I'm curious about people's utility bills. We just got ours for last month--$509.
We only heat the first floor, not the upstairs where we sleep so we heat about 2000 sq ft (400 of which is a small studio apt). 67 degrees during the day and 55 at night. Our house is an 1890's brick house with little insulation except in the ceilings.
Seems like a lot of money.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

yea.. id say its time to retrofit some insulation and proper windows .. i bet if you had the local power company come out and do a free test like they do here in florida where they let you know where your money is going .. they help you out by having you buy more efficient windows and the such ..

i think my parents pay 100-200 a month for electricity in my house. and we have a gas water heater .and that bill is never more than 100$ our house is probably 8 years old

Not much can be done to insulate the walls of a solid brick house. We have storm windows already. We may get some additional benefit from double glazed windows but probably not enough to make much of a difference. The attic is heavily insulated, in places 2' thick.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Was Dec 05 unusually cold in your location? The resources available at weather.com can help determine the answer to that question. Did your utility company raise the price of fuel?

I live in Fairfax, Va about 15 miles west of Wash DC. The 2-story (2400sf) and unfinished basement (1200sf) house was built in 1981. Temperatrue is set at 68 during the day and 62 overnight. Gas heat and hot water - family of four. i.e. 4 showers/day and laundry. Electricity used for cooking. Dec 05 gas bill was $214. Gas bill monthly average for 2005 was $100.
regards,
Mark

We live in a 1920's brick 2 story in central Ohio. The house is just under 1600 sq ft with original windows in most of the house. Decent insulation, a gas furnace that is 20 years old,80% efficient at best. We are on a gas budget that runs around $130 a month. I am thinking of replacing the old furnace with a 95+ efficient one. How old is your furnace and what is the efficientcy rating? Maybe time for a new one. Also, I read in Popular Mechanics that too big of a furnace will actually cost more to run than one that is the correct size for your house. Have an expert in the heating field perform an analysis of the heating needs of your house.

unless you blew it in yourself i bet that the walls have none..

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72 W114/M130

RedMeat cartoon

We have hot water radiators. When we bought the house in 1989 it had gravity hot water with a 300k btu boiler. Everything was broken because the house had been empty for a couple of years with temperatures at 20 below and the system had not been drained. So I did the heat calculations, replaced the the 300k but with a used 165k btu (slightly undersized), pumped the hot water, zoned the system and insulated. So the boiler could probably be replaced with a more efficent unit. Has anyone seen comparable reductions in heating bills to the increased efficiency of a boiler? I'm not in the mood for a bunch of plumbing work.
It has been somewhat colder here the past month. Since our kitchen is on the same zone as the apt, I'm going to try only heating our kitchen in the am, (and heating a bath with an oil electric radiator) and heating the rest of our downstairs living space in the pm, when the temperatures are warmer outside and see how much of a difference that makes.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

We have similar construction and vintage of the house. This one is a 1900 square foot colonial with typical foyer, living room, dining room, sunroom, and kitchen on the 1st. Four bedrooms and bath on the second. Built in 1921 with 2x4 construction. Updated periodically with R-11 insulation in the walls and about R-19 in the attic floor above the second floor ceiling.

The house started with an old cast iron, American Standard Boiler, with a giant firebox and large, cavernous heat transfer fins. This boiler remains to this day, however, improved with a Beckett, flame retention head.

It also had 2" supply lines covered in asbestos, running through the basement to the 3/4" risers to the individual radiators (9 of them). Naturally, it was only one zone. You would typically wait two hours for any serious temperature increase, because the system held 125 gallons of water (I measured it).

Fuel consumption was typically 1400 gallons per year, with the temperature kept conservative.............68 degrees during the day and 62 degrees at night. No clock thermostat.

The consumption included the hot water requirements via a tankless coil within the furnace.

After about 5 years of this BS, I finally had enough. Naturally the asbestos and the 2" pipes had to go. So, I carefully planned a project that included removal of all the pipes in the basement, including the asbestos. It was to be done in two stages............one-half the house at a time. Since each radiator in the house was fed directly from the basement (parallel system), it made sense to put a zone valve in the feed to each radiator and control the valve with a thermostat in the room. Maybe a bit of an overkill, but, the difficulty of obtaining two zones (double pipes in the basement, and an additional circulator) was about as costly as adding nine zone valves.

So, after about three years (on and off), I finally got it all finished. The furnace feeds 9 zone valves via 1" copper pipe, fully insulated. The risers in the walls remain at 3/4". Four of the nine zones have clock thermostats. I keep my office at 70°F. during the day and all other rooms remain at 60°F. In the evening, the living room is heated to 70°F for the evening hours. All rooms, other than my bedroom are reduced to 55°F. at night. The bedroom is reduced to 61°F.

The other significant change was a reduction in boiler temperature from the typical 180 degrees to 155 degrees. The cast iron radiators have tremendous radiating capability and the cooler water has posed no issues. The only time that hotter water is preferred is when the ambient temps drop down to below 20°F. If that happens, I simply go down and raise the boiler temp up slightly. I can manage the hot water with 155 deg. boiler water because the unit has a 10 gallon coil. It provides all the hot water desired at a temp of approx 120 degrees. If I need to do a hot wash, or a diswasher load, I have installed a switch, at the top of the basement stairs, that will send the boiler up to high limit (185 deg.) I do the required wash and then drop it back to 155 deg.

The consumption varies between 650 and 800 gallons per heating season. Last year was brutal and it used 800 gallons. This year, knock on wood, is running warmer than usual, so I'm hoping for 700 gallons. It all depends on the Jan-Feb. temps. If we remain close to 30 degrees, I'm fine. But, if we get several weeks of 25 deg. days and 10 deg. nights, then I won't make it.

So, fuel oil is currently at $2.159 per gallon (as of two weeks ago). My cost for a 12 month period will be approx. $1500.

The house remains with the original cast iron, American Standard boiler.


Hopefully, the above can give you some tidbits for improvement. PM me for any additional details needed.

good thread, meant to start one myself..

my total bill was about $150 for December.. 1500 SF although i haven't heated the super cold living room of mine much, working on drafts and such.. this year i decided to use electricity and my fireplace to heat the house with.. i hardly used the gas and it was $70.. a friend of mine heated a little less square footage and it cost him $250.. he does have more windows then i do..

i am rather happy with the result as it would have been easily over $300 if i just used my gas furnace alone.. electric is way cheaper right now, as it was back in the early 1970s......

my house is about 100 y/o and has no insulation in the walls (siding, studs, t&g interior walls covered with plaster).. i will add a bit to the ceilings sometime this winter still..

seems that adding "blanket" to the window bottoms and middle has helped tremendously.. any idea how one could insulate the window weights areas without impeding the movement of the weights? "blanket" = towels and other insulation.. i am in the process of cutting special covers for the middles out of rigid insulation

Ouch buddy.

We heat 3200 sq ft and our average bill is $150-200 for heat, coincidentally I spent the day cutting wood because it would be double that if I didn't back up the furnace with a wood burner. Hence my love for chainsaws.

Injectable insulation isn't expensive you should look into it.

No place to inject. Triple brick solid wall construction with plaster on the inside.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Damn.....I'd have a heart attack if I saw a bill like that.......my last Gas bill was $150 and the last electric bill was $59.

I have R-39 in my attic....Low-E windows with argon....and heat the house to 69 degrees...which sets back to 60 when we sleep or are at work....I have a two story Colonial with a split Foyer.built in 1963...no insulation in the walls either...except for the three rooms I have remodled...but in this area west of DC it is somewhat warmer than Colorado.....

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

So would I, but then I'm pretty sure no one wants to hear about my heating bills, anyway...

tell them LOL!
"heating bills" - that sounds scary. I manage to stay below $30 a month. Even in summer with the A/C running constantly my bills always show 2-digit numbers. I live in a small apartment though.

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quoting 240DieselDog: "...the 115/240D is a better car than any that have since been built - that's *any* car from any automobile manufacturer."

You have to be very careful when you compare numbers with other members.

If the average temperature in the house is 65 degrees (24 hour period) and the average ambient temperature is 35 degrees (24 hour period), let's say the fuel consumption is "X".

Now, take a different locale where the average ambient temperature is 25 degrees (24 hour period).

The fuel consumption is now 1.34X. An identical house in this new location is burning 25% more fuel.

The other mitigating factor is the cost of natural gas. In NY, it cost about $1.60 per therm for the supply and the delivery. Even with the high cost of fuel oil, gas is still going to cost more to heat a home.