An icy coldness fills your body and lungs. It’s hard to breathe. You start to cough and wheeze. Your body is exhausted, and your limbs go numb. Unless you can find shelter, there’s no escape.
This is life for the unhoused during the winter in Reno, where in December, the average low temperature is 25° Fahrenheit, and the average high is 46°. When the body reaches an abnormally low temperature, hypothermia begins to set in—which can cause lasting health problems and, if left untreated, death.
To keep warm, unsheltered people sometimes burn trash, wood, kerosene or other flammable substances they can find. These can produce toxic fumes, and fires can sometimes spread out of control.
The DIY Heater Bloc is meant to replace these makeshift fires. It’s a tent-safe heater that costs about $7 to make. Kelsey Corvidae, of Heater Bloc Reno, explained the effort to the RN&R via a combination of email and text messages. They said the first local batch of about two-dozen heaters was slated to be distributed just before Thanksgiving. The design was initially created in Oregon.
“This type of ingenuity exists wherever an underserved population is trying to survive, but the first ‘Heater Bloc’ that created this specific tent-safe heater design and shared the open-source guide was an anarchist collective in Portland,” Corvidae said. “There are now Heater Blocs in many cities. We’re connected with people from all over the continent who are supporting each other and skill-sharing.
“There is a wonderful original guide available online, and there are many collectives innovating and making it their own. There are ample instructions on how to both build and use a tent-safe heater, and more groups (are) adding their ideas to the hive all the time. Every heater distributed includes an in-person demo as well as printed instructions.”
The core of the DIY heater is a mason jar filled with rubbing alcohol, which burns cleanly. The ends of a U-shaped, 10-inch-long segment of copper tubing are secured in holes in the lid. The middle of the segment is a loop, and in the bottom part of this loop is a tiny hole. A piece of cloth long enough to touch the bottom of the jar hangs out of each end of the tube, feeding alcohol from the mason jar into the copper tube. When a flame from a lighter is held near the hole in the tube, the alcohol vaporizes, and the vapor exits the hole and ignites.
If the mason jar tips over, the flame goes out immediately—but for added safety, the jar is glued to a plate, surrounded by a wire cage, and topped with an inverted terra cotta pot which both helps control the flame and radiates steady heat.
The open-source, affordable, DIY design is meant to empower as many people as possible to make and distribute them.
“These blocs, or affinity groups, sprung out of an immediate need for safe survival heat among people who are made unhoused by the state,” Corvidae said. “State-run shelters are often not available or safe, and tents and makeshift structures are often the only option. In winter months, unhoused people are forced to burn whatever they can for warmth, sometimes in risky ways. Tent fires are a particularly gruesome way for a person to die, and firefighters have thanked us for preventing tent fires specifically.
“Tent-safe heaters are the bare-minimum offering to people who really should be housed. Everyone should be housed. So while we continue to fight for housing, we make tent heaters, too.”
Washoe County’s 2024 “Point in Time” count found 1,760 people experiencing homelessness earlier this year, breaking the previous record set during the pandemic. Activists, however, say that count is too low.
Corvidae said that the immediate goal of the Heater Blocs is to safely provide life- and limb-saving heat to our unhoused neighbors. But there is a broader goal: to create a collective of people who believe in housing as a human right, “because these types of actions are how we find our community, housed and unhoused, and create networks of care so that we can all face the bigger fights together.”
“There is no official group or nonprofit,” Corvidae said. “Heater Blocs have remained a grassroots anarchist endeavor wherever they pop up, because that’s just the kind of person who gets this work done. And I really want to emphasize that this effort is collaborative between housed and unhoused people.”
In fact, some of the best feedback Corvidae got on how to improve the design was from an unhoused man who had been a Marine engineer. “He had some awesome tips and taught me a lot about the science behind the heaters,” they said.
Corvidae said the “little heaters” are much-loved by their recipients.
“I can’t emphasize enough that the first step to helping another person is to just directly ask that person what they need!” Corvidae said. “If people didn’t come back with enthusiasm, we wouldn’t be doing the work. Maybe the state should take note.”
To learn more or support the efforts of Heater Bloc Reno, visit www.instagram.com/heaterblocreno.
The Heater Bloc is designed to be tent-safe. If the mason jar tips over, the flame goes out immediately.
Beautiful work! Everyone could use them for emergencies.