Life up north

[Tab]

If you live in the southern half of the United States you might not be aware of this.

I remember, years ago, I was interviewing for a job in Washington (at NASA, actually - I got the job but we had to wait for the budget to pass, which it didn't do in time for me). A friend was showing me apartments. Apologetically, he confessed that his heating and electric bill was $60. I would have killed for a $60 bill. I was dumping HUNDREDS of dollars a month into fuel and electric. But I lived up north (Vermont, at the time).

I am now on my third house of ownership (only one at a time - I don't have more than one), and have rented two more before that. Living in New England, usually houses are heated with oil.

There are some exceptions. Most people don't heat with electric because for many years it was the most expensive kind (good if it was a vacation home, lousy otherwise), and an awful kind of heat (very dry). Usually it was oil or gas, and typically it was oil.

Most of my houses in the past had a wood stove. Not so my current one. It's no fun getting up at 2 a.m. to go out and get some damned wood from the back yard to stoke the stove, but it's cheaper than oil (although it's getting pricey in its own right, now). My current house doesn't have a wood stove, but it's relatively small. My first house was a 6000 sq. ft monstrosity with two furnaces and three oil tanks. If I owned it now it would cost me probably $25,000 to heat it for the winter. And therein lies the problem.

We think of the price of gas as our big problem, and it's not cheap - stations here are running $4/gallon as I understand they are throughout most of the country.

Driving, however, with some luck, can be managed. Not eliminated, but there is carpooling and stuff like that. Heating your home, though, is not an optional task. You have to keep the heat on. Fail to keep it at least non-freezing, and your pipes will freeze (and burst, and flood the house or basement). You can wear all the sweaters you want, but if you have little kids, you really need to keep the heat up to at least 65 or so.

Houses heated by oil typically have an oil burner (usually providing heat and hot water) and a storage tank for the oil. I'm describing this because as I learned when visiting D.C., most people are in a warmer clime and don't know what we have to do.

Storage tanks, on average, are 275 gallon tanks. Although you can, in theory, use any company to fill it, most people usually settle on one local company, and often get automatic delivery. Automatic delivery means that they track your typical usage and show up to fill the tank before it normally would have run out. Occasionally this misses, but as a rule it works pretty well.

How long it lasts varies, but in my experience, a tank lasts about 3 weeks. So, that means 4 or 5 refills during a winter.

Okay, now... oil (priced closer to diesel) will probably be pushing $5 a gallon IF WE'RE LUCKY this winter. $6/gallon might be more likely. Unlike driving, heating is not an option. Every time that oil truck shows up at your house, that's ka-ching - some $1100 in their pocket. It used to just be under $200. Now we are talking some SERIOUS money. Not everyone has the flexibility to cover this. Hell, I have some flexibility, and I'm still dreading next winter. If I have to pay $6 or $7 a gallon for nearly 500 gallons a month, I don't know what I'll do. My car is nothing compared to this.

If you live in New England - or anywhere north, really - and don't have a flexible income (most don't) then your fixed cost of heating your house is going through the roof. Figure four or five refills a winter. This used to run $750 a year, maybe, perhaps $1500. Now you're looking at $2000 to $7000 to heat your home for the winter.

Most local utilities support a program to help lower-income residents with their utility bill, but I don't think any are set up to help 80% of their members.

This has nothing to do with fuel efficiency or choice of vehicle. No one has an "SUV" fuel tank. They either have what they installed or they have what they got when they purchased the house. It's never been a big deal before now, but now that prices are going through the roof, what used to be a secondary consideration is now a major problem. There's no simple solution either - you can't easily just change out your heating system.

High fuel prices are more than just driving. They will affect every single person living in the north.

[murray hill farm]

1. Thanks...so easy to forget!

I am from northern michigan, but have lived in the southeast for the past 15 or so years. Thank you for the reminder and update of what it is like to live up north in the winter. What you are discribing for the next winter is really frightening..really frightening! So many just will not be able to buy oil for heat for next winter. It will just be unaffordable. Then what??????????

[rox63]

2. I live in New England and heat with gas

It's not as expensive as oil heat, although it has gone up in the last year or two. But I know that gas lines aren't available everywhere, and changing over is an expensive proposition. My Mom is a low-income senior, and she gets heating assistance from the govt. A couple of local non-profits also upgraded her insulation and replaced her drafty old windows with newer thermal windows last year. Those changes have helped lower her heating bills tremendously. So, if you can afford to super-insulate your house or replace old windows, it would probably be worth the investment, especially if you plan on living there for a while.

[Tab]

3. Gas weirds me out

I get the impression it's not a ton cheaper, but as you note, it's not trivial to convert.

I'm considering a wood pellet stove, actually. Not the romance of a woodstove, but it is efficient, I guess. Regardless, any changeover will cost thousands of dollars and there are many people that can't pay their current bill, much less change over to something else, tax rebate be damned.

[rox63]

4. I grew up with gas heat, so it's no big deal to me

I've almost always lived in cities that have all the utilities piped in. But I'm in a fairly small (850 sq ft) upper-floor condo, so my heating bills are not even close to what I'd see in an older, single-family house.