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My mother-in-law is under the impression that it costs an average of $500 a month to keep a house heated in Maine. Think her relative or friend uses gas to heat the house. I told her it probably could be done cheaper. Am I thinking correctly?
My mother-in-law is under the impression that it costs an average of $500 a month to keep a house heated in Maine. Think her relative or friend uses gas to heat the house. I told her it probably could be done cheaper. Am I thinking correctly?
This all depends on the size of the house, is there a wood/pellet burning fireplace, is there a boiler/furnace or liquid propane/natural gas hookup, and how the house was built. Smaller cheaper, larger more costly. I'm a bit apprehensive about the cost of heating for our house as it is at with 2400+ sqft; going to find out how much it costs this winter.
$500/mo. is a lot. We burnt 1/8th of a tank of oil and 2.5 cords of wood that I cut off the back 40 last year. 3 bedroom house. Your consumption of fuel may vary widely with varying house and heating factors. But $6K a year is massive.
Heating costs depend on the size of the house, insulation, efficiency of heating system, type of fuel, passive solar gain and other factors. In February it could hit $500 for that month.
Last year was one of the coldest winters in ages according to my friends. I was in my 4th winter. I used about 4 cords of wood for the whole winter(October to May) at about $235 a cord delivered to MDI.
I have a well insulated house, and I kept it about 72-76. I put removable r-11 shutters on the windows at night, and put full season shutters on some of the windows upstairs, as well as a window and a sliding glass door downstairs.
Total cost for the whole winter was about $960. I also have a very very efficient Pacific Energy Summit Stove.
There are way too many variables to even be able to say what heating costs would be without knowing the house you were staying in. Each house is so different. The first house my wife and I lived in was a rental. It cost us about $400 a month to keep the oil fired hot air furnace at 60 degrees. That house was built in the 50's and had terrible insulation all the way around. It was a single story with a dirt floor basement. The home was somewhere in the area of 900-1000 sq ft. When we were looking for a home to buy, we kept that in mind. We ended up buying a home built in 1996, which is insulated very well and spend about $600-$800 per heating season keeping the house above 70 with a pellet stove set on its lowest setting. We actually keep our bedroom window open most of the winter. Our home we live in now is a 2 story, full basement and approximately 2100 sq ft.
As everyone has stated- depends on the size of the house, how well insulated and designed, and source of heat you are using.
Last winter, the worst they said in generations with record breaking cold and snow, we have two woodstoves.One stove is in the kitchen, and the other is in the living room of this 3 bedroom home.
We used 5 cords of wood, but did not burn one single drop of oil. That would factor out to $250 dollars a month.
I'm paying $120 a cord for tree length this year. That's $600 plus some chainsaw oil and gas for the year.
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