Heating Costs (Madison: mortgage, gated, apartment)

[anniebleu]

We're Easterners interested in moving to the Madison area, but we've heard you've had an unusually large amount of snow this winter. In general, your area is a bit chillier than ours. (Delaware)

This, however, is fuel oil territory, for a lot of us, anyway, and the price has gone through the roof. It's currently around $330 per hundred gallons.

We'd be interested to know what heating a c. 3000 sq. foot house might cost on the average.

Thank you!

Annie

[Megan1967]

I can't answer your quesiton about a 3000 square foot house, but my 932squ foot house (plus 438 sq feet exposed basement) costs $275-$280 to heat or cool each month. Gas heat.

[anniebleu]

Thanks. Is that for gas heat alone--or associated electric costs too?

I believe gas heat is far more common in your area than ours. Does anyone heat with oil?

[Megan1967]

That includes electric. Forgot about that. Older homes may still use oil, but I doubt too many oil furnaces are still alive and kicking.

[MidwesternBookWorm]

If you're thinking of moving to Madison itself, you can check utility costs of any address in the city at this website: Average Energy Use and Cost for Residential Addresses. You will find that utility costs vary enormously, even between two seemingly similar homes, depending on how much insulation has been added, whether or not the windows have been replaced with double-pane insulated windows, how new and efficient the furnace is, and what type of heat is used.

Generally, electric heat will be the most expensive. Gas forced-air furnaces are generally pretty efficient. Some older homes do still heat with oil, and if you've been watching the economic news recently, you can imagine what that's like (but you'd probably rather not).

We have an elderly (45 years old) hot-water radiator type furnace in a 1200 s.f. 60-year-old bungalo. Our winter heating bills are around $180 to $250, depending on how many days we get below zero. Of course with a radiator system, we don't have central air, but we do use energy-efficient window AC's in the bedrooms during the hottest and stickiest days of summer, and we generally pay $170-$200 per month to do so.

All that said, I can go to MG&E's website and do a search on a house across the street that's the same age and size as mine, and their utility costs could either be 50% higher than mine or less than a third of what mine cost. It all depends on those variables I mentioned earlier.

Once you get to the point of actually looking at places to live, be sure to do your homework on MG&E's website before you sign a lease or mortgage. The cutest place in the world gets ugly real fast if you can't afford to heat it in January.

[anniebleu]

Thanks all. For some elusive reason, there are (still) a lot of houses in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast that heat with oil--and they're not necessarily all that old.

Bookworm (me too), that looks like an excellent site and we'll certainly check it out.

Here in Delaware, where we have to use AC almost every day from sometime in May through September--as much because of the humidity as the heat, though we do have quite a few days in the 90's--we think of Wisconsin as cooler. Not so, apparently.

Again, thanks!

[Megan1967]

Northern Wisconsin is cooler, though they have their share of hot summer days, but Madison is usually humid and at least 85-95 degrees in the summer.

[MidwesternBookWorm]

Originally Posted by Megan1967

Madison is usually humid and at least 85-95 degrees in the summer.

My apologies, Megan, but that is not accurate. Madison's average July temperature is actually 68.6, as you can see here: Madison: Geography and Climate

Unquestionably, we have some hot-n-sticky summer days here, but it is most assuredly not "85-95 degrees" all summer long. In the summer of either 2003 or 2004, the temperature did not get over 80 degrees until Labor Day Weekend, and every summer there are July days with highs in the upper 60's.

When I mentioned using window AC's for the hottest and stickiest days in my earlier post, I should have quantified that. Most summers, we run the AC's for less than 8 weeks throughout the season, not continuously. We generally haul them out of the garage and set them up in about mid to late June, and run them occasionally on an as-needed basis over the next several months. In one year, we did run our AC's fairly continuously for the better part of July and August, which is what I based my summertime utility cost estimate on.

Having spent 18 of the longest years of my life in a place where temps are routinely in the upper 80's to low 100's from February to November, I have a great appreciation for Wisconsin's moderate summers.

[rekuci]

we have a similar-sized house and similar heating bills as midwesternbookworm. last bill was $180 for heat (gas) + electric, only about $130 for gas alone. the thermostat is kept at 70F when we're here and 62F when we're not, but I think it's actually colder than what it reads. and i don't exactly skimp on the hot showers.

before we bought this house, our agent pulled up all the average energy bills from MG&E for the homes we were considering buying. so we knew what to expect. the others were less $/sq ft (our house has a wall of original 1950s windows, not exactly efficient).

we moved here from Maryland in August and visited in June. it is very humid here, comparable or sometimes worse than the mid-Atlantic. lots of standing water and lakes. but as far as I can tell, they do not have the unmitigated scorching heat like in MD. WI actually experiences a good deal of 70s in summer. although we moved here during the "great rains" in August, it hasn't hit 90F yet, with most days in the 70s in august. felt like paradise to me. although we didn't use AC even in MD (largely because the one in our apartment barely worked), we never once felt the slightest urge to use ours since we moved here. people here really have little to complain about in summer besides the swarms of mosquitos, and even these are far less virulent than east coast mosquitos (you know, the yellow fever and asian tiger ones).

[Megan1967]

Originally Posted by MidwesternBookWorm

My apologies, Megan, but that is not accurate. Madison's average July temperature is actually 68.6, as you can see here: Madison: Geography and Climate

Wow. Thank you for being so polite, but I question the accuracy of those statistics. I don't remember it being 68.6 in July very often. I'll have to be sure to keep track this July, but I swear I honestly think it is usually 85 or above in July.