Bundle Up
 

I keep my house at 45 degrees and wear ski pants, a jacket, a hat, and fingerless gloves inside the house in the winter. As long as my hands don't hurt, I'm good.

Electric blanket (on a timer to preheat the bed) and a ton of blankets for sleeping. Using the bathroom is the only real downside.

Actually, I have trouble getting bananas to turn yellow. My fridge also freezes up a bit. I have to turn the heat up about 2 hours before I have guests.

you just let your house naturally get that low right? you dont have your ac to 45 degrees, right?

Yep, in winter. I have a whole house fan for the summer. Less tolerant of heat than cold since I don't have a "cooling blanket" for my bed. Maybe well water slowly circulating through some sort of pad? Sounds annoying...and heavy!

i thought i was hard core letting the house get to 55 degrees, Whats your electricty bill per month?

Bill's about $30. A lot of that is user fees. About 150 Kwh. I am still building my own house and it's not fully insulated, so I wintered in just a piece of it that I threw temporary insulation around. If it were finished, 50-55 would probably me a more reasonable level.

how many square feet? I am thinking about getting those energy efficiant windows, i currently have the old school ones. I wonder if my electricity bill would go down any. thoughts?

7,000 when it's finally all done. That's a little misleading as it has no basement (an attempt to reduce stairs) and that counts the integrated garage. My ex is a printemaker and she wanted an extensive art studio so I designed it all into one building. The walls are 14" thick and I blew in R60 in the attic, also the windows are very strategically placed. I have a wood stove (not in operation yet) and I had a solar porch with a plan for a big ol' hot water storage tank, but I needed to cancel that plan as I need to sell it now and people don't want weird and custom, so says the realtor. Nixing the thermal shutters for the windows too. Wish I'd never started it. Taking a long time.

A friend of mine had drafty old windows so he siliconed them shut since he never opens them anyway (not in a bedroom). Fast and cheap fix. He also had single zone heat (hydronic) so we added another zone for the bedrooms. Pex rocks, is all I have to say. I made him insulate his heating pipes (they run through his unheated crawl space), but he doesn't want to ditch his 20 year old fridge for some strange reason (it runs a LOT and is sucking down juice).

I suggest getting a kill-a-watt or just using your electric meter to systematically measure what's using power. Where do you live? Is A/C a big draw? I helped a friend blow cellulose into his walls in CA. He had a 1950s era house with nothing in there. We drilled holes on the inside rather than the outside because the stucco would've been harder to patch. One wall had a hole in the outside and we blew a LOT of cellulose in there trying to fill it up before realizing something was wrong. All over the yard.

Duh, you live in TN!

That would be much easier! For bigger things I would walk out to my meter with a stopwatch and time the wheels for instantaneous draw, or read it and then wait a few hours and read it again. Really annoying.

Funny story. I had a friend move in to my loft. He is a super computer gadget geek and my electric bill went from $30/mo to $140/mo. I offered to just keep paying the $30/mo and he'd pay anything above that (actually generous since the $30 included all the fixed user fees). After a while he complained because he couldn't see how he was using so much, so he got out his CA bills, which showed he had been using MORE out there, even in winter with no A/C. Anyhow, he pesters me until I install a meter for the loft with its own breaker box. He agreed that we'd just split the bill proportionally now that we had detailed usage info. Because he then was kicking in for part of the user fees, his bill actually went UP. Turns out that his load when his devices were all in sleep mode was 50% as much as when he was actively doing things.

here lately actually for the past 9 months that have been charging me a gas surcharge. its like 10$ extra a month

Our fixed fees just went up a lot for electricity, but then the first 100 kwh of power is at a reduced rate. For me it was pretty much a wash.

Only oil or propane here. Both are sky high. I have come up with some pretty entertaining ideas for heating (mostly not serious):

1) Using nuclear waste to heat - turns out you'd need a LOT of it
2) Generate my own electricity & use the waste heat
3) Get on as many junk mail lists as possible and heat with that
4) Use a compressor on a windmill (very windy here in winter) to run a ground source heat pump, storing the hot water in an insulated tank
5) Run a low profit margin grid computing service and use the waste heat

The $60/mo I pay for high speed internet (I don't get the TV programming) is what gets me. I'm lucky to have it at all, and many in my town are on dialup.

Go to the press. Make a stink!

Burning lots of paper is a huge amount of work, and it doesn't burn well in large quantity. Junk mail is especially bad, it's mainly glossy paper and sometimes plastic windows on envelopes.

In past winters, I've burned pallets. It's a lot of work cutting them up and feeding them into the fire but they make a whole lot of heat (and still less work than trying to burn all paper).

It sucks being a slave to the cable company. That's my only option too.

I knew junk mail sucked, which is why is was a joke! Mostly making fun of how much damn mail I was getting. I ordered some .22 ammo for my plinking rifle and all of a sudden I was getting cigar, jerky, and phone sex number junk mail. Yeesh.

I'd love to share cable with my neighbor and kick in for his bill (use a wifi router), but we're not friendly enough that I think he'd go for it.

When my ex left my mail dropped to almost nothing. Now I just collect it when I have Netflix discs waiting (mailbox is about 2/3 of a mile away so it makes a good walk).

https://www.catalogchoice.org is good at reducing unwanted catalog mail, though they have no effect on Travelsmith.

I never ordered anything from Travelsmith. Once, about 4 years ago, I let my mom use my credit card to order something to be delivered to her house (not mine). I get a never-ending supply of Travelsmith catalogs, despite my repeated pleas to stop the deluge. I've tried being nice, I've tried threatening, and I can't figure out what they think they have to gain by ignoring my requests. I'm not going to suddenly be impressed by their wares someday and buy something. All I'll ever do is beg people to never buy anything from them, as long as they're fresh in my mind.

Never tried it with junk mail, but I find a phone call beats email (especially if you make a point of asking for the name of who you're speaking with), a professional letter beats a phone call, and a personal visit beats 'em all.

I have had my phone calls escalated sometimes. I have been lax in the "sending letters" department.

I've mostly given up. The way I see it, if they truly want to lose money who am I to try to save them from that? Let them waste money sending me catalogs and lose customers when I explain why people shouldn't buy from those jerks.

I'm not as good as I should be. This talk has inspired me to get rid of the last of the ex's junk mail that trickles in.

Yeah, they could even lay off postal workers! Er . . oops.

We thought we could be proactive in turning off our heat this last week since the days were creeping into the high 50s and lows in the low 40's. But today it's back to a high of 42 with more typical Oregon weather: Sun, hail, sun, rain, sun, hail - all in about an hour.

I was ALMOST fooled into removing my snow tires late last week. Today we got 4" of snow. Close one.

Dude, be careful of that.
Don't ever share your cable with anybody. They prosecute that stuff.
I hope you're joking.

Be very careful with pallets.
Some are fumigated for use with fruit , vegetables and other plant life.
Burning those will kill you.

Pete.

Good point. I burned pallets from construction supply warehouses.

I keep my house at 55*F now even though I bought this fancy 7-day programmable thermostat, thinking, "Oh, this will surely save some money." Later realizing, nothing saves money quite like NOT using comfort features at all. LOL

I'm such a money hoarder. I hate it.

Just bought this house (32 year old house in rough shape) back in August. I'm 24, it's my first property. I rented a few places for the past 5 years before deciding the $8k incentive was reason enough to buy. Even when renting I would only run the heater if I had company (had gas heat at my old townhouse). There were many mornings I'd wake up to the sight of my breath... that was cold.

My mother is always complaining when I tell her on the phone the temperature in my house. She says now that I've worked hard enough to afford a house I should enjoy it in comfort. I just tell her it's more comforting to get the $30-50 energy bills each month than it would be to bask in warmth in the whole house and be paying $250-300. I'm a single guy, I can tough it out to save a buck. :)

I have a sheet, heated blanket, down comforter, and decorative comforter on my bed. If I'm home for extended periods of time in the evenings before bed I just drink hot chocolate or coffee or even hot cider. Helps w/ the chills. lol

Have you tried more heat to see how much it would really cost? I'm not sure that your $30-50 vs. $250-300 comparison is accurate.

Nope. It's the idea that getting by w/ less makes me a stronger individual/more efficient. Its reassuring to know I put myself in this situation and don't complain about it. It's a personal challenge.

It's also the fact that it's a no brainer, for each degree I raise the thermostat, that's more money out of my pocket. There's no arguing that.

$250-300 may not be accurate, but that's my fear. Like mentioned, I'm a single guy, might as well tough it out and save for something more important than comfort. IF I had a family, or a wife or even a live-in girlfriend, I'd raise the heat.

Before buying my house I figured the budget out and decided I still wanted to be able to contribute "XXX" to my savings each month. By not using excessive amounts of heat, water, additional cable programming, and fuel, I'm currently contributing double my goal. So now that I've established that as the "norm" kind of, I don't want to sacrifice it.

I have a heat pump also. If I had gas heat I'd probably do what I did in my townhouse a few times.... come home from work, crank the heat for 30 minutes and it would quickly warm the place to 70*F. I'd then turn it off and by the time I went to bed it was still 65*F in there. If I bump my current thermostat by 2 degrees or more the auxillary coils kick in and I've checked the thermostat wiring, I don't have enough wires to engage the coils in stages (you need 7 wires, I only have 5) so if I bump it up to warm the house, it's pulling a lot of juice, all 3 coils glow red hot. Rewiring the thermostat (running new wire) might not be too bad of an idea... maybe if i'm still in this house when I have a family.

Speaking of saving water -

I have a nice shower routine. I wash my hair first, turn the water off and lather up with soap, then turn the water back on to rinse. I bet I've cut my water consumption by 2/3 by doing this. The shame is, in my area the water district charges customers a "base fee" and you pay any additional amount of the given base gallons. I've never paid over the base fee, so I'm not saving any money on water, but I guess the water heater doesn't work as hard so I'm saving there.

we just put those in half the 1st floor of my moms house. it has 80 year old windows (all of them are). we decided to start with the living room since it has 6 fairly large windows. it was usually several degrees cooler than the kitchen/dining room, now it's several warmer. next year is the kitchen/dining room, after that the upstairs.

Quantitatively I couldn't say how much of a difference it makes since I put in a new ventless gas fireplace burner the week before Christmas (though we found you need the ceiling fan on and the doors open or it becomes an oven long before the CO/smoke alarm goes off)

I wonder if he still had a wife or g/f?

I once lived in an apartment which had other apartments on each side, and one above. My gas bill was about $4.00/month even in the winter. Of course, I used my water bed heater to keep me warm at night...

Okay... not gonna lie. This being cold stuff is getting very old.

Screw winter. :rolleyes:

You know, I tried for a while to use just cold water for things like washing my hands and washing dishes. It got old. I started using warm water. I did not notice a difference in my bill.

I think the largest consumers of hot water are bathing and top-load washers anyway. With our front-load washer, the temperature of the water we use makes scant difference in our bill. We'd save more money by shutting off the hot tub than washing with cold, and that doesn't amount to enough for us to worry about.

I have a single oil-fired boiler that provides on-demand domestic hot water and my forced hot water heat. For more than half of the year my oil tank's gauge doesn't budge, while it's only serving domestic hot water. Only when I use heat does the oil get used up. I take long showers and wash a lot of my laundry in hot water.

I've considered adjusting my habits, but considering the oil usage, there's really no reason to.

There's always a reason to adjust. I'm going to sound like a tree-hugging hippy, but what about the environment?

Ex: My local water supplier bills me for a minimum of 3,000 gallons which is like $15.50 each month. I found this out because I called and inquired about my useage an they said I hadn't ever gone over their lowest useage fee, thats why my bill was the same each month.

I still try to bathe in my same old manners though, because saving water is saving water.

I wash my head, get a loofa wet, turn the shower off, scrub down, turn the shower back on and rinse. I figure I'm saving at least 1/2 of the water I use when I don't do this. When you lather up, you are generally moving out of the flow of water anyway, might as well shut it off. If I'm in a hurry I just rush through it w/o shutting it off.

That's a worthy goal if it motivates you, but it doesn't work for me. For me, pragmatism, comfort, and convenience usually beat environmentalism.

Anyway, the environmental impact is less for me. I have a private well and private septic. My aquifer is very well provisioned. I have no reason to save water. So, it's still only about energy for me...electricity to pump the water and oil to heat it, both of which are immeasurably small at my house.

Our water supply is 100% river fed. Whatever we don't use ends up in the ocean anyway. Nevermind the issue of standing totally out of the heated spray of the shower to soap up in what is usually not very warm air in my house. I just don't want to feel that chilly in the morning!