on top of a bed dependent on the mattress size. In that I did not have one of those types of tents I used my improvised “X frame” poncho tent as a substitute to illustrate this concept. In fact, a suspended rope with a tarp draped over the top could be used instead of a tent or in addition to it.

The whole point of putting a tent on a bed is to capture the limited sources of heat and to insulate yourself from the surrounding lower temperatures. Alternately, a nested double tent could be used in the living room with padding on the floor. Care should be taken to not use flammable or carbon monoxide producing supplemental heat inside these tents but hot water bottles could be brought inside or perhaps your four-legged furry pets.