Hi
Had a power outage last night. Finances this year were such that we've not purchased our propane gennie with autostart yet, so we're reliant on a gas gennie. Of course, at -25C, wind chill at -42, guess what! The house is well insulated, so my only worry was the outdoor portion of the furnace.
After an hour of horsing around, I said wait a minute, I can run the furnace circuit for a short while from my computer UPS(not our air circulator, just the OWF and pump). Patched in a line cord to the furnace circuit, and five minutes later, fired up the E1450 to see how it was doing. Ran the circulator for a minute, felt a cold slug of water come through, then hot as usual. Although the unit had been off for an hour, the water in the OWF was still at 192F. The short burst of cold water must have been just the leg of pipe running from the back of the furnace into the ground. With the furnace powered, we checked the readouts and all was well. Power returned at the 2 hour mark, but I'm sure we'd have been good for six hours, as long as I pumped the slug around every hour or so using the UPS.
Note to self, need to decide how best to keep my gennie warm enough to wake up these days!