I was born in the early 1970s. I remember putting extra sweaters on for bed and having extra blankets for those cold, Western New York nights. We kept the thermostat at 65 and tried to conserve oil. At school, we would turn off the lights in the hallways during the daylight hours if possible. Class rooms always ran with half lights. Our area never did the February vacations, but other northern schools took a week from Spring Vacation and stuck it in February to not have to heat the buildings that week.
In the 80s and 90s, we were able to kick that puppy up to 70! Or in my parents’ case, 75 (yes, they are both on blood thinners, why do you think they moved south?) The sweaters were shed, the houses were cozy and all was good with our $0.89 per gallon gas.
Fast forward to today. Jay and I had gas inserts installed in both fireplaces. This reduces the drafts down the chimneys and these heaters are both beautiful and warm. The one upstairs can warm the main living area, but barely reaches our bedroom. The downstairs one can raise the temperature of the room from 66 to 72 in 45 minutes! They both radiate and are far more energy efficient than our furnace. So, we turn on the fireplaces as needed when we are home. Right now, we are keeping the house thermostats at 66. I sleep in long sleeves.
Most of my friends around here just turned on the heaters when we had the first frost. People who get oil have locked in a max price of the oil at $3.60-$4.00 a gallon. In 1999, Jay and I locked in $1.25 a gallon and were disgusted with oil prices then. (tanks are 175 gallons assume 2-3 fill ups a year if you are good at conserving.) We’re on natural gas (that’s how we could get the fireplace inserts). We don’t have to worry about the oil thing, but gas prices are through the roof too!
Why was the world so short sighted the last time we had this issue? Why did we not start working hard on alternative energy solutions then? Why did we have to wait 20 years until the 90s and the environmentalist movements? Just think, if we had started in the early 1970s, the technology would be 35 years old now! (assume a 3 year lead time). The advancements become exponential at some point.
We’ve looked into solar, wind, and geothermal for our house. The last one is out unless we switched our entire heating system from water baseboard to forced hot air. Solar may only work in summer as we have tall trees to the south. And wind seems feasible, but we would need to see what small wind stations are available for our area.
But for now, we bundle up and shiver as I did as a kid.
What is your heating solutions? What are you doing this winter?
If you’re in the south where this isn’t an issue, think about the summer…how do you cool then?
I’m mid-south.
I sleep better when it’s cool, anyway. Fabul-O is hot natured like yours truly so she’s fine with her jammies and her comforter in the winter. Will and the dog look like yuni-bommers in all their fleece, hoods and blankets. We have natural gas heat and had the option, when we bought our house in 1999 when nat. gas prices were affordable, to change over to a heat pump. We talked about it and figured what our return on investment would be and didn’t really think we’d be in this house this long enough to justify it so we chose to ride the natural gas wave. Holy hockey sticks do I kick myself and regret that decision. While gas may heat better, blah, blah, blah, I still have to pay to run the furnace to get said heat circulating throughout the house and those folks like to stick to ya’, too. What do we do? Well, we have a relatively small house and I have two kick-azz space heaters – one on the living room end of the house and one at the end of the hallway where our bedrooms are. With the two, we maintain a good temp throughout the house. It dipped down to 33* one night, but still warms up into the upper 60s so during the day so we’re good so far.
When we first looked at Chateau L, it was May and the yard was loaded with trees and they were all leafy and it was probably about 65* in the house. We were in bliss b/c of the shade the trees provided. Then came January and the first freak snow storm we had in years and it wiped about about 1/3 of the trees that made my house comfy. We run ceiling fans all year long. In the summer the thermostat stays set on about 74* and in the winter 64-66*. I also use thermal backed curtains use draft blocker thingies at the bottoms of our doors.
I’m not sinking one dime into Chateau L to alter it’s current methods. Mainly because whoever we are lucky enough to have buy it when it goes up for sale won’t appreciate it and I’ll just lose money. So, 9 1/2 years has passed and we’ve done okay. Hopefully we’ll fair for another couple.
End of long-winded speech.
Side note: Hope all is well
I’m in the same area as you but haven’t made any changes to what we have always done regarding conserving energy. We live in a small well-insulated house with natural gas heat. When we bought it we installed a programmable thermostat and when we are in the house and awake it is set for 67-70 degrees, depending on how much my husband whines. When we are at work and asleep the temperature goes down to 60. I’ve always slept under a feather duvet and like it cold at night. I’ve noticed a small increase in the gas bill relative to last year, but it’s minimal so far.
I work with someone whose wife has high blood pressure and is always hot. She won’t turn the thermostat up past 55 in the winter!
We live in a 300 hundred year old home that hasn’t been renovated since just about 1720. heh. We have fuel oil and the last couple of years have been insane, we keep the thermostat waaaaaaay down to 45-50 in the old part of the house. If you were here you’d see my pretty blue fingernails.
There was an addition added in the late 1940′s (where we sleep & spend most of our time) that we can heat seperately, so we keep that at a balmy 60 in the evening and a little lower at night.
Otherwise, it’s time to put plastic over the windows but that’s about all we can do until we can afford to gut/renovate.
We moved into a new house last year. I’ve really noticed a difference in heating and cooling as compared to our older homes. Most of our friends turned on their heat a few weeks ago, the temperature in our house didn’t dip below 72 at night until a couple of days ago. Our house is heated with a forced air gas system. Our basement has floors heated with a hot water system and even keeping the temperature really low down there, the floors are warm underfoot and we’ve closed off all the heating vents as the heat from the floor keeps the rooms toasty. Overall, we keep the thermostat at 72 during the day and 68 at night. I always need a little fresh air in our bedroom so even in the heart of winter, one of our bedroom windows is open just a crack. We have a gas fireplace but never use it as the house gets too hot. I also had to fill up my car today when I saw that gas had dipped to below $4.00 per gallon for the first time in months!!
Julie
I have bought my (stubborn) husband a pair of slippers, the kids sleep in feetsie pajamas, and we all wear long sleeves all the time.
Our programmable thermostats turn town to 55 during the day (even though it will rarely drop that low), and up to 67 1/2 hr before we get home. At 10:30 (we go to bed at 10) they drop to 62, and then 1/2 hr before wake up kick in to 67.
We are on a budget plan for our oil, where we pay one monthly price and at the end of August they will adjust if we owe/they owe, but they do give us quarterly updates.
We need to get curtains – right now the kids room is the only one that has them, the rest just have shades, but we need something more to contain escaping heat. We also have bare wood floors in most rooms, which we may need to change.
For cooling, we rarely used our a/c’s as most of our rooms have ceiling fans. But we do have an a/c unit for each bedroom which we used when it was really hot/humid.
But yes, I am ever so mindful….