[TheDude]

Assuming you can have NG hooked up in the first place - there are remote areas where it's never been offered. Revi's written about the heating oil situation before.

If this keeps up people will have to resort to huddling in the one room with an electric heater. Positively barbaric!

I keep waiting for the Prez to advise them to move south for the winter - the peak oil equivalent of "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" (which is misattributed to Marie Antoinette - and wasn't as pernicious as it sounds, "Let Them Eat Cake" meant something different than we now think.)

[wisconsin_cur]

We only really heat two rooms of the house. The bedrooms are only really occupied at night, so everyone at age two gets a down comfortor. The two bathrooms that are used get some heat as they are connected to the rooms that are heated. This is enough to keep them above freezing, not much more. The extra bedroom, my office and the rest of the upstairs is not heated. We do heat them when we have guests in the guest room.

Next year we may even drain the upstairs bathroom and keep teh upstairs even colder to conserve LP gas.

With all of this we spend less than 1000 dollars on LP gas and less than 100 hours on cutting and splitting wood... maybe less than 50 hours... I never counted. I find the work enjoyable.

So a couple of rooms are kept almost too warm. The house gets cold at night, but we have the comforters. It takes a while to warm up in the morning, but we have sweaters.

[Ferretlover]

Thinking out loud: I wonder how many people will increase their interest in climate change when they have to go back to living in a non-climate controlled environment...

[MarkJ]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'I') just don't understand how working class people can afford it. Or I guess they can't afford it. That's the problem.

[allenwrench]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('allenwrench', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'M')y Sister has one of those leaky old country farm houses. She was trying to squeak by till next winter. Well, with this lovey spring weather (freezing at night still) she ran the tank dry yesterday.

Minimum fuel oil purchase:

125 gal was............ drum roll........................

:

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MarkJ', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'I') just don't understand how working class people can afford it. Or I guess they can't afford it. That's the problem.

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('allenwrench', 'W')e use nat gas and have forced air. We keep our heat off all day and heat from about 9 PM to 9 AM at a temp of 64 degrees.

[Tyler_JC]

My dad leaves the heat on all day in his house. A toasty 70 degrees regardless of how cold it is outside. He argues the dog would get cold if he turned the heat down.

Personally, I think the dog can handle it.

A warm bloodhound is worth $1,000 a year, apparently.

Needless to say, this is one area that he could cut back on without experiencing much of a drop in his quality of life.

[heroineworshipper]

Theoretically, U can get more heat by burning dollar bills than the dollars can buy in fuel.

[Triffin]

Current spot delivery price for Heating Oil from my supplier is $4.91 and no fixed price contract
being offered for the coming heating season ..
We use ~ 1,100 gallons per year for space heating and domestic hot water. My electric rates are $0.14/kwh ....

I'm thinking it's time to switch to on-demand point of use for the hot water and an electric boiler for space heating. I have a three zone baseboard hot water system and we keep the thermostats at 62 degrees as it is. I can go natural gas, but that's no bargain either as it's still a fossil fuel and spendy. What to do ??

[Revi]

I think the thing to do is get a woodstove, and a solar hot water heater. Here's what we did to our house. We use about 300 gallons of oil and about 75 of propane now. We used to use about 700 gallons of oil and over 200 of propane to heat our hot water.

http://www.msad54.org/sahs/appliedarts/ ... /index.htm

I am still really worried about the price of oil next winter. I think we'll be paying over $5 by next winter.

[Byron100]

1100 gallons a year of heating oil?? That's gonna run you over $5000 just to keep your house at a chilly 62 degrees.

To be honest with you, I'd think about moving to someplace warmer, like Atlanta. We did have one month this past winter in which the gas bill break the $200 mark, and that's keeping the house at 65 degrees on average with not the best of insulation to boot. Rest of the year, the bills stay very low, except for mid-summer, when the AC might push the electric bill over $200, but again, this is just one month only in the midst of record-breaking heat waves.

Can anyone say the word "exodus"?

[FrankRichards]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Triffin', '
')We use ~ 1,100 gallons per year for space heating
and domestic hot water .....

[misterno]

I left Boston at 2001 December and my friends with 2 bedroom apartments were paying $350/month to BostonGas

Who knows what they are paying now.

Maannnn, I am sooooo happy I left the worst city on earth. I feel sorry for people who are stuck close to Canadian Border. Get the hell out before it is too late.

[purdum]

If you have the space, look into a ground-loop geothermal heat pump. We replaced our oil furnace (900 gal/year) with geothermal in fall 2005 and have saved over $6000 in three heating seasons compared to what oil would have been. Heating cost was under $1000 this past year, which isn't bad for Michigan. The geothermal heat pump also qualified for a lower electric rate (your power company may differ). PM me if you want more specific numbers.

[misterno]

I wonder what these people will do when oil hits $200 or heating oil hits $10/gl. I think they are losing time by not moving south.

A true PO believer, would not live in the northern parts of the USA.

[KingM]

I think you guys are wrong. If you want to see what the world looks like, consider where people wanted to live 150 years ago. It wasn't in Phoenix or Houston, that's for sure. I think you'd be better off somewhere like Pennsylvania or Oregon. Not too hot, not too cold.

Florida is right out.

[Cashmere]

Did somebody actually say, "move to Georgia"?

Jesus, now I've heard it all.

Georgia, home of chronic drought? Where nothing much grows well without intense irrigation?

Look OP, 1st question is, how tied to your house are you?

2nd question, how is your insulation?

If you haven't gone around and sealed every air leak around windows, replaced old drafty windows, insulated under the 1st floor decking, and so on, then you aren't addressing the problem from the easy side of the equation.

Some misinformed person wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')A true PO believer, would not live in the northern parts of the USA."

[one_more_day]

I also am ditching the standard heating/cooling system. Our current arrangement is forced-air gas furnace. We will be working on insulation all summer, and come winter we will be putting in a bunch of these [web]http://www.eheat.com/index.php[/web]

[Boo38]

My family lived in SC for 13 years. We had ongoing drought and couldn't grow anything but prickley pear cacti because of the sandy soil. A lot of the small towns are in bad shape with high crime rates ALREADY. We moved to the midwest by choice. Now we live in a nice small town with plenty of water surrounded by a large agricultural base. We have some land which is walkable to town and are planning on installing geothermal heat.

There are other considerations besides the temperature.