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help ?? what are you going to do besides wearing a snow suit indoors. They say to fill a 250 gal tank and keep it at 62 degrees and maybe it should last 8wks instead of 6 wks. Gee,that is about $1800 to fill tank at today's price to heat 1850 sq ft house. I can't pay that can you, and throw in $40.00 per wk for gasoline? Any suggestions on how to keep warm and not broke?
Insulate your home. Switch to Natural Gas. Condition yourself for the cold.
Our heating bill this year from Nov - March averaged about 140 bucks a month, which is nothing. Last month it was 52 dollars.
How?
We shut the heat off when we sleep and when we go to work rather than keep it at 60 Why heat an empty house? Our cats have each other and a layer of fur. We keep the thermostat at 68 when we are awake at night.
We have some good blankets and we are never cold at night. The house dropped to 52 degrees one night, but of course we didnt notice it under the blankets.
We hang out in the basement where I have electric heat and the temp never drops below 62 degrees even when its 0 outside
We conditioned ourselves to the cold. Its around 66 degrees in the house at night now and we are warm. We keep the windows open and the ceiling fan on when we sleep.
We left our big oil-heated, insulation free money pit in NJ and moved into a well-insulated, gas-heated, middle unit townhome in PA. All winter we kept pinching ourselves when the monthly heating bill was $75 as opposed to $800-900 in that old house during the coldest months. And we had to keep the heat on or the pipes would freeze...did I mention it had no insulation?
We have a Rinnai energy saver room gas heater (Direct vented space heaters and room furnaces by Rinnai = save money on your heating bills and keep your loved ones warmer!) which is direct vented (no CO in your house and no chimney to worry about). We can heat up our living room to 75 F in about 2 minutes and just heat up the rest of the house to 65 or whatever. I want to get my wife a heated bathroom seat (not joking) and would also like to put in radiant floors in the bathroom. Think about where the cold affects you most. For us it is when we are relaxing or using the bathroom. Personally I do not mind the cold but "conditioning" yourself does not always work. If you have children for example this may not be an option. We do not, but my wife hates the cold and it's not fair for me to expect her to deal with it just because it doesn't affect me nearly as much.
We do not heat the basement at all... yet, because we don't use it, even though it is finished, and there has never been any worry about freezing pipes. I would like to put a Rinnai down there also.
Well unfortunately I live in an area where natural gas is not available...propane isn't much cheaper then oil and I hate those big ole propane tanks in your yard.
Going to look at those fireplace inserts with a blower fan and use that a lot this winter
Well unfortunately I live in an area where natural gas is not available...propane isn't much cheaper then oil and I hate those big ole propane tanks in your yard.
Going to look at those fireplace inserts with a blower fan and use that a lot this winter
I used to have one Kate they are great.........I know have a gas fireplace but no blower but it does help.... I have gas heat and last year it cost a little less than $700 which I dont think was bad. I hate the cold so I will never lower it under 70.
I feel for y'all- our heating oil bills used to run around $1,000/year even back when oil was under $2/gallon, so they'd be more like $2,500/year now. My gas and electric usually total around $200/month now, with gas higher/electric lower in the winter, and vice versa in the summer, for around 2.5x as much square footage
Well unfortunately I live in an area where natural gas is not available...propane isn't much cheaper then oil and I hate those big ole propane tanks in your yard.
Going to look at those fireplace inserts with a blower fan and use that a lot this winter
My niece and her husband have a house in Dingman's Ferry, PA, and it gets COLD there. They have a pellet fireplace with a blower that they use exclusively for their heat. They tell me it's cost efficient.
when you have a big old home like myself you tend to do a process of elimination, and rotate your source of heating in order to find what's the least expensive of your choices, I have gas in my family room addition but since it's a 22 x 28 room and it's where we spend most of our time at home I use a wood/coal stove, coal runs pretty cheap ($250) compared to gas/oil so that's a no brainer. I also purchase wood by the bulk (courd*) sp and it lasts me all winter long ($180). I also use wood for my fireplace which has an insert and blower. Now oil that was the killer on my pockets, first winter in our home oil was running at 70 degrees when we were home and it was costing on avg about $400 - $500 every week. That's when we knew we need it to modify our heating sources.
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