How Is Everyone Keeping Warm?

[jmm63]

It was so cold here saturday that my oil lines froze!  First time in 10 years that has happened.  Woke up Sunday morning to a 50 degree house.  Panic ensued until I got hold of the oil company who was out in an hour and diagnosed the problem.  They torched the lines and the furnace fired right up.  Now that I've experienced that, I know what to look for.  The lines were insulated, but now they are DOUBLE insulated , also there is an electric blanket at the ready should this ever happen again.  I hate winter!

 

 

[vacerator]

Ditto Jim!

Hurry up April. My pipes to the basement shower froze because the duct for the exhaust fan is next to them in the ceiling. I could hear the wind flapping the damper in it. I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't gone down to clean. I thawed them with a hair dryer.

 

[cfz2882]

cold morning in belle...

was -22 this morning-'98 k1500 groaned a little,but started right up seat was hard as a rock and gearshift stiff...

 

[gusherb]

Well the utility bill is here. The period between 12/18-1/17 we used 347 therms and 1,261 KWh's. Total cost for gas: $206.03. Total cost for electric: $188.65.

Kind of wasn't expecting the electric usage to be so high, had no more Christmas lights than last year. I suspect that had something to do with some family visiting insisting on having the can lights in the kitchen on all the time which are halogen and use about 600 watts when not dimmed. Usually make up for that February-May.

The gas usage was slightly less than I expected, I did leave it at 72 after that cold snap as I've been perfectly comfortable with that. Looking back in records going back to 2009 that 347 therms is the second most used next to January '09 which was 441 therms used, the last winter the heat was kept at 72 for that billing period. That was with the old 80% efficient furnace still in place.

 

[supersuds]

My utility bill is an interesting contrast to GusHerb's. For 12/19-1/19 we used 165 therms of gas and 1685 kWh of electricity. The electric cost $168.19 but the gas cost $178.03.

So 50% more electricity cost $20 less, but gas costs almost twice as much per therm.

 

[gusherb]

Your electricity is dirt cheap.

We pay something around 13 cents a kWh after delivery fees etc which is rolled in with the 10 cents a kWh for electricity itself. Getting our usage lower is a practice in futility, so thinking maybe going solar would be a good offset to the usage.

Gas is dirt cheap for us but the utility wants to raise delivery charges a fairly substantial amount.

 

[askolover]

TVA keeps our power bills pretty reasonable in this area.

 

[norgeway]

We are good and warm

Good old oil heat, In this weather its more economical than a heat pump,and a heck of a lot warmer.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

Not CHEAPLY! Our gas bill will be on the rise, in no time... Though no sooner I do voluntarily raise the thermostat, I do turn it back down, but just for it to go back up again, so like I said--...

 

 

 

-- Dave

 

[askolover]

Our gas bill is figured as per hundred cubic feet.  We used 9600 cubic feet at 0.4993 cents/CF...so the actual gas bill  itself, not including delivery charge, was only $47!  With the delivery fees added, it was $78 total.  Not too shabby for keeping the Tstat set on 73 most of the time.  Plus, the Amana(Goodman) gas package unit is only 82% efficient.

 

[gusherb]

Honeywell is doing energy usage reports now. Idk why they just started considering they've been collecting data all this time apparently. Anyway, interesting to see on paper what I already know.
The downstairs usage from January 2017 is actually the upstairs from that time period, and the upstairs used December 2017 since I put the thermostat in last February so there was no 1/17 info from it. The old upstairs thermostat is downstairs.