Phillip keep you eyes peeled for a sale on tube caulking and buy a half dozen cases or more. Caulking is the most bang for the buck energy conservation step you can take. Caulking is super way underrated for the unbelievable and immediate observable benefits it's application provides to an old farm house.
Back to your question...I recommend the LP stove as a backup. LP imo doesn't seem as warm as fuel oil but if you get an LP stove most LP suppliers will provide a large tank...and with this large tank you can get a LP home generator that will kick on when the power goes out.
That generator will run for a long time...maybe a week if you're burning with wood. Now you're not out scrounging for gas with hundreds of other desperate folks. Something to consider anyway.
100% agree on the caulk, don't agree on the rented propane tank. They get annoyed if you get a big tank and don't use it up all the time and refill it. Buy the tank, then get it filled, then it can last forever basically.
Propane generator idea is double plus good. Just need to run it some like once a month.
Our big diesel backup gennies (3) on the farm get run once a week, automatically. They are actually radio monitored as well. Same with the chicken houses, computer controlled, remote monitoring. You can't even get a poultry contract any more without all sorts of computer controlled stuff and remote monitoring. Grid power goes down, you have around a five minute window to get the power back running smooth with the gennies or it can be like a million bucks loss.
Can't say as if I personally approve of all the designs (I really don't, the broiler houses could be built a lot different to save on energy costs, there are no heat exchangers to recapture lost heat from the huge exhaust fans for example), just stating it like it is today. I'm talking real large commercial production.
Now it used to be until a few years ago there was an emergency manual override via opening up the huge doors front and rear, plus the side vents, the big poultry companies made the rear doors obsolete and insist on more powered exhaust fans now (the rear of the buildings had the doors removed and walled off, then more fans installed), so proper automatic generators are critical to the operation.
