Running a Natural Gas Furnace Question

[dfchelbay]

I have natural gas furnace and water heater, installed in 2007. In the warm months when I only have to pay to heat the hot water tank my bill is around $20 a month. When I run the furnace, my bill shoots thru the roof. We've done all the things to conserve energy and have cut down on running the furnace. My current bill is $230 for the past month. But, we only run the furnace in the early mornings and in the evenings. We average about 7 hours a day of the furnace being on. The temperature in the house only fluctuates a couple degrees, and it takes no time at all to heat up the house. I took my current$230 bill and divided it by 30 days, then again divided it by 7 hours we run the furnace to get an average of $1.10 per hour to run the furnace. If I ran it 24/7 like an average family would, my bill would be almost $800 for one month. Is that normal? Do those of you that don't shut off your furnace in the winter pay that much a month...$800? What do you all pay on average for your heating bill? I'm just sickened by how much it costs. Our furnace is newish from 2007 as is the water heater. Nothing else in the house is gas. Am I in the ballpark with $1.10 an hour to run a furnace? What are you all averaging? Thanks.

 

[scrapquitler]

I have natural gas furnace and water heater, installed in 2007. In the warm months when I only have to pay to heat the hot water tank my bill is around $20 a month. When I run the furnace, my bill shoots thru the roof. We've done all the things to conserve energy and have cut down on running the furnace. My current bill is $230 for the past month. But, we only run the furnace in the early mornings and in the evenings. We average about 7 hours a day of the furnace being on. The temperature in the house only fluctuates a couple degrees, and it takes no time at all to heat up the house. I took my current$230 bill and divided it by 30 days, then again divided it by 7 hours we run the furnace to get an average of $1.10 per hour to run the furnace. If I ran it 24/7 like an average family would, my bill would be almost $800 for one month. Is that normal? Do those of you that don't shut off your furnace in the winter pay that much a month...$800? What do you all pay on average for your heating bill? I'm just sickened by how much it costs. Our furnace is newish from 2007 as is the water heater. Nothing else in the house is gas. Am I in the ballpark with $1.10 an hour to run a furnace? What are you all averaging? Thanks.

We have forced hot air natural gas and our hot water heater runs on natural gas, as does our cooktop (but not the oven). In the summer our bill costs about $25/mo. In the winter it runs about $200-&250 a month depending on the outside temperature. We keep the thermostat set between 55-60 most of the time, and we are in CT so it's pretty cold in the winter.

 

[wishuponastar42]

We are in Oklahoma with both a furnace & water heater on natural gas in a 1350 sq ft house. I use the average monthly billing plan so it runs $45-50 each month all year; so that's no more than $600/year. We typically keep the thermostat between 68 & 71.

 

[ORDisneyfans]

There are so many variables to this question. How many therms are you using per day' what efficiency your furnace is (70, 80, 90 or the new 93% models) , how much do you pay per therm for your gas? I would recommend calling your local gas company to evaluate your current system and check for possible leaks etc.

 

[tinkerone]

natural gas furnace and hot water tank. we don't rent the tank from the same company so my expenses will not include the rental cost.
we pay $80 a month, was $74 but they increased it last October. on the last month we do a make up bill. last year it was 51.20.
total for last year was $883.20. year before was $800.09. This year looks to be on track for under $900 as well. my house is about 1675 sq ft.
we keep our tempature at a constant 71. it takes more energy to heat a whole house from 60 degrees than it does to get the house to 71 and have it keep that temp. the heat only comes on every twenty/thirly minutes and only stays on for maybe 5.
i'm in Canada and it gets cold.

 

[Hannathy]

The furnace doesn't run all the time so doing it by the hour is a very odd way to do it. And someone said it takes the furnace running full out a lot longer and harder to warm the house back up from being cold than just to keep it at a reasonable temp so you really can't come up with an hourly rate and multiple by 24. How much you are paying also depends on where you live and your rate for Gas. some places are very high.

You said you have down things to conserve, do you have new or old windows, if old that a big loss of heat, good insulation?

My Bill for February for Gas and electric with a Gas furnace was $300, and I don't think we had more than 3 days that the low wasn't below zero!
And I refuse to freeze in my house, I kept it at 67 the whole time. A furnace person on the radio said that when it is -20 for long stretches it is easier on the furnace to keep it steady instead of turning it up and down and making the furnace work so hard to warm things back up. Did not want to think about having my furnace die when it is that cold out.

But without knowing your rate , knowing how much anyone else paid really can't tell you much.

 

[Marionnette]

I have natural gas furnace and water heater, installed in 2007. In the warm months when I only have to pay to heat the hot water tank my bill is around $20 a month. When I run the furnace, my bill shoots thru the roof. We've done all the things to conserve energy and have cut down on running the furnace. My current bill is $230 for the past month. But, we only run the furnace in the early mornings and in the evenings. We average about 7 hours a day of the furnace being on. The temperature in the house only fluctuates a couple degrees, and it takes no time at all to heat up the house. I took my current$230 bill and divided it by 30 days, then again divided it by 7 hours we run the furnace to get an average of $1.10 per hour to run the furnace. If I ran it 24/7 like an average family would, my bill would be almost $800 for one month. Is that normal? Do those of you that don't shut off your furnace in the winter pay that much a month...$800? What do you all pay on average for your heating bill? I'm just sickened by how much it costs. Our furnace is newish from 2007 as is the water heater. Nothing else in the house is gas. Am I in the ballpark with $1.10 an hour to run a furnace? What are you all averaging? Thanks.

Too many variables to really answer your question. How big is your house (as in square footage)? What kind of heat do you have (forced air, hot water, steam, etc)? How warm to do keep it during those 7 hours that the heat is running? How cold do you allow the house to get while the heat is off? It would make more sense to turn it down to 62 that to have the furnace struggle to heat a house up from 55 to 70 degrees. How many cubic feet of natural gas are you using in a month? Is your meter being read manually? remotely? or is the bill estimated? And finally, what is your rate per cubic ft of gas and how are you being taxed? Sometimes you pay a penalty tax rate for higher consumption.

 

[bdcp]

We have two gas furnaces and one heat pump. We also have a gas cooktop and 75 gallon gas hot water heater and it's just DH and I. My combined electric and gas bills are budget billed at around $320/month. I pay about $239 for electric and $80 for gas every month. I prefer paying the same amount year round rather than having really high bills during the coldest and hottest months. Now, my home is 5500 sq feet but we have digital thermostats that we have programmed at 69 deg in the winter and 72 in the summer. I honestly don't think it saves that much to have them off during the daytime while we're at work because once they do come on they have to run continuously to get back to the right temp.

 

[Alesia]

Try letting the furnace run continuously instead of turning it off for so long at a time. You're causing the furnace to work much harder (and less efficiently) by doing that. You're also putting way more wear & tear on your furnace.

 

[Gracie09]

We never really turn off our furnace. If we else the house for several days we will knock the temp down a few degrees. I would get an automatic thermostat and program it to drop the temp a couple degrees when you're not home and at night and put it back up when you come home.
I honestly have never heard of turning on and off a furnance during the day. It seems like it would waste a lot of fuel and energy because everything has to be heated back up

 

[elgerber]

I am on a budget plan, but I just went to the website, to see our actual charges. Our most expensive total was January at $143. That is for 3000 finished square feet, furnace, water heater, stove/oven and dryer. And I live in MN, where we have had 51 days with temps below 0 this winter, so our furnace has been working hard.

 

[manning]

The initial cost would be high for a tankless water heater. That is higher than a regular heater, but the operating cost is much lower. Plus you get instant hot water.

 

[wishuponastar42]

The initial cost would be high for a tankless water heater. That is higher than a regular heater, but the operating cost is much lower. Plus you get instant hot water.

Not to mention that the expected lifespan of a tankless unit it much longer than a standard tank unit.

 

[Colleen27]

I'm in Michigan. Summer bills (hot water and cooking) run $20-30/mo. Winter bills are around $200.

I don't understand why you wouldn't just set the thermostat at a fixed temp and leave it to cycle on/off as needed. Turning the furnace off and letting the temp fall then catching up again later is much less efficient. You can't really break the furnace costs down to per-hour because they do naturally cycle on and off. But you're creating hours with much more "on" time than would be needed if the furnace was left to maintain a set temp.

 

[shepd]

This is all going to depend on so many things...

- What is the efficiency level of the furnace? Is it two stage?
- How well insulated is the house? Are the windows reasonably efficient?
- What temperature do you (would you) leave the thermostat set at (adjusting it as you do is not helping efficiency unless you let the house get cold enough to freeze the pipes, although it probably isn't costing you more)?
- Do you leave doors/windows open at all (silly question, but some do...)?
- How large is the house, including basement?
- Does the house have a basement? Is the basement finished? Is it insulated?
- Is a garage attached? Is it insulated properly from the house? Is it heated?
- Details about the water heater?
- Electric or gas appliances (dryer / stove / ???)?
- Your location...

I can give you my average natural gas bill in Southwestern Ontario during the winter: $200 (although it's been cheaper the last couple of months due to estimation from them not being able to read the gas meter since it's buried in a 5 foot tall snowbank... ...which means I'll get a whopper of a bill soon). Water and sewage costs are harmonized into that bill.

My house is about 1900 sq ft if you include the basement (1000 otherwise). Half the basement is finished but poorly insulated, the other half is unfinished and only 1/2 insulated (all that was required in 1980 here by code). The rest of the house has similarly old insulation, but the attic insulation is relatively new. All but one window is insulated/double glazed, and none are faulty. We never leave doors open. No garage. The thermostat is set at 18 Celsius (64.4 Fahrenheit) and is never touched. Furnace is two-stage and 94% efficient.

Outside the winter, I generally pay $85 a month for my gas/water bill. The water heater is a 40 litre gas fired unit, and somewhat old (10 years old now). I keep it set to 130 Fahrenheit (gas fired water heaters are much less likely to have listeria issues) and it was installed prior to mixing valves being code.

I have an electric stove and electric dryer.

I could easily see a large home (3000 square ft + 1500 square ft basement) costing $400 a month to keep hot in this winter. If it's an old unrenovated large home, I'd bump it to $600.

 

[puffkin]

We live in PA and do get fairly cold weather. I have a 2000 sq/f 2 story house and another 800 sq/f in a finished basement. We have gas forced air heat, two gas fireplaces and a gas hot water heater. Family of 4. Everything else is electric.

Natural Gas is very cheap in this part of the country. I do the budget plan because I like paying the same amount every month. Both my husband and I are salaried, so our income doesn't change monthly so we like our bills to stay the same too. We keep our heat set at 60 all the time. Our family room fireplace is running anytime we are home which keeps our main floor very comfortable. We run the fireplace in the basement rec room anytime we are down there so it is also very comfortable. Our upper level does get very cold, but that is just the bedrooms and we don't mind it to sleep. We have vent fans with heaters in our bathrooms so they get very toasty when we are in there.

I pay $45/month, so $540 a year to heat my house and it is very comfortable with the fireplaces. Its awesome. A huge advantage to living in a development in gas service territory. Most of the people outside the towns/developments in this area have oil or propane tanks and pay 5 or 6 times what pay.

 

[daughtersrus]

We're in the Chicago area. In the summer, my gas bill is less than $20. We have a gas hot water heater, clothes dryer and oven/stove. My last two bills for the record low temps we've been having have not been more than $130 each. We do cook a lot on the grill but we do that pretty much all winter as well.

Our house is about 2400sf plus a full basement. Our heat is kept at 70 during the day but drops down to 64 at night (back up at 5am). We replaced all of our windows about 10 years ago. I keep most of the vents upstairs closed. Our familyroom is two stories and there is an open railing in the hall and one in the loft so a lot of heat rises.

Edited to add... Our furnace is original to the house so it's 28 years old. I'm sure it's not the most efficient.

 

[sherry7]

I live in the midst of the Marcellus Shale (gas fracking area), so our natural gas is fairly inexpensive compared to some parts of the country. I pay on budget, $84 per month year around. It used to be about $15 a month cheaper, but it recently raised because we've had an extra cold winter here. We keep our heat set on 72-73 degrees during cold weather. I also have a natural gas stove/oven and hot water heater. My house is about 1700 sq feet, built in 2003 so the furnace, windows, etc aren't that old.

Like someone else said, turning your furnace off and on uses more energy, and it's more likely that you'll have problems with your furnace at some point. I've had a couple of furnace repairmen tell me that. It's important to get your gas furnace checked once per year. It's not only to check for gas leaks, etc, but having it clean makes it run more efficiently.

 

[jensen]

I have natural gas furnace and water heater, installed in 2007. In the warm months when I only have to pay to heat the hot water tank my bill is around $20 a month. When I run the furnace, my bill shoots thru the roof. We've done all the things to conserve energy and have cut down on running the furnace. My current bill is $230 for the past month. But, we only run the furnace in the early mornings and in the evenings. We average about 7 hours a day of the furnace being on. The temperature in the house only fluctuates a couple degrees, and it takes no time at all to heat up the house. I took my current$230 bill and divided it by 30 days, then again divided it by 7 hours we run the furnace to get an average of $1.10 per hour to run the furnace. If I ran it 24/7 like an average family would, my bill would be almost $800 for one month. Is that normal? Do those of you that don't shut off your furnace in the winter pay that much a month...$800? What do you all pay on average for your heating bill? I'm just sickened by how much it costs. Our furnace is newish from 2007 as is the water heater. Nothing else in the house is gas. Am I in the ballpark with $1.10 an hour to run a furnace? What are you all averaging? Thanks.

I really cannot give you an answer without a lot more information. But, here's my question. Why are you asking?

Are you struggling to pay the bill? If so, contact your energy company and ask about budget billing. They will set you up so you pay the same amount each month.

Are you uncomfortable - is the house too cold, but you are afraid to turn up the heat because it costs too much? Look into some low-cost things like plastic on the windows, draft-dodgers for the doors and another layer of insulation in the attic. These should help the comfort level without turning up the thermostat. Also, keep doors shut in the rooms you use the most to keep the heat in there.

Are you tired of babysitting the thermostat? Invest in a digital programmable model. You can find a good one for less than $40 at Lowe's or Home Depot. Install it yourself... they are very easy to do.

There are other, much more expensive options (like replacing windows or a new furnace) that you could look into. But, speaking from experience, they don't always pay-off as promised.

 

[tvguy]

Biggest issue is going to be energy rates in your area.

I live in a subdivision that was built as all electric, because here, until the mid 1980's electricity was a far cheaper option. Electricity prices shot up in the mid-1980's, some folks getting $300 electric bills to heat to about $300 a month. and some folks paid $1,500 to have natural gas lines brought in, $5,000 to switch to a gas furnace, $1000 to put in a gas water heater, and $1,000 to put in a gas stove.

The gas rates rose and they got $400 gas heating bills 2 years later.