Heating - Back Up

Ideally of course we do not want to use back up at all, but there may be occasions when there is not somebody to keep the boilers full of wood.

It just makes plain sense to include this fail safe.

Current plans involve using electricity because it is cheaper than Propane and likely to be more so in the future.

There are disadvantages, a 400 Amp supply is realistically the most we can go for, Anything more and the costs escalate, big time.

We would have to commit half of that to backing up our heating system and providing power to the pumps/blower etc.

Obviously all this will need to be discussed with people who know a lot more than I do, but I am just wondering if we should look at Propane. We have a propane on demand boiler for DHW, perhaps this could be used for heat as well or add another propane boiler. There would be the advantage that with a full propane tank and a small generator we would be self sufficient from the grid.