Ouch! A $326 home heating bill!

[cardinalkarp]

Also, if there's rooms that you don't use very often, consider closing the vents and shutting the door. I do this with my dining room and my extra bedroom. No need to heat that extra 500 or so sq. ft. of space when I'm never in there. If I have company, I open it up.

This is exactly what we do at our house (but its only one room). We keep our house at 68 degrees and I would keep it cooler but my wife is ALWAYS cold so that's not possible.

Popeye, do you have a significant other that lives w/ you? There's not a chance in hell my wife (or any woman I know) that would tolerate the temp being 60 in the house.

[Hungary Jack]

65 away, 70-72 home?

I'd suggest setting your thermostat lower. I keep my house at 52 when I'm away, 63 in the evenings, and 60 when I sleep. The way I figure it, 60-65 is comfortable sweatshirt weather, and it's far better for me to wear a sweatshirt around the house than to pay an extra $200 or so over the course of the winter. At night, only my bedroom really needs to be warm, and if it isn't warm enough beneath my sheets, I have an electric radiator in there that I can use to heat just that room, rather than the whole house for 6-8 hours when it's coldest outside.

Also, if there's rooms that you don't use very often, consider closing the vents and shutting the door. I do this with my dining room and my extra bedroom. No need to heat that extra 500 or so sq. ft. of space when I'm never in there. If I have company, I open it up.

What I go back to is how people used to live before there was central heat and air. They used to just heat or cool whatever room they were in at the time, and were content to wear warmer clothes indoors. Seems more efficient to me, though less convenient of course. I'll accept a decent amount of inconvenience for hundreds of dollars each winter.

I agree, and as a backpacker I am inured to cold weather. But my wife would squawk too much if I dropped the thermostat much lower.

[Popeye_Card]

Popeye, do you have a significant other that lives w/ you? There's not a chance in hell my wife (or any woman I know) that would tolerate the temp being 60 in the house.

My gf stays over a lot, but no, no woman lives with me. She doesn't really have any problem with the temp in my house.

Yeah, I realize that most women turn into icicles or something under 70 degrees. Some friends of mine (a couple) actually keep their house at like 55-60 degrees, because it's a huge 3-story, completely inefficient house. She accepts it though, because she knows what the heating bills would look like if they kept it in the 65-70 range. They have a wood stove in the house that they use to heat the kitchen and the family room, and their bed stays warm with 2 dogs and a heated matress pad.

Side story: An ex-gf of mine could never really understand the concept of a thermostat (like the old dial types). If she was cold, she'd crank it all the way up. Hot, she'd turn it all the way down. So it would get to be bedtime, and she'd crank it up all the way because she was cold. I'd have to patiently wait for her to fall asleep, then I'd sneak out and adjust it to a comfortable level (usually a couple degrees cool--I hate being hot when I sleep).

[Popeye_Card]

I agree, and as a backpacker I am inured to cold weather. But my wife would squawk too much if I dropped the thermostat much lower.

Tell her if she wears a sweatshirt and some fuzzy slippers, she can go shopping with the heating bill savings.

[Hudler]

You really aren't saving any money by dropping the thermostat when your not home. Think about it,how much longer is your furnace running when you get home to get it to a temp that is comfortable? In most cases I've seen it's running longer than it would beif you kept it at the temp you liked best.

I install and service furnace and AC systems for a living and two of the biggest misconceptions out there are the one above and closing off rooms will save you money. A high efficiancy furnace is designed to push a set amount of air volume and shutting off rooms can play hell with it sometimes,besides that,most interior walls are not insulated which is gonna cool off the rooms you are still heating faster.

[Hungary Jack]

I agree, and as a backpacker I am inured to cold weather. But my wife would squawk too much if I dropped the thermostat much lower.

Tell her if she wears a sweatshirt and some fuzzy slippers, she can go shopping with the heating bill savings.

I insist that she wears nothing around the house.

[Popeye_Card]

You really aren't saving any money by dropping the thermostat when your not home. Think about it,how much longer is your furnace running when you get home to get it to a temp that is comfortable? In most cases I've seen it's running longer than it would beif you kept it at the temp you liked best.

I install and service furnace and AC systems for a living and two of the biggest misconceptions out there are the one above and closing off rooms will save you money. A high efficiancy furnace is designed to push a set amount of air volume and shutting off rooms can play hell with it sometimes,besides that,most interior walls are not insulated which is gonna cool off the rooms you are still heating faster.

If you keep your house at a warmer temp during the day, you're going to lose more heat to the outside. Yes, the furnace runs longer when you get home, but it shouldn't run basically all day in a climate like St. Louis. I doubt most days that my house even drops to the low 50's while I'm gone.

I can see your point with shutting off rooms adversely affecting the HVAC, but in my case both rooms I shut in are on the same duct run. I don't think I'm really affecting my flow to other vents. If it was shutting off a vent at the end of a run, I could see that it doesn't do much good--you might as well let the vent open. As for losing heat to those rooms, it's better to lose some heat to the rooms from the rest of the house than to be consistently heating that extra volume of air, no?

(I'm not spouting off out of complete ignorance either. I've had a few thermodynamics courses in my day, so I stick with the general principles of volume of air I'm heating and where I'm losing heat out of the system. But I'll defer to your judgement on HVAC matters--I've steered clear of HVAC systems in my career.)

[Hungary Jack]

You really aren't saving any money by dropping the thermostat when your not home. Think about it,how much longer is your furnace running when you get home to get it to a temp that is comfortable? In most cases I've seen it's running longer than it would beif you kept it at the temp you liked best.

I don't know. They say that for every 1 degree drop in your thermostat setting, you save 1% of your enery cost. For the 10 hours per day 5 days per week when I have the thermostat set at 65 during the day, the furnace runs considerably less. At night it drops to 67 for about 7 hours. During this time, the blower runs continuously, but the furnace runs periodically, depending on the outside temp.

[Popeye_Card]

You really aren't saving any money by dropping the thermostat when your not home. Think about it,how much longer is your furnace running when you get home to get it to a temp that is comfortable? In most cases I've seen it's running longer than it would beif you kept it at the temp you liked best.

I don't know. They say that for every 1 degree drop in your thermostat setting, you save 1% of your enery cost. For the 10 hours per day 5 days per week when I have the thermostat set at 65 during the day, the furnace runs considerably less. At night it drops to 67 for about 7 hours. During this time, the blower runs continuously, but the furnace runs periodically, depending on the outside temp.

I see the point. It's like needing to go 65 mph--does it save more gas to stay around 65 by adding a little gas at a time, or to coast down to 55 and keep it there for a while, then accelerate back up to 65 when you need it?

But I'm not sure it works that way with heat loss vs. friction loss on the road. I don't have a textbook in front of me for the equations, but IIRC you don't lose much less energy to the road via friction loss at 55 mph vs. 65 mph. But in thermodynamics, you're going to lose more heat to the outside if your house is at a higher temp than if it's at a temp closer to the outside temp.

I guess I should just skirt all of this and keep my house at 50 all the time, and just use a space heater in whatever room I'm in.

[Molly]

$326 in actual usage is not unusual for us during the winter months. We are on the budget plan & pay $155/mo even during the summer. Older 2 story brick house, storm windows, and have never been able to even locate a crawl space much less insulate it.