I love how Mother Nature every now and again gives us a good old fashioned smack down, just to remind us who is really boss. The ice storms eastern Canada experienced this past winter are a good example, leaving hundreds of thousands, including yours truly without heat or power. My situation was not as severe as that of many however, having a gas stove we were able to cook and make tea; our standing pilot gas fireplace took the chill off; and our good old fashioned chimney vented standing pilot hot water tank gave us hot showers. The situation definitely illustrated the advantages of older, simpler technology, and made me wish in the moment at least, that I had an old gravity radiator system in my house. Those old standing pilot millivolt boilers could operate without electricity, and the old radiator system could circulate without the aid of pumps simply by relying on the laws of physics, with the heated more buoyant water rising to the top of the system thereby causing the cooler water to return to the boiler creating the natural "gravity" circulation.
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