Keep a pencil lead-sized stream of cold water on at all faucets. Open all under-sink cabinets for the night. Keep a small heater with a temperature control in the cellar area on at night, set to around 50 degrees. Our propane water heater puts out enough waste heat to keep the cellar at 40 all the way down to zero. Know where your house plumbing is vulnerable and take steps to add low, consistent heat to those areas. At -25 or lower, we add ceramic heaters in front of the under-sink cabinets overnight. We have a 100-year-old house with no central heat.
Set back up gas heat to 55.
Keep 2-3 large pieces of firewood ready for overnight, plus some medium-small pieces. Actually, you get the most heat when the wood has become a mass of glowing coals. We sleep normally and check the fire maybe 2x a night when one or the other gets up to use the bathroom. If it is beyond the glowing mass of hot coals stage, open dampers, set on a few pieces of small-medium sized firewood, go do your business and then open all the faucets for a few minutes just to make sure there are no ice clogs. Return faucets to pencil-lead-sized stream, check fire, which should have flames, put on largest pieces of firewood and set dampers back to medium-to-medium low. Go back to sleep.
Remember to take the stovepipe out weekly and burn and brush out all the creosote.
Remember to turn the cellar heater off when outside temps rise to 15-20.
We routinely have bad winters with periods of 18-35 below. After 40 years we know when it is cold enough to freeze the pipes (-18 for 2 or more consecutive nights).
You're an engineer ... right /
/8^)