poll, whats your heating bill.

[Amii]

We live in the northeast in a 2200 square foot home. We heat with a woodstove and we paid $175 for a cord. We also got just over a cord free. We keep the house at about 70. We haven't turned on the heat this year but out gas bill has gone from $35-$40 in the summer to $80 this winter. We do have a gas dryer and a gas stove. Our electric bill was $170 in December. I'm afraid to see my electric bill this month since electric went up again and we had Christmas lights on.


wearegoingtodisney - I was wondering why electric and gas seems to be so much more in the northeast. I live in MA also. My mother lives in MA and she has a similar home to your house. She keeps the heat at 60 and her December heating bill was $386. My grandmother lives in RI. She's on a year round payment plan for her gas bill. She heats with gas. Her bill was $135 a month. At the end of November she got a letter saying her bill was going up to $260 a month. She got another letter at the begining of December saying her paymnet plan was going up again to $370 a month! (and that's year round) She does keep the heat at about 70 degrees, but she's always had the heat at 70 degrees.

 

[mudnuri]

I can't answer your poll with the options listed.

April 13th I moved in here, with a full tank of fuel. Since that date, I have used 438 gallons of fuel oil, at 2.089 a gallon. I did check my tank yesterday, and i'm down 1/2 so thats another 125 gallons or so, so rounded up thats 600 gallons- or $1253.40 for 9 months of heat/hot water...or 139.26 a month. I did pay for the majority of this via a pre-buy to lock in the price so it was a lump payment not monthly bills

Then there is electric- which the most so far has been 58.00 and that was August's bill that came in September. We are estimated every other month here, however I choose to read my meter on those months and go online and enter it into my account so I'm never shocked when they actually come read it and its more/less than I expect. My bill is usually under $45.00

I dont have a/c units, however I did have fans in ever one of these 14 windows this summer

My oven is electric...

I have double thermo pane windows, vinyl siding, wood floors and I'm on the 3rd floor of our building. My floors stay warm via the heat below...and i have insulated drop ceilings which help as well.

I dont complain about my price of oil, because I like my house warm..I havent taken any measures to consume less, as this is my first winter here. I have my thermostat set at 68-69 24/7 and it generally is 70-71 here...sometimes getting up to 72 when the furnace is on and the waters flowing freely...but it never drops below 68 which I consider the perfect temperature for the heat to kick back on!

Brandy
I run my dishwasher nightly, with the heated dry feature used. There is also a minimum of 5 showers here a day, on oil hot water.

 

[mickeyfan2]

For us I would have to do in on a yearly basis and then divide it by 12. This would cover heat and A/C for us. Electric - $1800/year and Propane - $950/year. Thus $230/month for each month. We only buy propane once per year. So hard to judge how much we used in a particular month.

ETA - We have a 4000 sq foot home that we heat and cool to 70. We never open the windows, so the A/C comes on only a few weeks after the heat goes off and visa versa.

 

[Befferk]

I couldn't vote, but ours is $0. We live in Wisconsin, and we burn wood. And, no, we don't have to buy the wood. My uncle has 80 acres that we cut from, and my husband works at a sawmill/lumber company, and can bring as much scrap wood home as he can haul. If we would have had to heat with LP this year, well, I don't know what we would have done. I do know that we wouldn't be going to Disney in May. I love being able to jack up the thermostat to 70-72 and not worry about the bill

We did have to invest in the outdoor wood stove when we bought the house 6 years ago (roughly $5000), but it has more than paid for itself. We also have it hooked up to heat our hot water as well.

Beth

 

[wearegoingtoDisney]

Amii....I don't know why it is so high here. It sounds like your mother and I paid the same amount to keep our houses at 60 so atleast I know it is the right range for this area of the country. I am just so suprised at how different it is. How do you keep your entire house warm with a woodstove? How long does a cord last? Wondering if we should consider this. Thanks

 

[capegrenier]

I live in the NE, llive in a 1000 sq ft home and I just pulled out my bill for Dec. Gas ---$151. and Elec. ---75. I guess compared to last year I am about 50 dollars more for Gas and about even for electric so I figure that electric is just an estimated bill and will get hit this month. Rising prices are a fact of life I just wish it would hit someone elses life...........I was in disney in August and saw the largest difference in gas from one station to the other on my way back to the airpport,,,, station on left $3.69 (mobile?) , station on right $2.79 (hess?)

 

[eblack0409]

We live in West Virginia....our house isn't even a year old yet....we just built it last April! Our usual bill runs us about $70 a month, for December it almost doubled...it was $137.

 

[mudnuri]

Amii....I don't know why it is so high here. It sounds like your mother and I paid the same amount to keep our houses at 60 so atleast I know it is the right range for this area of the country. I am just so suprised at how different it is. How do you keep your entire house warm with a woodstove? How long does a cord last? Wondering if we should consider this. Thanks

We had a wood fired furnace....basically a forced hot air furnace that ran by a wood box. It also had oil back up, but we never used the oil. 1800 sq foot ranch, average temperature in the house of about 76-78 and we'd go through 8-9 cord of wood a year. We would burn sept/oct at night if it got cold enough and in april/may at night as well. We also didnt have to purchase wood, as we had 300 acres to cut from.

Its not a fireplace by anymeans, its a huge contraption hooked up to the furnace. The outdoor wood furnaces are big as well, and do the same thing, though I believe they heat water, so you have forced hot water heat, instead of forced hot air. The thing we liked about ours, and why we didnt go with the outside- was it also heated the basement, which made the wood floors nice and toasty.

Brandy

 

[Befferk]

Its not a fireplace by anymeans, its a huge contraption hooked up to the furnace. The outdoor wood furnaces are big as well, and do the same thing, though I believe they heat water, so you have forced hot water heat, instead of forced hot air. The thing we liked about ours, and why we didnt go with the outside- was it also heated the basement, which made the wood floors nice and toasty.

Brandy

Just wanted to clarify that our outdoor wood stove does heat water that is piped to the house, but the house is heated by forced air through the existing ducts. Works just exactly like when our regular (gas) furnace would run, except instead of the gas heating the air, the hot water heats the air. Either way, it is great! I am no good at guessing how many cord we burn in a year, we just burn, and when we need more, we cut more, lol

Beth

 

[kydisneyfans]

2000 sq ft 2 year old home here.

gas was 292.00 for mid Dec-mid Jan
elec was 59.00 for December.

Since then our thermostat has been either off or set around 63. Thank god it has not been a cold winter.

 

[ckoncurat]

$228 a month for gas and electric (budget billing). Thats a 3200 Ft house in Maryland- with 8 people in it!!

 

[disneysteve]

Several people have responded with their monthly budget amount rather than their actual usage. I'm on a budget plan too - $171 for gas and electric - but my bill still lists the actual usage each month which is what I reported in my initial post on this thread as I think that is more useful information.

 

[welovedis]

Rochester, NY, just south of Lake Ontario
1400 sq ft house + 500 sq ft of heated basement
Gas $158.85
Electric $21.55
So Dec's bill was $179.78, less than I paid in Dec 2004

Granted our temps haven't been terrible this year, but the average temp for the month here (according to the bill at least) was 29 degrees, compared to 33 degrees in Dec 2004.

I keep the thermostat at 66 during the day, down to 63-64 at night. Our cape cod had a new roof (tear off) last fall, and the furnace/windows/insulation were all replaced after a major fire almost 9 years ago. The house itself (was it left of the shell after the fire) was built in 1929.

 

[mickeyfan2]

Several people have responded with their monthly budget amount rather than their actual usage. I'm on a budget plan too - $171 for gas and electric - but my bill still lists the actual usage each month which is what I reported in my initial post on this thread as I think that is more useful information.

I did mine as a monthly number since it is near impossible to calculate the number of gallons of propane that I have used in a 30 day period. I used the number that we paid for our yearly refill. That is the best I can do.

 

[disneysteve]

I did mine as a monthly number since it is near impossible to calculate the number of gallons of propane that I have used in a 30 day period. I used the number that we paid for our yearly refill. That is the best I can do.

Sorry - I didn't mean the folks with propane or oil. But at least on our gas and electric bill, they list our actual monthly usage even though we are on the budget plan. Maybe not all companies do it that way.

 

[Chicago526]

Gas was $275 and electric was $75, but for the electric, that bill was for most of December so we also had our christmas lights going. The next gas bill should be lower, Dec. was unusually cold and Jan. has been unusually warm, so that should be a big help! Oh, and our house is 1600 sqft, two stories. It's an old house with little to no insulation, we're hoping to add insulation in the next year or two.

 

[minnieandme]

I have a 1800 sq ft. two story all elec. house and my bill was $178. A little higher than usual, but with us being home for the holidays for 2 weeks and having the Christmas lights on, that's not too bad. It usual runs me about $115/mo. I keep my thermostat on 72.

 

[pyrxtc]

well, I'm on oil too and we jsut got filled up for almost $500 yesterday . Yikes!! Highest it has ever been!

 

[Tissa]

I'm not sure of our square footage but I have a 3 bedroom single story house. My Electric bill was $143 and my gas bill was $87.29 up from $27.76 the month before. Of course my family wants to turn the heat on when it gets below 75

 

[Crankyshank]

Electric (budget) was $119
Gas was $184 (down from $245 the month before)

This is a 1200 sq ft 1940 Cape in NW Rhode Island