In GA Nat Gas is a deregulated industry so you can pick your supplier. All that means is your bill has a line item for infrastructure maintenance and another for customer service.

Last month those were a combined 50 bucks on my bill BEFORE any nat gas therm charges. I might rather buy the **** at spot, pay the delivery, and ditch the bull**** fees. Be careful what you wish for.

2 drivers in our house (and I work from home most days) still burn 125 gallons of gasoline through cars a month so these heating numbers don’t sound all that bad to me.

Heating? WTF is that? I've only turned the heat on twice this winter and I could have done without. Pretty sure we are out of the woods now for cold temps. I'm running the A/C right now.

In North GA, we had an older home (1972) and ran the heat pump. I was home all day. We also used the woodstove some. Bills were very reasonable. Dang cheap in fact compared to the per kw/h rate here in FL.

I have no idea why anyone would try to heat their home to 68-70 in winter. Way too hot. 65 is fine and that's without any "sacrifice." You could go much lower IMO. The woodstove easiy got our main living area up to 80. Too hot!

Erica, the type of heat makes a big difference. For us, with hot air heat, 68 is an average. It goes as low as 65 before the furnace kicks on and when it comes on full blast goes up over 70. Kind of sucks - hot water heat is much more stable.
Here if you set it at 65 you're down to 60 before it goes on, which starts to get uncomfortable.
The location of our thermostat also isn't optimal, its behind the electronics which throw off a lot of heat. So even though it's set to 68 (at night and on weekends, its set much lower for the workday) the ambient heat from the gizmos keeps it from kicking on until the house is pretty darn cold.

On the bright side, we pay 0 for air conditioning. On the rare hot days we get in August we disable the furnace and turn on the furnace blower, which blows cold air out of the basement through the rest of the house. DIY central air.

What do you set your A/C at? 80? Why not 85? 80 is way too cool ;)!

Uhhhh ... I burn an obscene amount of heating oil.

I hope this winter represents the start of a weather trend that lasts about another 20 years :)

Please people - get a direct vent biomass stove that will burn pellets or corn or cherry pits or... - They are EASY to install and for $2000, you have a one year payback. Wood pellets are $180/ton in bulk and 3 to 4 tons will do 2500 sq ft in the northeast.

Eighty,

Yea it is all relative. I burn a lot of gas in my cube truck for my business and have limited my geographic area that I serve to controll costs but that is as far as I can go to controll it.

Lizard,

We have done the same with our house- siding with insulation wrap, new windows and doors and a lot of new insulation. The insulation has given us a great ROI.
The house is 3200 square feet and if I go just oil we will use 700 gallons for the season. The alternative which I have done this year and last is to burn wood with the oil as backup. Last years use 3.5 cords of wood and 100 gallons of oil. So it works out that for every dollar of wood I burn I save 3 dollars on the oil I didn't use. I have fine tuned the wood heat and can easily keep the house between 68 and 72 degrees. This years wood will come from my sons lot and the only cost to me will be chain saw gas and my physical labor.

My house is big, all spread out, with high ceilings and has an indoor pool room bigger than most standard houses.

The more I can generate my own electric and (thus) heat with that combination, the better.

The cost/benefit equation (with PV panels lots cheaper and fuel oil lots more expensive) continues to shift, as do I.

Lizard,

With regard to the cold- hot aspect of a hot air system I have gotten good results by dropping the input size of the nozzle in the burner [ I find almost all systems overfired for their application ]. This creats a longer run time between cycles, mixes the air better with the longer run time and can signifacantly increase the unit efficiency. If you would like more info PM me.

"Paid $407.00 for 100 gallons of propane six weeks ago. (In Tahoe)"

I think my mom had to pay $4.59 a gallon the last time they came to fill her propane here in central Florida. Luckily for her it has been a very mild winter, even for Florida standards.

Probably the percieved advantage of propane (and I didn't think this out first) is that in the south, where it's used more, we consume less of it during a typical winter.

My windows are open right now.

Carry on.

I have heating oil and circulated hot water heating also used for household hot water etc. Luckily this winter has been very mild in upstate NY.

I have acres of trees and enjoy chopping and chainsawing wood.

How much does it cost to replace an oil furnace with a wood burner?

We have oil heat in a 1939 duplex in central Maryland. After filling up the tank in October at 3.79/gallon, I decided we weren't using the furnace for heat this year if we could avoid it. I think it's been on for heat on 3 days this year; otherwise, I use a space heater on the main level and my daughter has the family room gas fireplace in the basement running most of the time. I also bought electric blankets in early January and they are wonderful on cold nights.

We do use oil for our hot water and the tank is 3/4 full (just checked before posting). I think it's a 150 gallon tank, so if we've used only 40 gallons so far this season, I'm happy. I would love to make it to half full in April and then will start tracking the price and fill up if it goes down any. Big if!

We do not have any heat ducts in our house so going to an electric heat pump would be expensive. Converting to natural gas is not cheap either, even with the gas line in the house.

Right now I'm saving for insulation for the three outside walls and some type of wood/biomass stove in the living room, which should heat up the main floor and the upper level, where the bedrooms are located.

The electric/gas bill is about $60 more than it has been in past years, but I think a decent amount of that can be contributed to my daughter taking over the laundry most weeks and using the gas dryer a lot more. I've got to get her to hang up the damp clothes, rather than fully drying them in the dryer. However, in previous years, we've been filling up the oil in both January and March with about 100-120 gallons each time, so $60 is better than $375-$480 for the oil - and it is nice that she's doing the laundry!

Boz,

They are all over the place price wise. Any where from a couple thousand for a simple stove with a water jacket to upwards of 12 thousand for a good dual fuel condensing boiler which requires a large volume of water for storage.
http://www.profab.org/products/profabpro....
one with a price, http://www.woodoutdoorfurnace.net/catalo....

These stoves can be as efficient as the new oil and gas appliances and the side benefit of condensing is no smoke and low emmisions. The large capacity and efficient capture of waste heat requires much fewer fires than a standard stove.

The high efficiency also means using much less wood to do the job.

Mari,

Oil tanks are generally rated at 275 gallons [27 inches wide 42 inches high and 5 feet long] and will accept about 250 gallons on fill up when you take the air gap in the top of the tank into account.
Insulation gives your best bang for the buck no matter what you heat with.

Agau, I'd have recommended that for my folks, but my main concern is maintenance and cleaning. Unless the wood pellets burn completely and don't need to have ash shoveled, binned, hauled and dumped. Theoretically a plasma furnace would burn that stuff completely up, but I don't think they exist for the home :/

Lizard, 5 deg swings in temp is not acceptable. Move your thermostat to an interior wall near the center of the home and away from heat sources.

A decent thermostat should be able to maintain the temp in very narrow range.

Killersdad, I need to check my records for the tank size. I'm really not sure but I didn't think it was that big, maybe because we don't get that low.

I just checked our price - it's $3.85/gallon. I'm glad I don't need any right now.

I have a heat pump and cadet heaters in each room. Electricity is pretty cheap up here. Total electric cost never gets above about $140. That includes HVAC, water heating, cooking, etc. I also have a pellet stove (12v capable), but only plan to use it during power outages.

Agau: Have you looked into Rocket Mass Heaters? Interesting tech.

Filled up propane tank lats week, rural mid-Michigan, 373 gallons propane, cost is $1.96 per gallon plus sales tax.

-BigCowboy

Otis

Pellets are a lot more ash than corn

My corn stove would run 3 days or more on corn before cleaning but with pellets it is daily

However corn is 7 vs 2 per bushel and pelets are now lower
What you have to do is put like five % corn in there

Unbelievably the high density corn hits the pot with enough force to kick out much ash

This might give two days between cleanouts

Anyone looking at heat pumps will want to look at the Mitsubishi Mr Slim units. Mine is 19 Seer.

I put that into my rebuilt house and the savings are about 40% over the 12 Seer Trane ducted unit. I don't use it for heat, but just A/C and I would expect similar savings in heat mode.

The Mitsubishi unit is ductless and zoned. For those of you with older homes, its perfect because you don't need to run ducts, just (2) 3/8 refrigeration lines, 12 gauge wire, and a small condensation line for each indoor unit.

Sandor,

What is the btu rating for this unit?

Thank God it's been a warm winter here in Nova. I tend to get very cold in the evening but burn up in the morning. It's my age which is perhaps TMI. I keep it at 65 and bundle up in the evening and am natural when I sleep.

Propane for heating the hot water and oil heat. I topped it off in November and will have them come in February to do the same.

This house is old but tight as a drum to it's detriment. I'm contracting to have proper ventilation put in the bathrooms and kitchen. The only way the house is not properly insulted is from underneath in the crawl space. The home is propreply graded; no moisture under the house.

I'd love to install a woodstove which would easily heat the house. But it is small and I can't see how it can be done other than in the garage which is big.

I've got to get some expert advice.

If I could install a wood stove, given that I could provide the fuel, that would be great.

Nova

Nanna, you need to follow the lead of the Victorians. Every room had a door, so that heat did not escape the room(s) that were being used, and drafts were reduced.

I also have a big, sprawling house where, especially at night, most of the rooms are not being used. I have closed the doors into the rooms not in daily use and the difference in my heating bill, even with the much milder winter than usual, is significant. That, plus a bunch more insulation in the attic and the electrical outlets have made a very expensive house to heat, very affordable. I've only spent about $350 on heat this season, October to now.

I hear you, Tesla!

Actually, I do that. I have about a dozen heating zones, too, set at varying levels depending on the room/space, and adjust with mini ceramic heaters when it gets chilly.

If I didn't have a year-round enclosed pool (where the pool heater also uses heating oil) which itself is about a 1800 sq. foot heating zone of its own, I'd save about half. 13 exterior doors don't help either :) And, the front solarium (about 300 sq. feet, walls and ceiling glass ... yeah, double pane, but hey) isn't exactly energy efficient, although the passive solar from that combined with the ceramic tiles on the floor does help during the day.

We all make choices, I pay in annual heating oil bills what most people pay for a really nice vacation ... but I don't fly so I stay home in my Shangri-La.

That said, new energy efficient house and pool heaters, closing off rooms not occupied (by zone) and adding (I forget what they're called) devices on each zone that look for hot water in the pipes in a different zone before the heater will trigger ... these things have reduced my volume consumption of heating oil by nearly a half over the past 5 years.

(OTOH, heating oil prices have about doubled in the same time...)

Before y'all start thinking I'm a 1%er, I'm not ... I live in what's still considered the middle of nowhere, and bought 12 years ago, when nobody not from the county had hardly even heard of my town ... it wasn't until a few years ago we got "discovered" and now this is sort of like Sonoma is relative to the nano- bio- and silicon tech modules that are gaining roots, regionally. I bought the house for about a third less than it appraised for then, at the end of 1999, too. I put a lot of money into the house between the infrastructure upgrades, pool renovation and solar, but I could still sell it for a decent profit and probably then some.

So, we all make our choices, my cross to bear is dealing with heating oil prices, but I fully intend to expand my electric power generation capacity to at least help keep those costs constant, if not continuing to trend down.

N/hope that wasn't TMI

Nanna,

Do you need a pool boy?